This post is kicking off the first of our “Home” blog posts as it’s taken us almost 3 years to move into #ThePowersPlace…. Here’s a recap. Sam and I came upon a piece of land in 2011 year after we got married. Sam and his dad have renovated and built houses for 20+ years. One day we were visiting Sam’s parents and his dad informed us of a plot of land that was for sale on their street. He told us that if we could purchased the land we could build a house for less than renovate one. My newlywed mind was blown… how could we afford a brand new home that overlooked the ocean on a piece of land that had never been developed? We was about to find out.
We got a loan and the favor of the seller because Sam actually grew up on the same street, and we had ourselves a plot of land in San Diego! At the time we lived in a one bedroom condo nearby while I was pregnant with our first son Waylon. In 2014 we built a 2 bedroom accessory dwelling building on our land because that was all we could afford and we lived there for 8 years while growing our family and adding Zeke and Ruby to the mix.
Standing on our land with Waylon at 6 months old.
These happy people have absolutely no idea what they are in for ha ha.
Sam and Waylon moving around the weeds on our land.
Finally moving into our new home!
While I was pregnant with our last child Ruby we had our plans for our forever family home drawn up. Sam worked full-time and drew up our house plans on the weekends while taking care of me and kids when I had horrible morning sickness. I worked as a part time therapist and full time mommy blogger. The perks of staying home with my kids and making good money were amazing but in 2020 that came to a halting stop.
This is me and Zeke on our land looking down on our ADU (accessory dwelling unit). This was also a shot from a campaign I did with Old Navy from the days when I was working as a full-time blogger.
We broke ground on our home #ThePowersPlace in 2019, a year after our youngest Ruby was born and things were moving swiftly until the world shut down in 2020. We had a framed house with a complicated foundation and no one to work on it. We lost our loan and ended up in tears in the kitchen one day in quarantine wondering how we would make it all work out. On top of it the agency that I signed with as an influencer told me that they couldn’t help me find brand deals with home brands because I wasn’t an established home blogger yet and bonus they also informed me that I wasn’t making them enough money so they let me go. It felt like a total rock bottom but Sam and I both knew God wasn’t about to leave us here; there had to be another way.
I went back to work full time as a therapist and built up my private practice while Sam stayed home and taught distance learning. He worked on the house when he could in between lessons and nap times. As school opened up again Sam was able to work on the house more but was/is still the primary caregiver and one man show working on our home. I lamented with a longtime friend and blogger Isobel Benesch @theatlasofmotherhood about our situation and she volunteered herself as my personal “house building assistant”. Isobel is an excellent writer and loyal friend and we could not have done this without her. I started paying her a tiny sum to pitch me to home brands and she landed us some of the best relationships with brands like: Kohler, West Elm, Emtek, Studio Cement Tile, Room & Board and more. Hope seemed to enter the scene again and Sam and I made it our mission to complete the house even if it took 10x longer.
We want to take a moment to thank all the brands and people that have followed our journey that allowed up to keep building our family home during one of the most unprecedented times. We could not have built it without you. (Special shout out to our friends that came to help out, gave us discounts on this and or encouraged us to keep going.)
In this “Home Series” we will be featuring the brands that will forever be near and dear to our hearts and our absolute go to for total quality and bomb style!
Through literal blood, sweat, tears and lots of couples therapy we got final approval in March 2021 and moved in a few days before my 40th birthday.
Stay tuned for our next post on how we designed, built our bathrooms with the help of our friends at Kohler.
With hope and joy,
Chrissy
