ost people consider themselves
fortunate to find true love once,
but for Jessica Comfort and
Jevon LaBar it struck twice.
“It’s a classic, modern love sto-
ry,” jokes Jessica, referring to a
dating app that connected the
pair more than six years ago.
Their first date lasted four
hours and went from a quiet
dinner to a bar and another af-
ter that. “We had so much to
talk about,” she says. The hot
topic? Vintage. Jessica has been
an ardent thrifter since high
school, and Jevon was deep into
the Portland estate-sale scene.
So naturally, their third date un-
folded at one of those frenzied
sales, where the entry line was
some hundred people deep.
Soon after, the couple started
Lyon Falls (lyonfalls.com)
named for their respective
hometowns of South Lyon,
Michigan, and Great Falls,
Montana, as a means to hawk
the vintage frocks, furnishings,
and things they chase (and then
restore) on weekends. While
hunting down one-off invento-
ry came easily to the pair, what
they couldn’t seem to snap up
was a new home. Then, after 18
months of searching, one
M
Initially,^ the^ kitchen,^ l
iving^
room,^ and^ bathroom^ w
ere^
all^ on^ the^ bottom^ floo
r,
and^ the^ upstairs–the
original^ houseboat–was
divided^ into^ bedrooms.^
Restore it
“We basically made all our
design decisions around
maintaining the original
cabinet work,” says Jessica,
starting with Jevon sanding
and refinishing all of the teak-
veneer drawer and cabinet
fronts. To make the wood-
work pop, they painted the
brick floor white and chose
white subway tile for the
walls. “I think the slanted
ceilings and the cutout in the
middle give this room a very
boatlike feeling,” says Jessi-
ca. “Like you could open
a little hatch above you
and climb out onto a
bobbing deck.”
38 JULY/AUGUST 2019 SUNSET
