Construction Diary: They Bought an ’80s Beach House and Wrapped It in Cork From Top to Bottom

They say major life events happen in threes. After receiving difficult health news and, soon after, experiencing the loss of their beloved dog, Texans Alyson Fox and Derek Dollahite decided to take charge of their destiny by making the third event a major move. Having designed and built their previous house (with a lot of help from family) in the Texas Hill Country, Alyson and Derek started hunting for a fixer-upper they could make their own. They cast a wide net and eventually reeled in a 1980s beach cabin on the Oregon coast.

Here, the couple share how after years of updates—including renovations and the construction of an addition, a studio, and a shed—and hundreds of linear feet of cork, they finally found a soft place to land.

Forest and Ocean

Alyson: I’d been planting the seed about leaving Texas for years, and then a lot happened all at once—our dog of twelve years was diagnosed with cancer, and two months later I learned I had thyroid cancer. I wanted to make a big move, and I needed it to be vastly different in every way possible.

Derek: I was born in Texas, and Alyson and I had lived there together for about twelve years. I’m a creative director, and I used to work with an agency in Austin, but the commute was awful. I switched to freelancing, but we were tired of the hot climate.