In 2012, while working as an independent consultant, I found myself on an RFP from the Saint Paul Housing and Redevelopment Authority (HRA). 

What had happened during the 2008/09 crash – was that people were either getting foreclosed on, or just walking away from their mortgages. 

The result was that the city of Saint Paul purchased these properties, and received a federal grant to rehabilitate them. So it was a federally sponsored house flip to get these properties back onto the market. 

The city put out a request for proposal for smaller firms in the city to document, field measure and provide remodeling drawings to bring these empty houses back to life. 

They’d release a property or two from the master list and my project partner Josh and I would team up for field measuring and photo documentation for as-builts. Then we’d get it modeled in our respective programs. I chose Revit, while Josh was working in Vectorworks. 

It was a decent way to spend a few weeks. We ventured out to be out in the field, getting some fresh air – while avoiding being mercilessly attacked by some of the most robust spiderwebs I’ve seen outside of movies in spooky basements and places that could be used at sets for a Blair Witch spin-off. 

I was designing from anywhere I could find table space and network access, which allowed me to keep working for 3 firms at the same time. 

Another nice perk of the process is that we had access to the homes for return visits and verification – which on a couple of these projects – I sat in the kitchen and worked out a few existing issues on the Mac to correct things that didn’t make sense in the field notes.