HAVEN - PAULINA & COLEMAN

“A place known and equally unknown, where adventure and love fill the space. Where sights and sounds inspire, yet there's no pressure to be anywhere else except that moment.”

A close look into
Paulina Castro & Coleman DeLeon’s
eclectic haven.

Following the beat of their own drum, Paulina and Coleman’s home is nothing short of eclectic. Both embodying a style that’s inviting and unique while also paying homage to their mother’s roots. The small details throughout their haven make an impactful difference in demonstrating how to merge vintage and modern. Staying true to themselves, it will inspire you to do the same.

Take a glimpse into their cozy abode as they share their process of being first time home buyers in Seattle, Washington.

I feel that a haven should activate all five senses, how would you describe your home in terms of… sight, sound, scent, taste, and touch?

When you visit, you’ll notice we always have music playing. Whether it’s Miles Davis on record or St. Paul and the Broken Bones connected through our phone. The doors are almost always kept open on nicer days, so much natural light seeps through and fresh air gets swept in.

Being surrounded by so many trees and vegetation, at different points of the day the shadows and light glimmers dance around the walls and floors. In the spring the scent of our lilac tree and neighbors wisteria takes over. Then in the fall our fruit trees over produce and the sweet pears and apples take over the air.

We truly feel so lucky to be here and call this our home.

How would you describe the overall ambiance?

When we moved in we agreed that anything we brought into our home we wanted to absolutely love. Everything has a story behind it.

If you know us, it just feels like the both of us.

We were stuck on a runway for two hours and stumbled upon the listing after one too many drinks. We scheduled a viewing for the following day when we got back to Seattle. We both grew up a few blocks away from one another, a few miles north of our home. Staying in South Seattle just felt right. Coleman always knew he wanted to own land in the neighborhood he grew up in, imaginably for a lot of the same reasons it led our parents to South Seattle over thirty years ago.

We tend to work around what pieces we want to bring into the space. Cole found a Ralph Lauren Riders Club chair, Hamilton drafting table and designed our now office space around it. He re-did the trim / baseboard, painted the room, framed old posters and swapped a classic door for a window paneled door that belonged in his childhood bedroom. The room feels really good now.

The whole house feels like a project some days. We are currently putting most of our energy into our yard- it's more than double the size of our home and was/is a weed-ridden disaster. We’re getting the landscaping figured out and hoping it’ll soon be a place we can escape to. Tucked away in our basement we have a beautiful porcelain claw foot tub we hope to put into one of our bathrooms some day. Coleman got this idea to cobblestone out our driveway, just for his 2002 aesthetics. We want to add French doors and a larger window to our kitchen. The project list truly feels endless!

The living room overlooks Lake Washington and all of the greenery surrounding our home, the light that comes in at all times of the day is stunning and our couch makes you never want to get up. It’s probably the room we spend the most time in together.

How would you describe the most challenging aspect of being a homeowner?

Learning everything the hard way. Spending three weeks laying brick to step back and realize it's hella crooked and knowing that you won’t ever enjoy sitting and having a coffee on it until it’s straight. Pulling weeds. Going to the hardware store to buy fourteen retaining wall blocks and getting home and realizing you needed sixteen. Pulling weeds. Reminding yourself to “measure twice and cut once” then proudly cutting trim by hand at the perfect measurements just to nail it to the wall upside down for some inexplicable reason. Getting stuck on the roof. Pulling weeds.

Finding the balance between excitement about an idea and the patience required to execute it correctly. Getting comfortable with negative balances. Pulling weeds. Learning to love the process. We have 50 years of ideas for the crib, if we don’t love the process then we spend 49 years working on something we will enjoy for 1. Drinking while working is probably what made the patio crooked the first time around but we still had a couple while we were re-doing it. Probably will sit and have a drink on it this week and talk about what projects we will mess up next.

What is a favorite piece of artwork you acquired that has the most sentimental value?

There is a painting of an unidentified military man in our living room. The gentleman in the painting is in a uniform with all the military accouterments of a 19th century general. He also has what appears to be the early stages of a handlebar mustache which makes his appearance seem more suitable for the cover of Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club than for any sort of military endeavors. He wears no medals, perhaps because he has seen no battles. He shows no identifying allegiance to any country, perhaps because he has none. He also is wearing a blank, yet provocative expression, and a monocle on his right eye. While I earn in vain to know this man's story and how he ended up in this painting I do know how this painting ended up on our wall. P and I were doing random stuff, in some random town, we found a happy hour, we ate tapas and drank some drinks, stumbled into some shops. The painting is signed "Larra Kope - 2002", presumably in a high school art class. The painting was $17.

Coleman has always had more of an antique eye whereas I lean towards modern. Although this feels reversed recently, we are both equally inspired by the aesthetics our mothers engraved in us.

There are Spanish touches all over.

(P) For me, it’s been every weekend sourcing pieces. It was the best routine, we’d wake up and be out of the house by 9, grab coffee in Columbia City then drive around stopping at various places. Making it home by lunch, we’d spend the later half of the day moving things around, cleaning or painting.

(C) Seeing it empty for the first time. We came here way too many times while it was on the market, my brother came over and we drank a six pack on the porch before we had the keys. We had seen the stereotypically staged living room way too many times, the fake plants, the pillow with a smiley face stitched on it, the Zebra print rug... we could squint and see past that stuff but it wasn't until I saw it empty for the first time that I could really picture it. I could picture the space filled with the music and people that had already made life so full up to that point.

We had a blank canvas, a place to hang the old Billie Holiday poster my mom had been saying she would give me if I ever lived in a place worthy of it. A place to spill wine, burn rice, and play music hella loud. The first thing we moved in was the stereo.