The Journey

I remember dreaming that I would graduate from college, buy a little yellow cottage with a white picket fence, and own a golden retriever. Maybe it started when I watched Anne of Green Gables as a little girl.

My parents built their first house in Louisiana, where I’m from, when I was eight years old. Three years later, they built another—and then another a few years after that. When I left for college, they built their last house. They self-contracted all four homes, and some of my childhood memories include helping lay tile.

Our first home—and our first remodel

My husband and I bought our first house in 2016, a year after getting married and living in a little one-bedroom apartment in Washington State. It was a 1,300-square-foot rambler with a nice-sized yard.

The house was built in 1984, and my immediate thought when we moved in was, “I can’t wait to remodel it.” Building a new house was not realistic where we lived. Land was scarce, and the permitting process could take years. I told myself that if I couldn’t build my dream home, I would at least make this home a place I loved.

We painted the walls and cabinets, rebuilt and painted the deck, refreshed the exterior, and worked on the gardens.

A bigger house and another blank slate

Then COVID-19 happened and the housing market changed. Our first house doubled in value, so we sold it and used the equity to buy a home twice as large. Looking back, we could have stayed with that tiny mortgage, but we felt cramped and wanted room to grow our family.

The new house had been built in 2012 and was very basic—the same paint color covered every wall, every room, and even the ceilings. We got to work again with new lighting, trim, and fresh paint.

Room by room

These before-and-after photos show how we slowly made the house feel like ours. We worked with what we had, choosing approachable projects that added warmth, character, and function.

Coming home to Louisiana

After four years, we sold the house and nearly everything we owned, and moved to Louisiana. Here, we bought land and a small home while preparing to build our dream house.

After living in the north in a town where land is difficult to find, we are so excited to have a whole acre of land. There’s still so much to do before we begin building, and in the meantime I’ll be fixing up the little “flipped” house that we bought.

I’ve already transformed the yard, and have a ton of ideas for the inside of the house. There’s a lot of mistakes that the contractor who flipped the house made that we’ll need to fix, and my goal is to turn it into a cute cottage rather than the black and white modern home that it became.

Below are photos of the backyard transformation so far:

Life is slow and peaceful. I no longer teach, and I get to raise my kids. We are learning to be content with less—literally half of what we have always had. And the sky is big and beautiful most of the time, something we rarely saw in the north.

There is no more stress from finances or a demanding job that took all my energy away from my family. Now we are entering the next phase: building on our land and self-contracting our dream home—and inviting a little stress back into our lives. Ha!

I will share all about the self-contracting process from start to finish. It will be a pinterest-level farmhouse from scratch so stay tuned to watch the process unfold!