Home remodeling has been trending for a while now. Based upon the as yet to be hammered out details of the proposed GOP tax bill, this trend may pick up even more, speed in 2018.
Here is one such home remodeler who was once a burned out casting agent and is now, 10 years later, an online purveyor of vintage furniture/accessories via The Ranch Uncommon and an interiors stylist.
Jennifer Maxey used to buy vintage pieces at flea markets and then sell them on Craigslist as a way to make extra money while working as a casting agent in Los Angeles. Turned out that the money grew from extra to enough and her relaxation became a passion. She opened a vintage shop called Hoot n’ Anny Home.
Then, she and her husband wanted to live in a more rural environment with more land than their Los Angeles tract home allowed. They bought a decrepit post and beam ranch house with terraced landscaping that was falling down the side of a hill in an unincorporated section of the Santa Monica Mountains.
“We bought the place based upon the lot size, not the house…” but then the reality of the house itself hit them and they were completely overwhelmed with buyer’s remorse.
First things first, the house had 1,143 square feet of living space and three bedrooms. They knocked down one of the bedroom walls to make a great room containing the kitchen, sitting room, media room and dining nook. She had bought the kitchen cabinets “just because” before they had purchased the house so she just made the cabinets she loved fit the space. (This is Maxey’s usual way of doing things, not the usual way of fitting the space to the thing.) There weren’t enough cabinets to fill the space so she filled the gap underneath the sink with an old, used barn door she’d had before she had the house.
The remodeled home is now the ultimate in “rusticity” with white walls where there was dark brown wood paneling and a formerly dark brown post in the center of the great room now wrapped in white rope to “soften the beam.”
“My store was in an industrial space and I was always trying to make it feel cozy and give it some character…I realized I was creating that kind of space in my home…and I started to look into how I could display and sell things I bought and loved from my home.” said Maxey.
Now, she is doing just that via Chairish and Instagram. “Using my home, I’m able to show people how they could use some of the goods I’ve bought…” mostly at flea markets still.
Clearly, Maxey has a vision about recycling and style. She says she wishes “…there were a ‘Green House Channel’ in addition to HGTV. Using these kinds of vintage goods (and vintage houses) is a way of recycling or ‘upcycling’…and I’d like to be part of that.”
