Update: our house sold

No, not our floating home... ironically that was only listed for sale a few weeks ago.

Our house/home/home-base back in Portland, which we listed for sale close to a year ago to prolong/avoid making other decisions finally sold (of course, not long after making some of those same decisions - the universe works in mysterious ways).

We've written a lot about the idea of "home" over the years, and the idea/concept continues to grow and unfold. Obviously we have long believed that home is wherever we are together. Our life over the last 12years has been a t-shirt or poster quote of "home is where you park it" or "home is where you drop the anchor" (in fact, that's a great idea - I should likely get on designing those shirts for our Swag Shop), but that doesn't mean we don't have the same heartstrings pulling towards family/friends/loved ones that everyone else does.

When Jen and I first met (when she moved in next door, we stalked each other and eventually fell in love), we fully believed that we would live in, have children in, and eventually die in the house that I owned at the time. It was a massive old PDX style home, that I was slowly rebuilding the intricate craftsman details on (sometimes with a modern tilt), had 5+ bedrooms and a full attic/basement/garage that we quickly started filling with "stuff". I just went back and reread this post about stuff, and wow have things changed about our mindset!).

A few years later, as we began to downsize and seek adventure/travel we quickly realized that the concept of "home" wasn't tied to those walls (funny how saving a lot of money every month by living in a more affordable place while someone else pays your mortgage off can help convince you), and we started to realize that our happiness wasn't tied to our home address or how big or attractive our house was.

After a disastrous year of us living in Utah (best described as us buying a "sure-thing" investment that instead turned out to be the local drug house and brothel - nope, not kidding nor exaggerating), we returned home to Portland and used Jen's severance for investment.

I say investment because we knew by now we weren't looking to buy a "home" with that money, but to make an investment (aka buying the cheapest/crappiest house on the market in a neighborhood we thought/hoped might eventually not be as bad as it was back then).

The house we bought and moved into was easily the worst thing my designer brain could imagine. I'm not sure it had a single quality I considered "positive" beyond the fact it was a 1970's ranch and I knew that I could knock every interior wall down without worrying that the house itself might fall down, but it was cheap (likely the combination of the unattractive house and the less-than-desirable neighborhood). I desperately wish now I could find an old photo of the pea soup-green exterior and the fortress of arborvitae trees surrounding the house that were so thick you barely knew there was a house behind them.

Our research however showed that this neighborhood was growing rapidly and had been highlighted in the city plan for quick growth/development, so we did it - despite all our friends thinking we were crazy for buying and moving into a "heap" near the street best known for mechanic shops and oil spills.

The day we picked up the keys, I fulfilled my promise and started ripping out interior walls (most of them) and the kitchen. By the time Jen got home from work there was a massive heap of debris in front of the doorway, but we suddenly had an "open plan" that made the house far more comfortable/livable. Of course, Jen quickly reminded me that we had announced a "housewarming party" and that the debris needed to gone before guests showed up the next evening... I got rid of the debris, but we still ended up hosting the party in the garage/driveway since the house was a disaster. And we did the post party dishes in the bathtub.

We renovated the house to meet our needs (as best we could), did some landscaping to make the house at least visible from the street, but only stayed about 2 years or so before moving again. Oddly, in that time we absolutely fell in LOVE with the neighborhood, our neighbors and the up-and-coming street nearby. It quickly became our idea of home, but a job offer took us to Vancouver, BC and we rented out the house to another family while we were away.

Years later, after quitting the rat race and driving our way down through Mexico and Central America in our VW Bus, we returned to Portland and rented a flat a few blocks away so that the tenants could stay and so that we could still be in the same neighborhood and near our friends.

Problem being, that even the smallest studio apartment (with no furniture and only a couple camp chairs and an inflatable mattress on the floor) cost us only a few hundred dollars less than the mortgage on the house.

Didn't much matter, the family who was staying there didn't want to leave (and we didn't have an interest in paying the mortgage)... so we eventually concocted a plan to live in the unused 2car garage.

At first the plan was simple - we'd make a cheap home out of the garage, just something we could pull the bus inside of and maybe a sink/toilet in the corner so we had a home-base in between travels. Somehow the designer in me took over and pent up creativity turned that dingy garage into a modern "loft" with custom everything that we built with our own hands (literally... our hands designed and built everything in that space from the walls to the barstools).

It also somehow overlapped with a trend in Portland and around the country of people seeking inexpensive and flexible living spaces, and our little garage turned home found it's way into the NY Times and other publications and eventually became our first business as we started helping others design and build tiny but flexible homes/ADUs as zenbox design.

That project (and the resulting space) literally transformed things for us and because of the complete lack of a line between inside and outside spaces - it felt like so much more than 460sqft and almost made us feel like we were camping (luxuriously) right in the heart of the city.

Ironically, from the outside many people mistook our little home for a bar, which also led to countless conversations and new friends (and a couple podcasts and youtube videos) over the years as people would stop by to ask what we were serving, ask us for a quick tour and/or ask to hear about our recent adventures.

Despite how perfect this space turned out to be for us and our lifestyle - we also soon realized we wanted to travel more than to be at home, and AirBnB provided that flexibility (as well as doing a lot to fund our travels and even put some money back in the bank). Didn't hurt that the old street that was covered in oil slicks and mechanic shops was now one of Portland's most famous/most visited and had now "exploded" into luxury condo buildings above some of the cities best bars and restaurants (but we prefer to think that the guests came for the style/ambience of our place).

We've thought of the garage as our "home base" ever since - but the reality is we haven't been back for years, eventually started renting it out longer term and each year we pull further and further from the idea that we are likely to ever find ourselves living back in portland... as we talk about how to fund our current adventures (and floating home) after losing the business last year - listing it for sale simply made sense to make sure we had some money in the bank and a safety net.

Sadly, that process took FAR longer than we thought/expected as the real estate market has been slumping, but we finally got the offer we were waiting on, and she finally sold/closed. Bittersweet - yet also feels very far removed at this point (might be a lot of blood, sweat and tears... but still just "stuff" at the end of the day).

Lots of memories and lots of lessons learned in and from within those walls... and in the end, no doubt one of the best investments we've ever made - mostly because we simply followed our hearts and did what fit best for us and our lifestyle - which then happened to work well for others as well.

Thats a LOT of info in a single post, so as always keep us posted if you have any questions or if there's something we missed here. Still lots of decisions and puzzles to solves, but for now, time for some well deserved champagne!