Budget Breakdown: It Took $61K—and a Huge DIY Project—to Save This Tiny Portland Cottage
"I told Lara it would take three months, and I think it took a year and three months," Workaday Design cofounder Jason Stamp says of the process of converting the house neighboring their home into a rental.
"I told Lara it would take three months, and I think it took a year and three months," Workaday Design cofounder Jason Stamp says of the process of converting the house neighboring their home into a rental.
It all started with a very tall cedar tree that towers over Jason Stamp and Lara White’s house in the Concordia neighborhood of Portland, Oregon. The couple had remodeled and added a second-floor bedroom suite to their home, which overlooked the tree in their neighbor’s yard. "People would always be like, ‘What are you going to do when someone buys the house next door, builds a giant house, and tears down that tree?’" recalls Lara.
Of course, the couple didn’t want that to happen, so they decided to buy the property if it ever went up for sale, and they told their neighbor they were interested.
In 2021, Lara White and Jason Stamp of Workaday Design bought the house next door in order to save the cedar tree between them. It has 580 square feet, with one bedroom and one bathroom.
Photo: LUKE + MALLORY LEASURE
Fast-forward to 2021, and the owner was ready to sell the one-bedroom, one-bathroom, 580-square-foot cottage. Unfortunately, there was a lot of deferred maintenance, so Jason and Lara, both designers and founders of Workaday Design, started planning a spec house for the lot. Their design had considerably more square footage, five bedrooms and a detached studio, and included a courtyard for the tree. "The whole goal was to save that beautiful cedar tree," says Lara.
But just two weeks before they were supposed to break ground on the rebuild, they had to halt the project due to ballooning construction costs. They tried to adjust the design in order to lower the budget, to no avail. "We would get another quote back and it’d be more expensive than the one we had before," says Jason. "That was just an indication of where the market was going at the time."
Before: Dining Room
Before: The house had not been cared for, and it needed a full gut remodel to make it livable.
Courtesy of Workaday Design
After: Dining Room
The Maru Pendant from Cedar & Moss hangs over a Tulip table with a marble top from DWR. The hutch is from Mustard Made.
Photo: LUKE + MALLORY LEASURE
See the full story on Dwell.com: Budget Breakdown: It Took $61K—and a Huge DIY Project—to Save This Tiny Portland Cottage
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