In 2013 we were lucky enough to get a modest loan and scrape together a down payment for our first home — a cozy 3 bedroom, 1 bathroom Cape Cod revival that we spent a decade remodeling into a modern urban homestead. After our first task of ripping up the carpet to reveal beaten-up white oak floors, we turned our attention toward establishing a year-round food garden. Lawn covered both the front and back yards (except for the patch of river rock in the rear that was used for RV parking by the previous owners), but slowly, we transitioned each quadrant to twenty-seven raised beds full of veggies that fed us each season.
See our first garden transformation
From April 2013, through April 2015, we documented the changes we made to the yard and garden of our first home in the Montavilla neighborhood of Portland, Oregon. We were inspired by the story of a young photographer in the 1970s named Ken Griffiths who created a photo series taking a picture of an elderly couple in their garden every season.
Meanwhile, we took a gradual yet unrelenting approach to updating the interior room by room, year by year, with whatever meager budget, tools, and knowhow we could cobble together. The house was a mix of original 1950s elements alongside other updates the previous owners had made each decade or so — shag carpeting, wood paneling, 1990s wallpaper, and a bulky washer and dryer in the kitchen. We started small and through many iterations, plenty of mistakes (what were we thinking with some of those early paint colors, yeesh?), and more than a few disagreements, we started to find a shared vision and design approach.
Honoring a home’s history has always been important to us, and even with this little cookie-cutter house, we wanted to preserve its original spirit. Rather than turn the home into a series of add-ons to increase square footage, we looked for cost-efficient design opportunities to bring more connection, charm, and light to the existing cozy yet compartmentalized layout. We exchanged aluminum windows for wood, added skylights, painted the interior a warm white, and grounded the space with reclaimed and natural wood elements for a Scandinavian-inspired cottage. One of the most significant changes we eventually made in 2020 was converting a bedroom adjacent to the living room into a dining room, accessible by a new cased opening. This not only gave us a much-needed place to gather, but also brought us closer to the outdoors.
Ten years into our tenure, we decided we were ready for a change of scenery, and ended up moving to a home just a few blocks away. But this will always be our first home — the place we tried so many things for the first time and as a result grew into the individuals, partners, and home owners we are today. We will be forever grateful for the many memories we made at this little house on Main Street in Montavilla.
