Creating a home you love to live in.
Hello and thanks for visiting our Mod-Barn WAREhouse. I’m Stephanie Ware, born and raised in the PNW where I currently reside in Skagit County, with my husband, Levi, and our three perfectly crazy, wonderful kids. For the past 14 years, we’ve bounced around living in tiny homes (700-800 sf) as we simultaneously dreamt, built and cultivated our passion project, Melodic Caring Project (MCP), a Non-Profit supporting kids and families in isolation and in hospitals since 2011. It’s been an extraordinary journey of highs and lows over the past 14 years including a shotgun wedding in 12 days (a story best told over a bottle of wine), an invitation to The White House, 8 moves, three kids, four house remodels, 7 Galas, one house foreclosure, an autoimmune diagnosis, (and SO much more) all while building, running and sustaining a video production company, a Non-Profit, a couple family projects and trying to intentionally raise three good, kind and capable little humans. (whew, I’m exhausted just from writing that 🤪). From the very beginning, my Husband and I’ve always said we wanted to live an extra-ordinary life. I guess I should have clarified how many “extras” there were going to be.
A lot of people don’t know this, but I’m going to share it here as it is a part of our story, what’s brought us to where we are and why our Mod-Barn WAREhouse means so much to me. In 2012, we lost our house, having to choose between keeping our non-profit alive or paying our mortgage. It was one of the easiest and hardest decisions of our lives. Easy because we knew in our hearts we had to keep MCP alive as it was helping so many, and hardest, because in building and sustaining anything worthwhile, it is, undeniably, hard. One thing I’ve learned is nothing great comes easy, but it’s exceptionally rewarding. And I wouldn’t change it for anything. It has been one of the most rewarding, soul-enriching experiences of my life. But, life is also about balance. And for the past 14 years, we’ve been so hyper-focused, my body and soul have forced me to stop.
At the start of 2017, I was diagnosed with Mast Cell Activation Syndrome (MCAS), an autoimmune disease triggered by stress, fatigue (staying up all hours of the night planning our annual gala year-after-year) and ultimately mold from the house we were living in, which sent my body into unbearable hives, swelling and eventually anaphylaxis putting me in the hospital. It was a wake up call to restore balance in my life. And the chaos in which I’d been living and operating wasn’t healthy. I needed to focus on my health, my kids and my home, so for the past 4 years I’ve been gathering ideas and working towards designing a home for our family that could provide us with a sense of peace, restoration and intentional living while altogether inspiring us with a home we love to live in.
How we accomplished it. We temporarily moved in with my parents while remodeling and moving back to our first home (The Bulson House), a charming 700sf pine cottage Levi owned and renovated before we got married, and the place our first daughter was born. It was a tight squeeze for our family of five, but it served as a cozy respite while we re-focused on some personal investments, the first being a 1901 farmhouse (The Nelson House) we remodeled in the summer of 2017, just shortly after I was diagnosed. I’m so thankful my husband knows and is brilliant at construction. It was our first full project together and I absolutely love how it turned out. (check it out here)
After squirreling savings away for the past 10 years, and a crazy-good deal my FIL found, we decided to purchase 8.5 acres in the farmlands, sell our charming first home and build. I was already working on plans for a mod-barn style home and this new property just so happened to have 3 unfinished buildings, an 800sf MIL, a small Studio and a barn that was supposed to be a wedding venue. We broke ground in 2019 and have just finally moved in November 2020 (with a lot of projects in between and still to do).
So why am I sharing this? Throughout our journey and home build, I’ve learned so much from researching what others have done and spending thousands of hours thinking through details, design, sourcing and organization that I want to share what I’ve learned in the hopes it can help you and maybe even inspire you along your journey in creating a home you truly love to live in.
đź–¤ // Steph Ware
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