Today I am sharing a tour of the Art House! It’s been just over 4 years and 9 months since I saw the listing photos for our Northern California house and lost my mind over this magical yellow outbuilding. Every single day that I step inside it feels like I walked into my own vision board. It’s really special.

I wish I knew more back story so I could share more about how it was actually built. Here is what I know — we bought our house in 2021 from the original owners. The acre for our lot was parceled out and purchased in 1979. The main house was built in 1985. The back vines were put in sometime around 2010(ish). We think the yellow outbuilding (which we call the Art House) existed before that. We are not sure about the second outbuilding (which we call the Wine House).

The Wine House in the back corner has electricity and a small air conditioner to keep it cool. The doors/walls are nearly a foot thick. The goal of the building is to maintain 55-60*F year-round to store finished wine and wine in process.

The Art House also has electricity and cold water plumbing. It does not have any AC or heating. This means it gets cold in the winter and really hot in the summer. I plan my work and my days accordingly. (In the winter I bundle up and in the summer I try to work early in the morning.)

As mentioned, I knew the second I saw the Zillow listing that this was The Place. I loved the actual house, of course, but with the yellow house I was obsessed. Before we moved in, my dad painted and epoxied the floor a pink color. (It looked really great for a few years, but has started to flake as I have used the space more.) When we moved up in July 2022, I filled it with the furniture from my San Diego office.

AND THEN FOR A YEAR AND A HALF I ALMOST NEVER ENTERED THE SPACE.

In preparation for this newsletter, I went back and looked through my Instagram. I counted nine photos taken in the Art House from July 2022-December 2023 when I got offline. Just nine out of something like 500 posted photos. (No wonder that pink epoxy floor stayed pristine.)

Why did I not go in there? As discussed at length, July 2022-December 2023 was my burnout era. I was working on other house projects (like these), trying to keep my business afloat and helping my kiddos transition to a new school. And that’s okay! Those were three hugely important tasks. But it meant that I had no time or mental energy to contemplate much “art house” work. (An interesting through line in the photo captions I did share to Instagram was my talk of “potential.” I wasn’t doing much in the space but I was clearly dreaming about a future time when I could be.)

That time came! At the end of 2023, I committed to getting out there more.