Renovating our past

Quick note: I'm new here to the Hive community and this is my first post (testing the waters) but so far this place feels. . . right. anyway, hope you like it.

​

Things disappear when they’re forgotten. You’ll put a book down as you’re on the last chapter. Life starts to happen. Things slow down just a bit then you try to go back and finish, and it’s gone. Missing from the spot you thought for sure you left it. That’s about how our housing has gone missing over the last century or so. People hear about a beautiful new spot that would be great to live, raise a family, retire. Forgetting where they began. Not forever but just long enough for that history of their life to disappear. That beautiful spot we were promised becomes overcrowded, up all night, stressful nightmare accompanied with terrible neighbors and passerby’s.

Remembering where you came from is a key point to your personality. It’s...who you are. It’s the foundation of your future and accomplishments of your past. All this started in a home. Weather it be a hand-me-down home from an uncle or grandparent. A house your parents built or a modular home. There’s history there and it’s your history. The history that made you.

I drive a lot. From bright cities to one stoplight towns. I try to stay on the roads not traveled. That two lane road that runs through those small towns with the one light in the center of it. I can’t always do it but when I have the time I try to stop by some of the forgotten houses covered by kudzu and the driveway has all but disappeared. These houses have a personality that just feels inviting, unlike that out of the box homes being mass produced these days. You can walk into one of these houses and generations of furniture and wallpaper. Ranging from the 1920’s couch to a mid-century art piece hanging from a fireplace. It’s like stepping back in time through someone else's eyes. Re-introducing the past in my designs is my way of bringing familiarity to the customer. Sometimes it works with their ideas and sometimes it’s what their trying to get away from. Either way merging the past with the present is a necessity in this industry. It's the familiarity of the past merged with the technology and style we’ve come to love now.

It’s interesting seeing a rustic stone fireplace from a cabin found deep in the woods merge with a wi-fi widescreen television and some A.I. asking you how they can help. All the while your sitting in a chair designed from the 60’s. Things like this bring variety and color to the home. Something that sometimes gets lost in the modern black, white and grays in the world we create these days. Renovating our past homes is something we need to focus on more and more with over population always at the cusp and the many different personalities coming to light becoming clustered in such congested areas. I see so many homes rotting away, forgotten by their previous owners yearning for someone to throw some paint on and add just a few new pieces of furniture. To just be lived in. Old farm homes with so much acreage just sitting around being retaken by nature.

The abandoned houses littered throughout our cities and towns. Lost neighborhoods tagged with spray paint and busted cars and rotting furniture in the yards. Refurbishing and rejuvenating these areas can bring a piece of mind of its citizens. Knowing you’re not just creating something from the old but helping a starving community out of certain economic death.