The Process
The Koosharem house was built by Avery Hess, it then belonged to Nad and Markay Brown for over 20 years. My grandparents shared this house with their children and grandchildren, creating so many fond memories of the cabin. In 2020, they decided that it was too difficult for them to visit Koosharem from their home in St. George, so that opened up the opportunity for my dad, Ryan, to buy the house. Over the 20 years, it collected trinkets from the families that visited and many belongings from the Hess family.
The first step to make this house our own was to clean out and get rid of the junk. There were many treasures we found, but most things were unnecessary. After this step we moved on to the furniture, ditching the outdated pieces, and created a more functional space. After this was any renovations that were needed.
What we found was the best strategy, was a 3 step process.
1. Does it bring me happiness? Meaning does this item add to my life, does it makes tasks easier, does it overall make me happy. Whatever did not bring happiness was eliminated and thrown out.
2. Will I use it? Items that will be used, you can follow up in 6 months and see how many times it was used. If you didn’t find yourself using it often, it can donated or thrown out.
3. Broken or goes to DI. Anything that did not fall into the two previous steps was either thrown out, or donated to DI because someone will find a use for it.
We found the most success using this process, we cleaned out what we didn’t need and reorganized the things we kept. It cleared up space for the items that we needed to add to the house.
We next focused on the furniture, customizing the space to be the most functional for our family. We loved the cabin feel to the house, so we kept the same vibe but updated it. Since it is a place we like to bring other friends and family to, we needed extra beds for guests to stay in. We created “Camp Koosh” for the kids that visit to sleep in, and updated the 3 other bedrooms to have a queen/full sized bed. We have 2 TV areas, 2 bathrooms, and a little dining room nook. This simple layout has been functional for us, but still customized to our style.
Last, the renovations. The original house had two bedrooms, one bathroom and an attached garage. The garage was converted to a livable area by my grandpa. A living room, bedroom and bathroom were added to create room for families to stay. Since then, we had to redo some of the walls/windows in the garage half of the house. They had leakage and didn’t insulate heat well, so they were redone. Other small changes were made, like ceiling fans and other light fixtures. Other than, the house has everything we need.
Want to see our future plans? Follow the next page!