Nearly a decade ago, I, Kelly, was determined to have a dog. Naturally, this dog would want a yard (and a house too), so I saved up cash for a down payment thanks to my little Etsy shop I’d spent evenings and weekends building after my design work.

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I remember thinking at the time that the market couldn’t possibly get crazier (little did I know). I was about to throw in the towel the week my first home popped up on the market. I walked in and knew it was the one, putting in an offer immediately. To my surprise, it was actually accepted!

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I got my dog, Mochi, and she absolutely loved that yard. Evenings and weekends were spent making changes to my little ranch home, slowly turning dated finishes into a space that just felt good.

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A couple years later, I met Mike (!), and we started dreaming about a home on some land. We looked for years, and we never saw anything that truly clicked. They were all either too large or the land just wasn’t right. 

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Then I found it.

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The catch was that it wasn’t listed yet, but it was clear that they planned to due to recent rezoning and a nearby sale by the owner. So we sent letters, hoping to beat it going to market.

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Ultimately they decided to list it, but thanks to photography that failed to highlight the land properly, we swooped in and got our accepted offer!

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To afford this new endeavor, we knew we needed to sell our home, so we wrapped up all our projects, made some more aesthetic updates we knew buyers would want, staged, and listed. I still remember slowly driving by as buyers piled into our home during the open house, absolutely consumed with anxiety while we waited to find out if we would even get any offers.

 

Well, 14 offers later, we sold for $90K over asking, nearly double the price I had paid for it. A new record in the neighborhood.

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This profit increased our purchasing power and financial freedom immensely. I drew up our plans, packing functional design into every corner of our home. We were strategic in choosing to finish what would be cost-effective during the build process while prepping for future finishing and what we could easily take on ourselves. We were careful to balance our choices in finishes with the overall scope of the future finish to ensure we didn’t under or over-build.

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It turns out that I’m equally (if not more) passionate about helping others experience this too. Now I'm the advocate I didn't have during my build, spending my days applying the same tenacity I had for my own journey to that of my clients, designing dream homes and leveraging design and savvy marketing to achieve unheard-of home sale prices.

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All because I wanted a dog. Zero regrets.

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Good design can truly change your life.

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Let’s get started!