Who we are: Ben and Kaytlin of St. Louis, MO. Dentist and social worker, respectively. Parents of child(ren) and dogs. Residents of the Firehouse.

What you can expect from this blog: Renovation updates. General lifestyle stuff. How-to stuff. Other things as they come up.

In July of 2017, we embarked upon one of the greatest adventures of our partnership – we bought a firehouse! Granted, we’d already had several other “adventures” under our belt – this is the second home we’d purchased, we had one nearly 1-year old son, we’d survived raising 2 dogs – one who takes daily prozac and the other who has some Hapsburg genetics (seriously, this guy’s a mess). But this – this felt overwhelming. We were fortunate that the previous homeowners had not only done an immense amount of work on the firehouse but had also kept a meticulous (and beautiful) blog of all of the work they had done. This really expedited the home-buying process for us (because many of the questions we might have had were answered and very little of the inspection was a surprise) and Ben was able to see what had been done and start to envision what he wanted to do with the firehouse before our offer was even accepted.

**It should be noted here, up front, that Ben is the real mastermind behind nearly everything that happens in the Firehouse. This is not to say that I’m not invested, because I very much am, but of the two of us, Ben has more of an ability to think in the abstract and envision what’s not there. I’m here for design aesthetic, creativity, and picking out colors to make up for Ben’s color blindness. So when I say this is Ben’s vision – it really is. Of course, we go over it together and I can say ‘yay’ or ‘nay,’ but the beauty of being partnered for nearly half of our lives (!!) is that we know each other pretty well so he’s not making some outlandish suggestions that I’m not going to be on board with. Plus, I trust him implicitly so that helps, too.**

Other things of note about us (we’ll do another post that goes a bit more into the evolution of our relationship but as it relates to how the firehouse works): we both work full time and have, as of 3 weeks ago, 2 kids. This means house stuff gets done when the stars align and we happen to have both time and money to get stuff done. This is also the space that Ben works in part of the time (he’s a dentist that works from home – what?! Just kidding, he does management stuff from home for most of the week…) and that our oldest child goes to school in (more on that in another post at some point) so everything we do to the house requires that we are also able to live and play here at the same time. Usually that means some extra precautions taken when we do construction and Ben working in the night. It’s a good thing he’s a night owl anyway.

And finally, a bit more about the firehouse: it was built in 1960 by the City of St. Louis and was promptly decommissioned 4 years later when they built a new firehouse about a half mile away (yay for stellar city planning!) It’s 5200 sq. ft. on nearly a 1/3 of an acre in the city of St. Louis – this means lots of green space for city living and a lot of space to customize. As previously mentioned, the previous owners kept a blog (over at A Firepole In The Dining Room) documenting their renovations. To get up to date on what’s happened before we moved in, we highly suggest you check this out and take a look at the work they’re doing on their new house in CA! The Firehouse may seem familiar to you because it was also featured on HGTV’s House Hunters (no, we don’t have access to this episode nor is it available online…) which makes this house a sort of local celebrity. If you are familiar with that blog and you are here because of it, welcome, and I hope you enjoy the changes we’ve made so far.

Enough about all that, let’s dive in!