NFH #002: On the Pleasures and Perils of Doing it Yourself

Last month in the inaugural News from Home I wrote a little bit about how fun and exciting it can be to imagine all the changes you might make to a home you see in an online listing. Sometimes this becomes so inspiring that you end up buying that house. All that dreaming and Pinterest-ing then suddenly turns into real-life work that needs to get done. 

I consider myself a pretty handy person, which is handy because there’s a lot to do around my house. When we purchased our home in the Eastern Hills neighborhood of Fort Worth three years ago, not much had been done to update it since it was built in 1959. We started by removing the old wallpaper, three layers thick in some rooms, and covering the ceiling in the kitchen and living area. What I thought would be a weekend task for my partner Zachary and I turned out to be a job that took three professionals, several tools I’d never seen before and about a week to complete. And so it went throughout the house. Seemingly simple tasks turned into major ordeals. There was and remains plenty to do to update and maintain our home. 

 I’ve been talking for at least six months about tackling the hall bathroom project. The scope seems reasonable really; our original pink-tiled bathroom has been unchanged since 1959 save for some “new” wallpaper installed sometime in the late ‘70s if I had to guess based on the metallic floral pattern. While the tub surround and countertop tiles are in immaculate condition, the floor needs to be replaced and the aforementioned wallpaper is peeling up. Some fresh faucets, new light fixtures and a coat of paint are all it needs to bring some new life into the space. How hard could it be?

I decided I could tackle this project myself. The plumbing fixtures were first up; a new sink faucet and tub filler. While it wasn’t smooth, I muddled through the sink faucet. The shut-off valves had corroded and would have to be replaced as well. I struggled to get the tap handles loose, but with a couple trips to the hardware store for new tools and some extra muscle leant by Zach after he heard me grunting, groaning and cursing under the sink, we managed to make it happen. The new faucet looked great. On to the tub. 

After 26 hours with the water turned off at the meter, new pex lines run from the attic, many, many YouTube videos watched and fully 13 Home Depot runs, the tub filler was installed too. I was traumatized, exhausted and utterly ecstatic after I had finished. Few things are more satisfying than getting in over your head but accomplishing something truly difficult.

It was a rush, but now I’m in no rush to jump back into it; the new floor tile still sits in boxes and the old floral wallpaper remains untouched. Owning a home means taking on a set of responsibilities that demand you to care and learn about things you never thought you’d want or need to know about. Sometimes it's empowering to learn a new skill. Sometimes you need to FaceTime your dad in a plumbing emergency. Sometimes it's a huge relief to call a professional.

So much of real estate is about slow and steady progress. The process of buying a home can involve years of planning, saving, searching and negotiating. Remodeling, decorating, gardening and maintenance are often a game of patience and slow accumulation. There’s an undeniable pleasure in finally achieving a hard-fought win, but there’s also joy to be found in reaching out for help. 

Oftentimes help is available but it’s not always clear how, when or who to ask for it. As an agent, one of my primary roles is to provide those resources and connections so you don’t have to go it alone. With the big shifts the market has seen over the last few years, even experienced buyers and sellers can benefit from the expertise of lenders, inspectors, tradespeople or general contractors. I’m grateful to have a network of vendors in the DFW area and an office full of accomplished agents, designers and construction professionals at 6th Ave Homes who can provide valuable insight. I’m always happy to provide resources and recommendations for anyone interested in making a move, whether you’re just starting to think about leasing or buying your first home, considering a major renovation or just need a plumber.

Here are a few informative instagrams I enjoy:

@thedallasgardenschool—Solid resource for native and vegetable gardening know-how

@inspectedbyshack—Home inspector operating in North Texas. The videos on new builds are especially enlightening!

@ellieridgerealtor— Bay-Area agent with a wealth of knowledge about homes’ structural elements

Thanks for reading, and oh by the way, I’m never too busy for your referrals!

NFH #001: In Praise of The Personal

Before I became a real estate agent, one of my hobbies was Redfin. More than a purely voyeuristic scrolling habit, it allows you to create a new life in your mind. You imagine all the updates you might make to that cool but run down Southern California mid-century (keeping the original terrazzo floors in-tact of course) or the vintage furniture you could buy for that a-frame cabin in the mountains. You imagine not only the ways you could change a home, but the ways a home could change you. That expansive backyard would allow you to take up vegetable gardening. The upstate country house has easy access to cross-country skiing.

I know I’m not alone in this real estate fantasy world. There’s even an episode of the HBO show Silicon Valley that mentions this phenomenon. But when it comes to the real-life choices we make, our imagination tends to dissipate. Far more numerous than these inspiring homes are listings for dull, lifeless and downright boring houses—spec homes of yore, cheap and poorly executed flips or the ubiquitous “millennial gray” remodel. New builds and updated older homes all seem outfitted with the same limited selection of flooring, countertops, cabinets and tiles, becoming indistinguishable from one another.

This sameness is not a new phenomenon. Pete Seeger recorded ”Little Boxes” in 1964, a song written by Malvina Reynolds in satiric reaction to the uniform post-war housing developments springing up in the hills of the San Francisco suburbs. Clearly the sentiment resonated at the time; “Little Boxes” was Seeger’s only charting single. But at least in the neighborhood of the song “there’s a green one, and a pink one, and a blue one, and a yellow one.” In contrast, today’s new or recently remodeled housing stock seems to be issued exclusively in bloodless non-colors or the pervasive black-and-white of the “modern farmhouse” style.

What accounts for this homogenization? There are the macro explanations of shifting societal structures and economic trends of the last 50 years or so. Our workplaces have become more transient, causing people to move homes more frequently. Why deviate from the norm if you plan to stay only three or five years? The post-‘08 residential market has also seen an influx of investors big and small with the goal of a quick flip or rental income. Housing is now less about creating a stable home and more about ROI, even for individual homeowners. The family home has become the primary vessel of generational wealth transfer. This financialization of the places where we live leads to a devaluing of individual style; every tile or paint selection is made with resale in mind. A neutral color choice or minimal styling is perceived as safe and therefore appealing to a future buyer or renter.  Drained of all color or discernible style, these houses lay bare their true purpose; financial speculation.

Yet I don’t think the greige-ification of modern domestic life can be entirely explained by rentier capitalism and a decade and a half of historically low interest rates. There also seems to be a psychological aspect to our collective chromophobia—an idea that colors are pretty but for other people. Instagram and Pinterest are awash with images of bold design choices and bright interiors of every imaginable variety, but this too can lead to dull design. With so many inputs coming across our feeds, it's very difficult to hone in on our own aesthetic preferences, and the increased speed of the trend cycle makes it hard to commit. In a previous era, homes were fitted and furnished with items that could be procured locally, or perhaps something you made yourself, inherited or purchased while traveling. Many of the postwar homes I see here in the DFW metroplex feature bathrooms outfitted in a matching combo of American Standard porcelain fixtures and ceramics from the local Dal-Tile, founded in 1947 on the cusp of the midcentury housing boom. These packages were offered in a relatively narrow range of choices (there’s a green one, and a pink one….) My own home sports both the pink and baby blue versions. Now, overwhelmed with the nearly infinite selection of decor and finishes available in big box stores and online, we wind up settling for the safe, efficient and economical. 

So what is the antidote to these forces of neutralness? Nancy Silverton, the much-lauded Los Angeles chef and baker, talks about her approach to cooking not as an act of creativity but of personalization. Her goal is not to create new dishes but to take in and process the existing paradigms to make her own perfect example of a chocolate chip cookie, or pizza, or pudding. I think this mindset can be productively applied to our homes as well. There’s no need to think of home design and decorating as a daunting act of invention. Personalization is the answer. This doesn’t require a custom build or gut remodel. Basic changes like fresh paint, new hardware, or vintage light fixtures can take a home from insipid to interesting.  

Of course, defining and refining that personal sense of style requires the effort to understand ourselves, and that understanding isn’t just knowing what looks good to us; it also comes from our social, economic and cultural context.  When houses reflect our own preferences and experiences, they allow us to feel something— warmth, serenity, safety, security, familiarity, fun, playfulness, joy. It goes without saying that sometimes the personal can tip over into something more crazy than cozy (we’ve all seen Zillow Gone Wild,) but I’d argue that in a real estate context, offering a property with some color and points of differentiation protects from the ravages of the trend cycle and inspires prospective buyers to imagine themselves in the space. In other words, it makes it feel like home.

To wit: a few examples of personalization that I admire, from the extreme to the subtle.

Artist Katherine Bernhardt’s unhinged post-modern masterpiece. Her take on the Barragan-inspired pink theme sums up my sentiments succinctly, “The color pink makes me happy.”

The work of Jeff Shelton is illustrative of how working within a set of strict parameters can lead to distinctive style. Designing in the Spanish style mandated by the city of Santa Barbara, Shelton creates buildings that are recognizable but special.

More locally, the design of Kaitlyn Coffee’s East Dallas house really embraces its architecture and period details. The use of complementary colors feels super fresh and the casual and layered decoration makes the space approachable and inviting. Kaitlyn is so cool.

And some local listings that get the imagination going!

A whimsical 1930s English-style cottage built for the inventor of the Drumstick (yum.) The lot is amazing. 

Picture yourself poolside, cat-eye sunglasses on, martini in hand, Cadillac convertible in the driveway. This house has so many interesting textures. 

A nice update with some uncommon finishes.

Have thoughts about personal home style? Questions about the real estate market? Drop me a line at hello@erinhahn.com. Thanks for reading!