This Designer Didn’t Rush to Create Her Dream Home in Colorado

Original article posted at Architectural Digest by  Kelly Dawson.

Back when they were newlyweds—before their two kids and her interior design studio State were born—Laura and Scott Arledge had a particular routine. “We’ve always been kind of obsessed with real estate,” the designer says. “We were always looking for the perfect house.” They’d stay up reading about listings in her adopted hometown of Fort Collins, Colorado, before bed, and drive around searching for “for sale” signs in yards. One day, as they rolled through streets of midcentury charmers, in an enclave set between the city’s historic downtown and the country, they spotted a contender. “It was a total fixer-upper, and there was no way we could’ve afforded it,” she remembers. “But once we were in the neighborhood, we parked our car across the street and just sat there admiring it. And then we looked at the house next to us and it had a for-sale sign. It turns out we parked next to our home the first day it was on the market.”