Three years ago we announced my brother’s family River House project – a new build on the Willamette in Portland and we are FINALLY in the “fun stages” to share. This project has been slow because the engineering of a house near a river that can flood is intense and they had to put like 20 pylons into the soil, going down 80 feet until they hit bedrock. But as my Mormon upbringing will remind us all – you need a firm foundation to build upon (not to mention it was required). And she’s a big house, so pouring the foundation, framing, and doing all the rough electrical, plumbing, and HVAC was a year process after the pylons were in. Most of this I wasn’t really a part of because my role is mostly in the rooms with partnerships that I negotiated (of course I weigh in on stuff as a sister too). That’s all to say I can take almost no credit for the structure itself and it turned out incredible thanks to… 

Who Is Involved?

Speaking of, JP Macy of Sierra Custom Construction (not pictured) is our contractor and a personal friend. We love him very much. JP, the engineer, and Annie Usher, the architect, deserve all the credit until “finishes” are involved (where Max and I came in). Annie did an incredible job laying out the house and maximizing the views and light. Some of the angles and ceilings are just so pretty!!! They did all the window plans without me (I was in Arrowhead) and while I gave my opinion on where the rooms should go via drawings,  Ken/Katie knew what they wanted. I will say that the lot of land is skinny and long so they had to go up and make accommodations for not being to be too wide or spread out. 

We started this project while I was living in Lake Arrowhead full time during lockdown and I didn’t have a team in Portland. I KNEW I wasn’t going to be able to do it well alone. So I reached out to my friend, the very talented Max Humphrey to see if he wanted to co-design it with me and introduced him to Ken and Katie to see if it was the right fit. 

It was so awesome having his expertise and experience on the project and I loved having his perspective (and learned a lot). Now that the farmhouse renovation is done I have more bandwidth so I’m finishing most of the rooms without Max (you also don’t need two designers to choose a side table and for the sake of speed, one actually does it faster). Starting about 3 months ago I took over since it’s my brother and I am on the hook for all the partnerships. We had a really easy conversation about it and we were both on the same page – that it didn’t make sense any longer to have two established designers decorate a room. He shares 50% credit in so many of the rooms and some of the best paint colors were chosen by him. Nothing but love and respect between us and I’m excited for him to come over now that even more is done. The only real reason I’m even mentioning it is that at times I might say “I chose” and at times “we chose” because I don’t want to assume he wants credit for something he had nothing to do with (and might not have chosen it:)). So while he and I did the bathroom hard finishes together, most of the decorating/style will be by me (and he might restyle if he doesn’t like how I did it, which is fine by all of it and part of the deal).

Why Haven’t We Been Blogging About It?

Well, mostly because designing two houses at the same time for our tiny team is already a stretch. But documenting both in a way that an audience can understand is so much more work than it looks like. From experience (and this is getting really inside baseball) most of the readers and followers aren’t interested in the construction phase – we see the numbers drop until it’s time for tile, color, paint, etc. So we try to customize the content to make it as compelling as possible and not just “drywall is going up” for months. It was framing for a whole year! A three-year project only gets interesting at the very beginning and near the end – and a new build of this scale and budget isn’t exactly relatable – less “problems” to solve or things that are interesting to debate. And mostly, if I’m being honest, I didn’t have the team up here or the creative bandwidth to manage documenting and publishing both at the same time. So we focused on the farmhouse for 2023 and this is our major 2024 project. My hope is that the social media following (which has to cut through so much noise) will not be confused where we are (farmhouse? mountain house? river house?) and be able to engage with the project if we are only doing one renovation.

How Does It Work With “Friends And Family” Projects? Is Your Brother Paying You??

Let’s cut to the juicy part. I’m not comfortable charging friends and family (because it would be a lot and then so much pressure on me to not disappoint and thus taint the relationship) and yet for the sake of preserving a healthy relationship and not creating resentments, I also don’t want to work for free (especially when they have a budget). In the past I’ve billed friends/family all my assistant’s time (unless a sponsor was covering it completely), but never my time. It’s crucial to be upfront and transparent about it all. So every “job” is on a case-by-case basis right now. For this one, we came to an agreement where I’ll pitch all the partnerships, promising to publicly document the project, with the hopes that the partners can pay my company for the time to create the content (known as deliverables). These deliverables will include photos (with usage rights), video integration (YouTube and reels), and a LOT of social media content creation, not to mention blog posts, crediting, linking in perpetuity. It’s not only a lot to create, but a lot of relationships to manage (thus having a full team and needing to get paid to cover their time, which is a lot). 

So I got real busy three years ago pitching my favorite design brands to a varying degree of partnership levels, with a lot of customized pitch decks. In some cases we are using the house as a show-house for the brand and in other cases we are just doing product placement in exchange for linking/crediting. Some want and pay for exclusivity to be in a room with no other competitors and others are just happy to be tagged, linked, and credited (PR awareness and sales). I charge my brother 30% of the retail cost of the “traded” piece, giving him essentially 70% off so hopefully at the end we’ll consider it a win/win but also who knows! 

Let me be very clear – NOTHING IS “FREE” or “GIFTED”. It’s not my birthday, these are not “presents” – these brands want something in return, as they should, and often what they want costs more to create than the price of the product. So then I have to estimate if the production costs make sense for the desired piece (and ideally we profit not just break even). It’s a lot of spreadsheet tracking work TBH (thank you Caitlin!), but I’ve been doing this for years so I have a pretty great gut instinct if it makes sense or not. Besides, every single thing in this house, every partnership was one that I went after and handpicked so nothing was a challenge to incorporate. We have to create content regardless so while some of the partnerships probably won’t make a dime, at a certain point when you have to take the picture anyway you want the dope lamp badly enough to make a deal and hope to make the money back on the back end.

Wait, What’s The “Back End”?

The “back end” is the unknown $$ that we bank on in the form of “blog posts”. The hope is that the process and reveal posts of the project will make money via ads and affiliate commissions. This is a huge personal risk for me and my brother, so we have to really be respectful, upfront, and transparent at all times to protect the relationship first. Trust is HUGE. He has to trust me that I’m going to make the house beautiful with the partners that I’ve selected and I have to trust him to pay me, LOL. There is, of course, a chance that I’ll spend more on photography, videography, social media production, and styling/design assistant than I’ll make via this system we’ve created, but it feels like a solid risk to take (and was my idea) and one I’m going in with eyes wide open. So far it is honestly really great, mostly because I know Ken and Katie’s style so well and we are pretty aligned on most decisions. Plus, neither of us is easily offended so if we don’t agree, no big deal and we find more options or just check the box and move forward. It’s been very, very fun and pretty seamless – the house is 15 minutes from me, it’s GORGEOUS which is really inspiring design-wise, and it’s fun to work with my brother. So yeah, that’s how it “works” :) Every blog post makes revenue so the more we blog about this project the more revenue EHD can create, thus keeping us alive in the slow partnership months (Jan-June). So thank you so much for enduring the pop-up ads :) But the challenge is on us to make sure that we get eyeballs on these posts and that we make the rooms look sooooo good that people love and share.

When Will You Be Done?

Right now they are on tile and cabinetry so we are estimating they can move in by March (this has moved many times, of course). Our plan is to style and shoot the bathrooms and mudroom (anywhere that doesn’t require furniture and decor) in the spring and start rolling them out by the end of 2024, meanwhile decorating and furnishing the rest of the rooms with less of a deadline and with a lot of time to document. 

What Are The Biggest Challenges?

Honestly, the inspiration for it is our mountain house – They loved staying there and I certainly do, too. It’s just such an easy house to enjoy life in. But I obviously don’t want to design the same house twice! So I’m pushing it to be a more traditional cabin vibe and more color, wallpaper, and moments of risk/fun but it has to be what they want and what is appropriate to the contemporary style. Maybe I need to be a better pusher, but I’m risk-averse when it comes to hard finishes so we are actually on the same page. Remember my prediction post where I predicted that the “weird’ and “rebellious” are getting attention? Well, Katie and Ken don’t want weird, they want simple and high quality, so where we are taking risks (per usual) is in the decorative finishes, not the hard finishes (i.e. more in art, accessories, and furniture). I hate that I even think about that – knowing what is “in” and will “perform” so I try to push down those comparison thoughts because they aren’t useful or authentic. Like, we know that red is in, but red doesn’t belong in this house so I’m not going to push for it.

We are starting to draft all the posts now with what we feel is interesting about the process and then you’ll be up to speed on all the finishes soon, I promise :)

Resources So Far:
Paint by Sherwin-Williams
Tile by Ann Sacks
Wood Flooring by Stuga
Plumbing by Kohler

*Photos by Kaitlin Green