Portland Open House, Party & THANK YOU!!!

After almost a year, the Portland Project is COMPLETE (and on the market!). And the best news of it all? I LOVE IT and we are so proud of how it turned out. My brother Ken and I made it through our first investment property (well, he and his wife invested, I designed) and while it wasn’t easy doing it from LA, working with him was SO much fun. Last week, we had a party and open house to celebrate and I want to take a minute and thank all of you who came. So today, I wanted to give a little recap and sneak peek into the project.

But first, the night before the party, I had an anxiety attack. Like heart-won’t-stop-pounding-rapidly-and-maybe-I-should-go-to-hospital kind of anxiety attack. I think it was a combination of not sleeping (our team stayed up ’til 11pm, 12pm and even 2:30am that week working on the house) and the anticipation of so many people walking through (and potentially judging) our work. It was like a wedding, except I didn’t know who was coming or if they would like my dress/house/me and frankly we hadn’t properly planned the party. My brother asked me who I had invited and I said “uh, everyone.” And then I realized that there could potentially be thousands of people and we weren’t exactly prepped for that kind of volume. My nerves subsided, I slept all night and woke up not nervous, just excited.

Earlier that week, I had hired the team of The Nightwood Society and THANK GOODNESS, because they took over the planning of the party and I can’t recommend them enough.

About them: The Nightwood Society is a collective of women who create experiences—food, drink, music, flowers, etc.—for any kind of event. Ours was last minute (they were hired on that Wednesday, HA) and we didn’t have a firm RSVP list, but regardless, they did such a great job at setting up and creating a beautiful, seamless experience for the open house with delicious food and drink (seriously, people were standing around the food table basically devouring things).

Alex Liegel, the DJ (below), emailed the day before and said “Cool if I bring a mix of ’60s folk and French pop?” and we were like “uh, yes.” It was perfect.

Thank you so much for the beer, wine and liquor sponsors who helped execute this last-minute bash. We had a couple clear cocktails (gotta keep that house pristine) that were delicious and made with liquor by New Deal Distillery and syrups by Portland Syrups, as well as beer from Backwoods Brewing Company, chardonnay from Planet Oregon by Soter Vineyards and rosé from Stoller Family Estate.

So many lovely people came, including Kristine and Amber who had helped out earlier in the week by unpacking boxes and generally doing the most annoying work ever.

Kristine is a stager, so if you are in Portland and need help staging, call her up.

A lot of our local vendors came, too, including the lovely ladies of Aurora Mills (awesome architectural salvage and antiques in Portland and Aurora, OR).

We aren’t sure how many people came through. Our real estate team says “1,400” but I think it was more like 500. I took photos and chatted with readers for hours and it was honestly so much fun. They used the hashtag #ehdportlandproject and #ehdportlandparty and we snagged a bunch to roundup in this post.

GAH. How cute are those cookies by Beth Bakes? Thank you so much to her and the other cookie place (we got some insanely yummy nut-free chocolate chip treats from Dropout Cookie) for sending these our way. Trust me when I saw we DEVOURED them post party.

But the biggest thanks goes to my design and editorial team. While not everyone was involved in the design of the project, I wanted to make sure that everyone got to see it in person because lord knows we will be blogging about it for a while.

Up there you have Priscilla (project manager), Arlyn (editorial director), Velinda (design assistant), Sara (photographer), Brady (design/creative director), Emily (styling assistant), Julie (design assistant) and Grace (design assistant). Jess (our office manager and senior editor) was out of town and we missed her.

Who you don’t see up there is JP Macy of Sierra Custom Construction who was our general contractor and just INCREDIBLE in every way. I can’t say enough good things about him and his subs (and no, this isn’t some sort of discount partnership situation, it was just a lovely professional and high-quality experience). Annie Usher was the architect who was involved at the beginning along with Jenna Sheingold, who helped manage the project at the beginning stages.

Again, thank you to my incredible team for so much hard hard work. Also, thank you to my husband for being so supportive and taking care of the kids for 10 days while I was gone, to and my family—mom, dad, John, Mary, Kendryn and Cameron—who all came to help.

What’s next? We started shooting last week and have a full week of more shooting coming up. We’ll be revealing it room by room and project by project.

Now folks, it’s time to sell this house before my brother decides to move in and sell his house instead (true story) so if you know anyone interested in a 5k-square-foot, acre, fully designed and decorated house in a great school district in one of the oldest neighborhoods in Portland, spread the word…

Listing: https://www.redfin.com/OR/Portland/2008-SW-Military-Rd-97219/home/26394149