Cassie Courtney has always been drawn to pursuits such as music, dance, and art that allow her to express her creativity. At a young age, Cassie’s father first helped her make the connection between being creative and making homes beautiful. As an adult building her first home and then finding success with real estate staging opportunities helped Cassie realize that interiors was a genuine passion worth pursuing. This led her to open featherlane design co, a full service interior design and staging firm.
“I love the idea of making your home and life a place where you are truly happy doing things that create beauty,” shared Cassie. “Over the last five years, I’ve had a goal of not wasting things that are here but seeing homes as places to restore instead of tearing down and getting rid of. It is a lot of work, fixing something up to be beautiful, but it can be done. It is about truly pouring a little love into the place.”
Cassie’s passion for restoration led her and her husband, Drew, to their current project of restoring a home on Morningside Drive in Ferger Place Historic District. For the couple, this restoration is special as it is also their family’s home.
“When we chose this property, we had renovated and restored a few homes already and were always looking for something for our family, but we didn't want to go too far from our Highland Park neighborhood,” she said. “I’d seen this home because it was on the market for years. It had never sold for a couple of reasons… it was a very old, very neglected property and it is a big house in a historic district, which comes with a lot of responsibility and layers of processes for restoration. But this house was probably, in its time, something very special that clearly had lost its luster.”
The house, built around 1910, was designed by Clarence Jones who also designed the historic Chattanooga YMCA building that is now home to The Common House. In addition to loving the rich historic architecture connection, when Cassie found out that the original owner of the home was a harpist and the home was the birthplace of the Chattanooga Orchestra, she knew that restoring the home would be an exciting adventure.
“I think that the original owner would play her harp and other members of the orchestra would play with her on the porch and folks from the community would just enjoy it from the lawn,” shared Cassie. “So, I began imagining what it would look like if this house had music back in it again. Now, I have a vision that eventually we will be able to utilize the porch with musicians again and have a bit of a community experience, bringing the house back to what it was intended to be, which is a place to enjoy music.”
Cassie and her husband bought the house two years ago and began working on refreshing the inside of the home with new paint and trim, updating floors, remodeling a few bathrooms, and transitioning the house back into one living unit since it was split to make apartments in the 1970s. They have reinforced the foundation, and this year began work on the exterior by rebuilding the porch with contractor Driftbank Builds. As with all projects this large, they have experienced the setbacks that come with restoration in mind, but the couple continues to tackle the project in pieces. Over the next few months, neighbors will see a transformation of the exterior of the home, beginning with a new roof.
Large historical properties such as this one require special attention to detail and Cassie appreciates the help and support she has found from others during the restoration. “Historic remodeling and remodeling in general are very different practices,” she explained. “For both, it’s really important to have the right team of experts around you. I feel very thankful that, being in the industry, I have relationships with people I can lean on who really know how important it is to keep quality in mind when you’re hoping to preserve a home. The contractors I work with and those in the design community that have been great resources.”
Although Cassie loves helping others with their homes, restoring this property is especially close to her heart. Not only is it the place where her family will create memories for years to come, but in many ways, it is fulfilling a need to breathe life into something that was dying. “I love that I can keep dreaming here,” she said, “and hopefully making an impact in my community by taking something that wasn't really cared for and making it something that's hopefully celebrated and enjoyed by others.”
Follow progress on the Morningside home restoration on Instagram @morningsidestory. To connect with Cassie for interior design or home staging needs and to see her portfolio, visit www.featherlanedesign.co.