April 8th, 2008 just three days before my 24th birthday, I purchased my first home. Built in 1900, it needed more than just love. After searching for months, this was the only home that hit the market in close-in SE Portland… and I fell head over heels for it.

The only listing photo

… dreamy right?

Enter into the livingroom

The haze on the floor is cigarette ash.

Free set of encyclopedias!!

Woodburning stove

Burrito not pictured

Butlers pantry

Our one and only bathroom

Toilet in the walkway

Back of the tub blocks the window… who thought this out?

The dynamic duo!

Orange shag carpet

Your common hall sink

Yep, there was a sink in the upstairs hallway… Odd, but that meant there was plumbing running upstairs!

Bedroom full of furniture

Check out those floors!

It smelled like cigarettes, was full of junk, it had a different pattern of linoleum flooring in each room, dog turds under the couch, and hadn’t been updated since the ‘40s... but it had 4 bedrooms, an office, original moldings, high ceilings, a big yard, and it was 12 streets from the river. It was dingy and neglected but it had great bones and I always had a way of seeing the diamond in the rough.

My brother and I planned to buy a house together - get a light fixer, shine it up, sell it in a few years, and then we could each buy our own homes. From a young age, my brother and I assisted my father with house projects. “Hey Colleen, come hold this for a second… (much longer than a second). Want to see a little trick? If a screw is stripped out of the door jam and you can’t get the screw to catch because the hole is too big, just put a chopstick in the hole, break it off, sand it flush, and then you can screw the hinge back on the door jam… Fixed!” George was filled with tips and tricks for just about everything around the house, and he loved sharing all of his wisdom with us.

Apparently all the tips we had in our back pockets made us confident enough to take on this huge project. Good thing we also had a few books and YouTube videos to help us out along the way.

As part of the purchase, the seller was able to leave any personal property of their choosing behind. The day we got our keys, there was a burrito in the oven, a samurai sword under the couch, an ashtray in every room (including the bathroom), and dog turds sprinkled around the house. Our initial task was making the house inhabitable. All the windows were painted shut, and it looked like no one cleaned since the 70s, so I chiseled the windows free and mopped the walls with bleach. Our initial deep clean of the house also included filling a giant dumpster with garbage. Before major demolition began, we lived in the house with it looking like this for a while...