Our Story
We’re Dana & Colin and we bought our 1966 home in Atlanta in 2020. It was built by P&H Realty, who designed and built hundreds of modern homes around Metro Atlanta in the mid century era. We don’t know much about the early years of our house, but we do know that it was completely untouched and original until 2018, when a massive real estate investment company bought the home from the second owners. They painted everything white and grey and replaced a majority of the original features with cheap products. They gutted almost all of its charm- we’re just so glad they were too cheap to touch the tongue and groove ceilings!
We always knew we wanted a mid century modern home, but wanted something we could move into right away while financially recovering from buying our first home. And if you know anything about Atlanta traffic, location is very important! When we first toured the home we could recognize the potential that it had- move in ready, great neighborhood, great architecture. The bones were great but the aesthetic was not; it was nice having a move in ready home, but the finishes were very much not our style and clashed significantly with the architecture of the house. And as we lived in it longer, those cheap finishes were starting to show their worth.
As we started decorating and planning future renovation projects, we realized how much we appreciated and wanted to honor the original style of the house. We’ve become huge preservationists over the years, and if there was a well-maintained untouched MCM home in our desired neighborhood and budget at the time we probably would have swooped it up, but we honestly just weren’t the die-hard preservationists we are now. We all learn and grow, and it’s pretty dang fun to be able to unflip and save a house!
We’ve spent hours, days, weeks, studying dozens of other P&H-built homes, looking at any real estate listing we could, even asking neighbors for tours of their P&Hs. We’re still trying to uncover more information about our home specifically, but we have unflipped so many original features to date: the avocado green kitchen, slab wood doors, and even stripped paint from the brick.
We still have so many projects planned so stay tuned!
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For us, Unflipping is the process of undoing a flip that was stripped of what was there originally. We often describe it as renovation and restoration combined, but with an important distinction: renovation alone and restoration alone do not constitute Unflipping. It requires both, carried out with the deliberate intention of honoring the home's original character and era.
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The term "Unflipping" is actually something we coined ourselves, we didn't come across it anywhere else. It felt like a natural way to describe what we were doing to our home, so we adopted it as our social media name.
As we continued sharing our work, we began gaining real traction with an audience that genuinely resonated with our mission. As our following grew, we started noticing the term being picked up and used by others, which made it clear that this was becoming a perspective people in the vintage home space were beginning to rally around! -
This is one of the most common questions we are asked. At the moment we are balancing our normal every day jobs with our growing platform. However, this process is in the works to be launched at some point! In the meantime please feel free to reach out and we can try to work together :)
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Focus on what your house once was. The single biggest impact you can make is doing thorough research. That means diving into the architecture of your home and the era it was built in. When you design with intention, leaning into what the house was originally built to be, everything starts to piece together naturally, rather than forcing it into something it was never meant to be.
Reference historical documentation. Inspiration and accuracy go hand in hand. Your local historical society is a great starting point, but don't overlook period-accurate advertisements, design publications from the era, and real estate listings of comparable homes that were never touched by modern updates. These resources give you a window into exactly how these homes were meant to look and feel.
Don't follow trends. This one is simple but easy to forget: trends are the enemy of authenticity. What's popular today is rarely what was true to your home's original design, even materials/designs that claim they are modern interpretations. Keeping your focus on the period rather than the present will always lead you in the right direction. There is likely overlap between today's trends, trends of the past, and your personal style; as long as they are incorporated in an intentional way that still reflects both the spirit of the home and your personality, they will blend right in. Filling your home with every item on "This Year's Hottest Decor" list will never feel like you. Personal is always timeless!