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How to Achieve the Ultimate Portland Loft, in 19 Easy Steps

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Every once in a blue moon, the huge marketplace of interiors photos that is Houzz spotlights a house that can be described as nothing less than an interior design jackpot. Featured recently: the effusively hand-crafted and roughed up interiors of what must be the most 'Portland' loft in the history of Portland lofts. What does that mean? It means walls made of resin and twigs. It means spare metal-frame twin beds in place of sofas. It means a sitting room enveloped in burlap and feed sacs. Creating the ultimate in Portland dwellings is no small task: the owners, an immunologist and endocrinologist, took over a decade rehashing DIY projects, scouring second-hand stores, and tracking down artisans. In the name of simplification, here's a breakdown of the (moderately insane) details found inside:

19. Battered pendant lamps. "The more dents the better," the owner tells Houzz. "It gives them character."

18. A lonely, scavenged chair.

17. Patchwork bedding in the living room.

16. The back of a cello?

15. Driftwood in the window.

14. Raw, but waxed, floors. The owner "spent days scrubbing paint off the floor" before sealing it with polyurethane. She didn't like that, however, so she removed the polyurethane and instead coated the floors with a wax finish.

13. Resin panels embedded with grasses and twigs. "I wanted the inner spaces to have as much light as possible but also keep privacy."

12. Tables created "by a friend."

11. The fruits of your sculptural welding class, which, admittedly, you "kept failing." The homeowner created her own handrails.

10. A sitting room surrounded by wood and windows scavenged from a barn.

9. Study rooms done up in chipped turquoise paint and bare bulbs.

8. A wall covered in burlap bags.

7. A traditional Japanese cedar soaking tub.

6. A sink from a wool factory, "where it once collected clippings from the sheep," Houzz writes.

5. Copper walls.

4. A bathroom with, as Houzz describes, "a semiprivate wall of dry vines."

3. A stone sink "meant to be a birdbath or something."

2. A bedroom (↑) with floors and walls done in industrial steel plates.

1. No mattress.

Still, if you want this kind of thing using a one-step process, consider buying it outright. After 12 years entrenched in custom ironwork and Venetian plaster, they're—SIGH—selling it. Read more, over at Houzz.

· 12 Years of Tinkering Produce an Amazingly Artful Loft [Houzz]
· All Portland posts [Curbed National]