Wouldn’t it be nice if major renovation projects really did zip along with the same degree of alacrity as those ubiquitous home improvement shows? Mandee and Alex McEvoy know that’s the stuff of fantasy. Their contemporary home—and the three acres that came with it—has been a work in progress ever since they purchased the property outside Bangor more than four years ago. “It’s been a lot,” says Mandee, who is the creative director at Nazareth-based Martin Guitar.
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But she’s not complaining. She sounds genuinely excited when she describes in detail the myriad of projects that have helped to transform the space into a home for her growing family. Amid the construction chaos, Alex and Mandee welcomed two children—son, Proper, 2 ½, and daughter, Suede, seven months. So, yes, it’s a lot. But it’s also fun, Mandee says. And it’s fair to say, since this wasn’t their first foray into the world of reno and demo, they had an idea of what they were getting into when they signed the deed.
Alex and Mandee are certain they started dating in 2009. But how they met is somewhat of a mystery. “It’s a running joke,” says Mandee. “All these years later we have no idea who introduced us.” She theorizes that perhaps Myspace was involved. They definitely had some mutual friends. Regardless, the pair of Lehigh Valley natives (she grew up in Nazareth, and he’s from Pen Argyl) were married in 2015 and bought a home in Nazareth. “We gutted it completely,” Mandee says. They worked on the home for 10 months before moving in. But just as renovations were wrapping up for good several years post-purchase, the McEvoys were getting the itch to move again. “We knew it wasn’t our forever house,” Mandee says. “It was 1,800 square feet or so.”
It was also a historic home (built in 1890) on a busy street. Home number two for the McEvoys would be dramatically different. They knew they wanted something a little more modern, but they weren’t interested in buying what some might deem a typical home in a development, or in building something entirely brand new. “We like to make things our own, rather than start from scratch,” Mandee says.
She remembers finding the listing by chance on Zillow: a 2,700-square-foot cedar home built in 1985 off the beaten path in Washington Township. “It had potential and I saw that immediately the second we pulled up,” says Mandee. The home had been languishing on the market for about a year; Mandee thinks the state of the indoor pool (translation: not good) may have had something to do with that. The McEvoys bought the home in May of 2018 and got to work.
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It’s important to point out, there was a lot to like about the property right off the bat. Even though the pool was in rough shape, it wasn’t beyond repair. There was also a tennis court and basketball court behind the home as well as a large outbuilding for storage. And the home itself, with four bedrooms and two and a half baths, boasted many appealing features, such as an open floor plan, oversized windows, hardwood floors, a balcony off the master bedroom and a second-floor loft area.
For the McEvoys, it was a matter of infusing some TLC. Okay, maybe a lot of TLC. “It was dated,” Mandee says. “It was stuck in the ’80s. No one had really updated anything. Everything was orange and stained wood.”
Four years later, there are very few spaces in the home that the McEvoys haven’t altered in some way, and they’ve been doing the vast majority of the work themselves. While neither Mandee nor Alex is formally trained as a general contractor and everything that comes with it, they’re lucky to have quite a few family members who are more than a little handy: “Team Uncle” to the rescue! Mandee says her mother’s three brothers—Jeff, Jerry and Kevin Duckworth—helped them with everything from building various pieces of furniture and a custom vanity for the master bathroom to pouring concrete for the hardscaping. She also names her stepfather, Freddie Solivan, as an instrumental member of the crew. And her mother, Hillary Taylor, is her true sounding board for anything she might need an opinion on. “When I feel like I need someone’s seal of approval, it’s always hers.”
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It’s a good balance, Mandee says. “I’m the creative. I order everything, see it all, visualize it. And then I lean on them for the expertise of how to actually get it done.” And Alex, she says, besides being a big part of the “muscle,” helps keep her on track and focused on the task (or, more accurately, tasks) at hand.
One of the toughest jobswas the pool renovation. “That was a room we didn’t even touch for the first two, two and a half years,” Mandee says. “It was out of sight, out of mind.” Initially, she didn’t even want to make the effort. “I was 100 percent sure the pool was not going to be a pool,” she says. “I wanted to fill it in, take the wall down between the house and pool and make it a huge kitchen.” But then, after learning she was pregnant, she imagined her child as a teenager, bemoaning the fact that his mother had deep-sixed what was arguably one of the home’s most desirable features. The pool stayed, much to Alex’s (and probably their future children’s) delight.
The overall goal has been creating a living space that’s contemporary yet homey. “What I don’t do, is do what everyone else is doing,” Mandee says. “I’m always looking for something different, modern and unique.” Mass-produced décor and tchotchkes are a no-no (“I’d rather make my own art or have my kids’ art framed on the wall”). She takes inspiration from a lot of places—“the color of this, the texture of that, the size of that”—and figures out a way to incorporate those elements together.
Mandee has been documenting the home’s transformation on Instagram (@ourmodernhome), where a wealth of pictures and videos offers a vibrant timeline of the McEvoys’ journey from the very first project to where they are now. Mandee says she wants to inspire other DIYers to be bold: “Get a can of paint and removable wallpaper and just try it. What’s the worst that could happen? Make it your own.” But she also strives to keep it real. “We are normal people. We didn’t go to school for this,” Mandee says. “We’re learning it, YouTubing it, asking people with expertise. And we’re doing it in real time. We have two kids, we have full-time jobs.” Sometimes she and Alex will only get a few days here and there to work on the house, which means that some undertakings—like renovating the master bathroom—have taken years, not because construction was ongoing the entire time, but because life got in the way. And that only made reaching the finish line (finally!) this past spring that much sweeter.
There’s still work to be done, of course; a homeowner’s to-do list is a constantly evolving and changing thing. They’ll be turning their attention to the kitchen soon, and, before you know it, Suede will need a “big kid” room of her own, just like her brother, Proper. But there’s no rush. The McEvoys are playing the long game. “We plan to be here for a very long time,” Mandee says.
