Oregon Home | 43 PERFECT PLACEMENT: ABOVE THE MANTLE and Jake Creviston first entered the Portland real estate market in 2016, they had certain expectations about how it was going to go. The city was in one of its hottest real estate bubbles in history, and properties were going in two days, with several offers. The couple had planned to search for a few months before landing the right place, but they ending up touring — and eventually buying — one house. It was a bank-owned, “marked” property in North Portland’s Arbor Lodge neighborhood where the owner, a vet, had died by suicide. “Most people are really spooked by that,” says Callero, the lead for the interior design firm Emilia Decor. “We weren’t.” Most historic homes need a lot of love — but Callero and Creviston might have been the best, most qualified people for the job. At the time, Callero was a budding interior designer eager for an all-consuming project she could use to build her portfolio. Her husband, Jake, is a psychiatric nurse practitioner who was working with veterans coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan. He also loves to build and was ready to take on major DIY house projects. “The whole place felt like it needed an injection of something,” Callero says. “I wanted a place where I could really get my hands dirty and learn.” The first room they tackled was the kitchen — which was really just a closed-in butler’s pantry about the size of a closet. It HOME When Emilia Callero
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