Why Whidbey?
After almost a year of all the boredom, self-worthlessness, and excessive HGTV bingeing that only a global pandemic can bring on, Justin and I decided we wanted to buy and renovate a fixer upper somewhere outside of Seattle.
I’ve always loved home design. When I was seven I chose an insect damask and tassels for my bedroom curtains—shocking both my parents and the man at the fabric store. At thirteen I drew from a neon floral Neiman Marcus duvet cover to inform the bright green and sisal carpet of a room at my mom’s. But I don’t think I realized until recently how growing up on the UES of NYC exposed me to arresting, if sometimes excessive, interior design and as a consequence, how much thoughtful decor matters to me. I went to private school in an old mansion with velvet handrails built a decade before the Titanic sunk. Math class was taught in rooms with wall murals nearly centuries old. We went for field trips at The Met and smoked pot at classmates’ penthouses featured in Elle Decor. And I took it for granted. Engineered elegance was just there, it was a given as a kid. Then college and my twenties happened, and I forgot about mindful man-made surroundings, in favor of those in the natural world, the ones on ski slopes and at campsites.
But once we bought our house in Seattle, and suddenly my living space was completely my own, and not some rental with a guaranteed expiration date and a ceiling that collapsed from a squirrel burrowing into the sheetrock (this actually happened), I remembered how significant home design was to me. And I really wanted, no, needed, another project.
Justin, meanwhile, has worked as an electrician since he was 15. He is the epitome of handy. I’ve seen him hang a precarious glass chandelier from an eleven foot ceiling, roll a marble fireplace topper weighing over a ton up stairs with no help except the curved edges of PVC pipe, and cut and hang pentagonal tile so it fits just right under our kitchen peninsula.
Justin and my experiences before meeting couldn’t be anymore different. We joke that together we make one functional human. So our vision for this second home was somewhere we could transform together with our combined skills.
Whidbey Island made sense because it’s practical. It’s close to our home in Seattle, and the weather isn’t so bad that my Manhattanite-bad at driving-terrified of snow and ice-ass couldn’t make it there on a random Tuesday on my own. Whidbey Island also made sense because it’s sentimental. We’re getting married here in October. So the search for the right place began.
We wanted somewhere in South Whidbey for ease of travel from the city. It had to be structurally sound, because although Justin is a household genius, he’s not an engineer. We also wanted land, so that going there wouldn’t feel exactly like being in the city. And we wanted a place that hadn’t been renovated for the sake of getting a higher sale price. I didn’t want to replace cabinets and carpeting just because they were ugly. Turns out the first house we looked at on Goatsbeard Lane in Clinton, was the perfect fit. But we didn’t realize that right away. And we were also unaware that we had a very long road ahead of us before it became ours.
This is the story of our journey to Goatsbeard Lane, our renovation mishaps, mistakes and victories once we arrived, and a humorous account of what we learn along the way.