Why a family bought a schoolhouse

Jesse and I never set out to buy a schoolhouse. We just loved flipping our own homes — buying a foreclosure, taking it apart, putting it back together better, and living in the mess in between. It was our idea of fun.

So when a historic schoolhouse came on the market right here in Dorr — for less than we'd paid for the house we were already living in — we wanted it before we could talk ourselves out of it. There was just one problem: the listing went viral. Everyone wanted it. We were sure there was no chance we would get picked.

Then the phone rang at 11 o'clock at night. It was the selling agent, asking if we still wanted the building. We said yes before the question was even finished.

There was only one small complication — we were leaving to visit family across the country the next morning. So at 4am, just a few hours after agreeing to take on the historic schoolhouse, we boarded a plane to California and spent the whole week somewhere between total shock and pure excitement, sketching out a future we could hardly believe was ours.

Then we got to work. For two years straight, our days belonged to Better Home Improvements and to homeschooling — and our nights belonged to the schoolhouse. We'd put the kids to bed and keep going until two, three in the morning: painting, tiling and mudding drywall until our bodies ached and eyes hurt, then waking up to do it all over again.

At the two-year mark, the building still wasn't finished — honestly, it still isn't — but we were finally able to move our family onto the main floor and actually live inside the thing we'd been pouring ourselves into.

And the best part? Our kids got the chance to be apart of it all. They learned to paint with us. To tile. To mud. To look at a worn-out old room and dream up what it could become. That is something we are so grateful to have been able to invite them into.

The schoolhouse was built to bring people together. More than a century later, it still does — only now it's our home, and the coffee shop where our whole town gathers.