As you may or may not know, a reality tv show rented the Urban Oasis for five months back in February to shoot their next season. I can’t mention the name of the show until it airs in mid-June. So you’ll have to stay tuned to get the scoop.
Four months have flown by and now three weeks of post-show renovations have begun. We’ll be moving back in late June, and the Urban Oasis Bed and Breakfast will be open for guest stays starting in July.
Back in 1998, I bought this entire warehouse to have an office for my medical records software company. In 2000, we completed building a unit at the back of the building, adjacent to what is now the Atlanta Beltline, for our family home. My kids were 12 and 14 when we started that adventure.
Fast forward to 2009; the kids had left for college and were starting their own lives. Long before Airbnb, Duane and I decided that we needed to share this unique living space with others. We redesigned the kids’ bedrooms, and I built a website to begin renting out our three suites to guests.
Here it is twenty years and hundreds of guests late, and the design of the Urban Oasis has remained mostly the same. Oh sure, we’ve painted some walls here and there, added new furniture as needed and oh yes, we built a pool!
The production company approached me several times about leasing our home to them to shoot the next season of their show, and I repeatedly said, “No, I can’t possibly disrupt my life for five months.” Then I thought about it and asked myself, “When am I going to take the time to redo the kitchen, or move all of the furniture out and repaint the upstairs floors or, sand, polish and seal the concrete floors downstairs or reimaging the whole look and feel?
The answer was never. I couldn’t imagine a better circumstance and opportunity. They asked again, and we agreed to undertake this madness and uproot our lives for more than a third of a year!
We were able to rent a lovely house a half a block from our loft, and the production company moved the furniture and belongings we would need and stored the rest of all of our worldly possessions. Oh yes, they packed and moved every, little, thing from our 5,400 sq foot space, including the garage and garden areas.
Now that the show has finished filming, they’ll take the next few weeks to remove all of the equipment, lights, cameras, microphones, wiring, and walls they built and begin the process of restoring our home to how we want it. I don’t want to go back to how it was. Instead, I’m using this as an opportunity to re-envision the Urban Oasis and create a more sophisticated, 2019 version, with paint, light fixtures, new kitchen, updated bathrooms, wallpaper, furniture, and more. The great thing is that the production company will do much of the work. Afterward, we’ll be able to do the rest. Figuring this out has been a lot of work, especially on top of my actual web design work, but it’s also been a whole lot of fun!
I can’t wait to spill the beans about who has been shacking up in our house! Stay tuned! And plan a visit soon.
