We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Tjs Dwellings a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
TJs, appreciate you joining us today. What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?
My partner and I met back in 2018 at an advertising agency we worked at in San Francisco. We’d both worked in advertising since we’d graduated college and I’m not sure either of us had thought about a different career path until covid hit. It was sort of a perfect storm of meeting the person you are supposed to spend your life with, while life as you know it was drastically changing. For how hard we were both working and how devoted we were to our careers, during lockdown we wondered if there was a better way to dedicate our time professionally. While neither of us knew exactly what that meant, both of us had a lot of heart for our planet, our changing climate and the inequalities created through blind consumption. Realizing a stark contrast to our 9 – 5’s, we decided it was time to quit our jobs, leave San Francisco, buy a van, live in said van for a little while, and figure out what we could invest ourselves into next. It wasn’t really a glamorous “road trip across America” – it was filled with a lot of tears, confusion, soul searching, Walmart parking lots… but it was also beautiful and deeply impactful to disconnect and spend time figuring out where we may be able to be the most helpful. After months on the road, we finally landed on a business that could drive a more sustainable and thoughtful way to design interiors and a side gig learning how to be better shepherds to the land through regenerative farming. Our small business, TJ’s Dwellings & Designs, is a partnership between 2 people who want to create more ethical and sustainable options for home renovation and interior design services. We have a passion for building with reclaimed materials, restoring reused furniture & products, and decorating with a life-time mindset versus a seasonal one. We also believe that our homes are a sacred space and that happy, healthy, beautiful homes should be attainable for everyone. We’re learning that this goal is a hard one to crack in an industry that is traditionally very wasteful and unsustainable, but it makes it both exciting and challenging to pursue. With each client, we’re slowly figuring out how we can provide a service that they seek, while also guiding them to make more ethical decisions in the process.
TJs, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
Tony, my partner and husband, is a general contractor and wood worker, and I’ve been pursuing sustainable interior design and how to create a business through sourcing decor second hand. We offer a variety of services that are evolving as our business grows but our core offerings are home & hospitality design and renovation, custom furniture, interior design and furniture sourcing. This industry is full of luxury and frivolous spending, an endless cycle of buying, and the thing that gets us most excited is navigating around these habits and creating a world where we no longer use virgin materials or products to create an equally luxurious and beautiful space. It’s hard and challenging to go against the grain and pursue more ethical sourcing habits for building materials and decor, it’s also often more expensive and time consuming to do, so I’m proud of us for trying and learning how we can do a better job with each client we take on. There are so many people and agencies in the industry pursuing the same goal towards a more sustainable future which is amazing to see and learn from. The more people practicing ethical sourcing and building, the easier, faster, and cheaper it will become. A huge belief of ours is the importance of shopping and sourcing locally and second-hand. Thrifting is one the easiest and most fun ways to decorate more sustainably – it’s also the only way to create a truly unique home. We love sharing our work and learnings on Instagram and other social platforms as a way to connect with like-minded individuals and hopefully inspire people to consider reuse and secondhand in their own projects. We also love meeting people and finding ways to partner with other artists, builders, and creators who are eager to pursue more sustainable ways of creating beautiful spaces. As we look to the future, we hope to incorporate a shop selling restored and renewed secondhand treasures and work on larger hospitality projects like hotels, restaurants and bars.
Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?
When we pivoted from our advertising careers to start TJ’s Dwellings, we knew we had to start from the ground up to gain the experience needed to pursue our dream. We started by converting an empty cargo van into a home which we lived in before selling. We did everything from the electrical, to the plumbing, to the design, to the build. This was invaluable to our journey and taught us so much about functional space planning and how to build a home from the ground up. We always had the larger goal of working on homes but it was important for us to get hands-on experience with every facet of the creation process so we kept converting vans, restored a few vintage travel trailers, renovated the old farmhouse we live in, got our contractor license and a certificate for sustainable interior design, and just kept practicing and learning until we were ready to take on a home project for someone else. By the time we did our first home project, we had this whole world of knowledge and insight into electrical, plumbing, foundational work, permitting, and sourcing that helped us understand the entirety of the renovation process. Restoring travel trailers is brutal work, not to mention doing so in a half-baked workshop with one drill and a small table saw located in an old dairy farm barn that had been half blown over, with dirt floors and no protection from the wind or cold. We wanted to quit so many times, thankfully because of Tony’s resilience and ability to get shit done in any environment, we did not. The biggest realization we both had after being in cushy corporate jobs since college was the world isn’t built for people to pursue their passions – it’s hard, it’s dirty, you have to sacrifice a lot at first but fast-forward to today, our workshop has walls, a floor, TWO drills, and we’re taking on our 4th home project this year. If you’re just starting out, find your people who will support you, cheerlead you, and fill up your cup when you can’t see the light at the end of the tunnel.
What’s been the best source of new clients for you?
A huge learning for us is the importance of connecting with like-minded individuals locally and really immersing yourself into the community that exists within the industry you’re entering. Word-of-mouth, referrals and partnerships are hands down the best way to get new business for us. We work really hard to participate and engage with businesses we believe in and look up to, such as our local Portland Restores and an icon in sustainable community building here in Portland, Rebuilding Center. We really admire and respect their mission’s and we realized early on that if we can engage and learn from leaders in sustainable and equitable home building, we can find clientele that have the same values and desires as us. You can’t be bashful either, you just have to get out there and make introductions. When we were converting travel trailers, we signed up to be a vendor at the Portland Flea. They’d never had a travel trailer showcase, so we weren’t quite sure if we’d even be accepted to attend but they loved the idea! We were both so nervous to wiggle the trailer into a vendor parking spot, but we did it and it turned out to be such a great experience. It’s not always about the transaction either, we realized we probably weren’t going to sell a trailer at the market but we knew that we’d be able to meet and connect with other vendors, the owners of the Flea Market, and so many on-lookers who we’d later connect with socially and professionally. We just finished a Portland themed airbnb and one of the main goals was to source as many things as possible locally and from independent businesses and artists – from the wood we built furniture from, the wallpaper & paint on the walls, the custom poster art, the hand painted murals, our coffee & beer partners, the decor & furnishings, were all from local businesses who are now friends and connections. Figuring out ways to incorporate and support other small businesses through our projects has been an amazing way to create connections and new business opportunities.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://tjsdwellings.com
- Instagram: tjsdwellings
- Youtube: tjsdwellings
- Other: tiktok: @tjsdwellings
