You’re going to love this visit to Casey’s incredible home. She and her husband are renovating a Bed & Breakfast, that is also the home for their family of six. The rooms are open and inviting, and manage to feel contemporary and comfortable while still reflecting their historic past.
Since Casey and her husband have always worked from home and home schooled, she has some really great thoughts for those of us who are still adapting to spending more time at home. Welcome, Casey!
We are Jason and Casey Cashell. We are old world loving romantics, black & white movie addicts, curl up with a Jane Austin novel type of old souls. We set out on a rather wonderful adventure in February of 2020, with our four kids, of cultivating a historic home. We are inspired by French country chateaus with lavender fields, farm animals, and a culinary garden. We currently run the house as a B&B, with a workshop and retreat space for creatives.
Fifteen years ago we started out DIY-ing our first house as poor college students. We were newlyweds, making $ 10/hr, with a home built in the 70’s that needed a complete overhaul. We found very quickly that hiring “the professionals” would never be an option for us, and so we jumped in with both feet to learn every trade you could think of. Jason bought every tool he could on clearance. He bought the orange Home Depot Home Improvement 1-2-3 book (this was before the days of Youtube). We dreamed big, worked hard, and created something beautiful together as a family. We were officially hooked on renovating our homes.
We have renovated several houses over these past 15 years, juggling renovations with a full load — working full time jobs, homeschooling four children, keeping an open door for hospitality, even during the renovations. Our goal is to keep our home a place that’s welcoming to others, no matter the current state of construction or demolition.
Over the years we fell in love with historic architecture and historic renovations. We became experts at taking out the new and putting in the old. In fact, the ability to make a home look historic became our niche. We found that giving our homes a romantic old world charm lit our hearts on fire.
Jason and I met, oddly enough, sitting on a trash can. I even wrote a rather fabulous poem about it.
It happened one day on a trash can so smelly That butterflies began to tickle my belly. For sitting beside me to my surprise, Was my future Prince Charming before my green eyes. Who would’ve thought that it was part of God’s sovereign plan That two would fall in love on a smelly trash can.
Jason and I knew very quickly that we wanted to get married. In fact, I still have notes that we gave each other in the first month of dating talking about how we desired to spend the rest of our lives together.
The family all together is Jason and me (Casey) and our four children: Lincoln (11), Chamberlain (10), Holly (8), and Athans (3).
Jason is a true renaissance man. He loves renovating, cooking, history, designing, good books, and historical architecture. He is creative and absolutely hilarious. I am a creative to the core. I have been a professional photographer for 10 years. I love hospitality, creating old world design, gardening, and good books.
Lincoln is our inventor and artisan. Since he was a toddler he has chosen to have tools instead of toys. He is a gifted artist, wood carver, black smith, and renovator. He loves to invent new things. He creates almost continuously. He loves to exploring local antique shops for tools. Chamberlain loves antique tools and making people laugh. He also absolutely loves blacksmithing. Holly is sweet as pie and happiest when she is baking with her Momma. Athans is the cutie pie of the bunch. He has a steady stream of fans on Instagram who love watching him tell bedtime stories or get caught in hist latest attempt to snitch sugar
We live in a little historic town called Orange, Virginia — which was once home to President James Madison. Orange is a small, beautiful town. It is truly picturesque. It has cute antique shops, an old water tower that shines at night, an old courthouse, a great train station, quaint shops, some amazing restaurants, wineries, and so much more.
We love our town for all the above reasons, but also because it’s in a great location. In 30 minutes we can be on a beach that overlooks the Potomac, or 2 hours to the ocean, and an hour and half to the mountains. Everywhere we drive we are surrounded by the Blue Ridge Mountains, old homes, historical markers, vineyards, and beautiful horse country. The average price for a house in this area is around $ 240,000.
We had been looking for big B&B project — that could be both our home and our business — for nine years. We had found a few properties that we thought were going to work out, but in the end they didn’t. Finally, about a year ago my husband stumbled across this home. When he first saw it he was in awe. We could not stop thinking about it. It was perfect. However, we didn’t think we could get it, so he put it to the side. Over the next few weeks it kept coming back to his mind, and so he told me to call the realtor and just ask a few questions. I called the realtor and we decided to visit.
The one thing we will never forget is our first time seeing this home in person. We had looked at pictures over and over again, but to see it in person was breath taking. We were immediately in love with its architecture and the surrounding countryside.
We spent the next couple days exploring the house — going through its old barn, the original school house, the old well, and the beautiful gardens. We were certain that this was where we were meant to be. For nine years we had been looking for a special place, a unique one-of-a-kind place to call home and run our entrepreneurial dreams from. We could hardly believe we had actually found it.
I wish I could say that the process to buying this house was easy, instead it was anything but. In the process we met many dead ends, but we refused to give up. We kept pressing forward and praying.
Owning a property like this was #1 on our bucket list and had been for a very long time. We genuinely believe that our life experiences prepared us for this. Prior to this, I started a professional photography business, and have been a wedding photographer for 10 years. Jason ran a restaurant for many years, was an HR at a Fortune 500 company, a construction supervisor, and together we have renovated 3 homes.
This is our fourth home (2 of the 4 have been on the national register of historic places). The most exciting thing about doing these renovations is knowing that we get to share them. Throughout our marriage we have had people live with us, and we’ve sought to create a home that was a refuge to weary souls and a center for hospitality. We try to keep a very real open door policy, and love when people to stop by, even unannounced. We believe that our home is a tool to use to serve, encourage, and inspire others, and we now have the incredible opportunity (and privilege) to show hospitality on a larger scale.
Our personal life has not really changed in many ways since the pandemic started — mostly because we were home-schoolers already. The biggest adventure has come from buying a Bed & Breakfast a month before a global pandemic hit that would shut down the globe. The hospitality industry was hit more severely than virtually any other sphere. The first few months were scary since we had hundreds of cancelations and an empty house. We kept faith, and prayed hard.
A few months into the initial quarantines, people began to travel stateside again. Guests — with masks and social distancing — returned to the house.
Our daily life right now is just what we love: We wear many hats and get to be creative. We feed the kids in our family’s dining space; once breakfast is over, one of us homeschools while the other hits the office to stay up on emails, bookings, and marketing. Then it’s off to cultivating land or home. We can be found gardening, cutting the grass, renovating, cleaning, caring for guests or children, or one of our 5 goats and 2 baby lambs. On weekends, Jason cooks breakfast for guests, and I serve it.
The biggest thing we have learned is to get comfortable with imperfections. As parents we are so prone to want to get it all right, which can be a crushing expectation. Running a business while homeschooling our kids is not easy, and has shown us just how important it is to work as a team.
Jason is a bit of a scholar of historic homes and he describes it this way: The home today would almost be unrecognizable to those who went before us in the 1700’s. I do not mean the design or the size of our homes, but primarily what goes on in the homes.
In the early colonial period, America was an agrarian society and culture where commerce and innovation took place in the home. Homes were places of creativity, exploration, education, business and team work. Often in colonial periods the wife would know the family trade as much as the husband. The kids were not primarily a wife’s responsibility, and the husband was heavily involved in raising the children.
When the industrial revolution came, work increasingly grew to be disconnected from people’s homes. People left the house to work, to be creative, to invent, and to explore. Sadly (in my opinion), over time, homes have grown to become a place primarily of consumption and not creativity. Homes have become a place of self-interest and relaxation where we often turn our brains off and shut out the world until we head off to work the next day.
We like the idea of reclaiming a home activity-wise, so it’s closer to the way it used to be. Perhaps in light of this global pandemic, there is not a better time to return to the freeing reality that our home can be our canvas, and a place where we find our greatest joy in creativity.
We hope our kids remember that our love is constant, forgiveness is always given, and humility and joy are keys to a successful life. We hope they get the chance to create with their hands what was in their minds. I hope they forget all the mistakes we have made as parents — the times we were frustrated when they broke things or messed up the clean house we spent all day cleaning. (Haha, I hope I forget that too.)
Being with them, snuggling them, seeing them grow and laugh, seeing their minds work, watching them figure out things is one of my favorites. We love to put our kids in situations where they have to figure things out on their own. What a joy it is when they have a huge smile on their face because they were able to figure something out on their own.
I wish someone had told me that raising kids is the most humbling thing you will ever do. (I’m sure people did tell me that, but I didn’t listen — haha). I wish someone would have told me to squeeze them tight, kiss them often, laugh A LOT, pray out loud for them daily, ask forgiveness, point them to Jesus, pause in the busy to play even if just for a little bit, snuggle close, listen to their hearts, and empower their dreams.
I wish someone would have told me that your kids will need you more in their failures than their victories. I wish someone would have told me that I wouldn’t be the perfect parent; that I should breath, do my best, and enjoy the season. I wish someone would have told me that parenting has just as much to do with my growth as a person as it does my children’s growth.
Thank you, Casey and Jason! This house must be so interesting to renovate. I love the rich colors and the carefully chosen furniture pieces. And the outdoor space is positively dreamy — the beautiful trees and the pond with the tiny duck house!
I also really appreciated what Jason had to say about the changes in the function of a home since the industrial revolution. I think so many of us are used to a 9 to 5, Monday through Friday work schedule, that it just seems like second nature. But now, so many of us are learning that we can all be more flexible with our schedules. Despite the losses we’ve suffered over the last year, I hope that as we eventually move out of this pandemic, that we keep some of the positive things we’ve learned to do — like keeping flexible schedules, more home eating and home cooking, and spending more time together.
You can check out more of Casey on her website. Living With Kids is edited by Josh Bingham — you can follow him on Instagram too.
Would you like to share your home in our Living With Kids series? It’s lots of fun, I promise! (And we are always looking for more diversity in the families we feature here. Single parents, non-traditional parents, families of color, LGBT parents, multi-generational families. Reach out! We’d love to hear your stories!!) Email us at features@designmom.com
