When we first purchased Fox Hollow Ranch, it had been abandoned for over 3 years. Each cabin was fully furnished and just as the previous guests left it those years ago. Dirty dishes in the sink, full trash cans and one big project ahead of us.
Our dream has been to create an artist retreat space and seeing this place, these cabins and this land, as a practical story of restoration is near and dear to our hearts. We began (and are still working on) the slow process of cleaning up, fixing up, salvaging and rebuilding to make this a place that gets a hold of other’s hearts and souls in the same way it has for us.
Most of the work has been done by us, family and friends. We knew very little about renovations and using power tools when we started and have learned a lot over the past few years. There are few of us who can still see what this place used to be in our minds and recognize the shadows of it was in what it’s becoming.
It’s a beautiful story and one we look forward to sharing with you.
The Desert House (as it looked when we got ownership)
What We Did
We ripped out the decaying wheelchair ramp, threw out or sold most of the furniture (salvaging what we could and moved pieces into the house), bleached and sprayed vinegar on the walls, scored the entire plywood floor with a circular saw to look like wood planks, stained and sealed floor, tiled the bathroom, adjusted the toilet so it wasn’t at an angle, took out the window AC unit installed in the wall, ripped out the kitchen, built new from salvaged barn wood, poured concrete countertops and installed LED recessed lights in the kitchen. The kitchen sink and cabinet underneath it stayed, though we moved it over a few inches. We also kept all of the wood trim, painted, auctioned and thrifted for furniture. The bedroom doors were curtains, so we found antique doors in the barn, cut them down to size and used those instead. Somewhere we still have the original guest book with a last entry of 2016.