Your beautiful home

1414 W. Cliffwood Ct., Spokane

Tracy Christensen would like to make fixing up ordinary homes a regular hobby. But her husband Bill is kind of attached to their Cliffwood Court house.

“My husband wants to be carried out in a body bag,” she says.

In the three years since they bought their 1960 Fairwood home, the Christensens have turned it into a dream house.

“I know they’re building all over. But some of these old neighborhoods have such wonderful homes and they’re such great neighborhoods,” Tracy says.

They scraped the popcorn texture off of the ceiling. They crow-barred the lava rock off the home’s exterior. They hired Rik Willmering to create the copper hood over the stove and local artists for a lot of the painting, the pine cabinetry and the slate surfaces in their bathroom, but Tracy and Bill are proud to say they’ve done most of the demolition themselves and encourage others to take a similar creative look at their homes.

“I think they look at remodel projects and think they’re a lot harder than they actually are,” she says. “You just have to go and look in a house and say, ‘What would happen if I took this wall out?’”