After sleeping on a dusty mattress without heat or hot water, Edward Brede realized the bedroom needed to be renovated before he could start on the kitchen.
You can't blame him for being eager. Brede waited six months for his house in the Edgewater neighborhood to close. The night it did, he tore out the upper cabinets. That was Dec. 21, 2018. Speed ahead four years and the 1902 residence seven minutes from downtown is Brede’s retreat.
Outside, the 0.33-acre property hosts an ode to Washington, D.C.’s reflecting pool, myriad sunflowers and space for Brede’s 10-month-old pit bull mix, Brody, to romp. Inside, the unimposing 1,400-square-foot home is a blast of modern, airy elements and bold colors.
“It was such a Cinderella fit for what I wanted to do,” Brede says. “I think of it like my little compound in the city.”
With Brede’s improvements, the house has nearly tripled in value. Brede, a web developer for NASA, estimates the work has cost him roughly $25,000.
“I don’t love doing drywall work,” Brede says. “But I certainly prefer doing drywall work to paying someone $50 an hour to do drywall work.”
Since the 2000s, Brede has dabbled in carpentry. After moving from Mentor to Washington, D.C. in the 1990s, he used his self-taught savviness to work on his mother’s house, which he jokes would have a new wing added to it if he didn’t have his own home to work on.
The Edgewater house was within Brede’s skill set: The plumbing was sound, the electric locally upgraded, the wood exterior supurb. The inside? A cosmetic nightmare. There were no door frames or molding. It would take three dumpsters to clear. But Brede wouldn’t have it any other way.
The blank canvas allowed Brede to rearrange the space to suit his style. He created his own vanity, built 13 cabinet doors and even discovered a fireplace hidden behind a wall. He uncovered a box left by the previous owner. Inside sat an assortment of family pictures and letters written during World War II.
In retrospect, months of waiting helped Brede plan his remodel. Before the house was his, Brede used photos from Zillow to create 3D renderings of the kitchen. Later, he’d remove linoleum, build custom cabinet doors from oak plywood and take out French doors to reconnect the kitchen to the dining room.
Today, light bounces from bay windows and a white farmhouse sink to concrete overlay counters, complementing a crisp atmosphere. The view to the garden “makes doing dishes almost a pleasure.”
“When the power goes out in this house, there’s so many windows and skylights you can’t even tell,” says Brede.
He credits the cabinets’ factory finish to Benjamin Moore’s famous Hale Navy coloring (the third shade of navy he tried). Brede also built the kitchen island, which is his favorite place to gather around with company.
The dining room is decked with a sleek retro and simultaneously modern taste. A cone-shaped light illuminates a pearly 1960s table set, which, Brede says, is the most expensive addition at $1,100. After obtaining this central piece from his secret “gold mine,” Bid Rust Belt online auction, Brede says the rest of the room’s tone was set.
“Mid-century farmhouse is the style of the house as I’ve come to think of it,” says Brede.
He procured the living room’s navy pin-stripe sofa for $660. He rescued an 7-by-8-foot art piece for the living room that was lying for disposal in a neighbor’s lawn.
Brede’s design philosophy keeps the space fresh, full of stories and original: a selective curation of items that aid his vision.
“I’m not going to be a person who has cutesy tchotchkes on the shelves or anything. I like to be very clean,” Brede says.
Spare, minimalist and technology-oriented, this is not your mother’s mid-century farmhouse. Yet, the close-quarters and sentimental items that are displayed echo an intimate setting.
Though Brede describes himself as “relatively content,” he expects to return to work on the home in winter, eventually converting a part of his garage — “my biggest junk drawer in the world” — into a permanent abode for his mother and addressing the plumbing in an upstairs bathroom.
“Part of me says ‘leave it alone,’ but I’ve never been successful with that,” Brede says with a chuckle.
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