Hello!
You're probably stopping by after we dropped a huge bomb on Instagram that we've changed our name, the direction of our business, and actually have a freaking web site with something called a "blog." So let's walk you through all that nonsense.
The Name Change.
This has been in the making for a very long time. If you didn't know, we used to call ourselves "Slygho." It was a unique spelling we came up with for the county in Ireland, Sligo, in an effort to stand out. In fairness, if you searched "Slygho" on Google, we were the only thing showing up in the results so there's that (but Google would also be like, "Uh guys, did you mean 'Sligo'?").
So why Sligo? Sligo is where Jim's grandfather is from and he is the reason Jim is a carpenter today. The different spelling has been confusing as all get out, though. We can't tell you how many times people are like, "Uh, what's a 'Slygho'?" Or stumble over the pronunciation and/or spelling. Or even avoid saying our company name all together so to not flub it. I always think back to that movie I was obsessed with in the 90s, That Thing You Do. The band, in an attempt to be witty, called themselves "The Oneders" (pronounced "The Wonders"), however people kept calling them the "Oh-needers". And when the band started gaining traction, Tom Hanks had to set them straight and say quit confusing people and spell your name right, fools.
I digress...
Well one day Jim decided he despised the name Slygho and wanted to change the spelling back to the proper "Sligo." But I was very hesitant. Why? Especially if I didn't like the spelling myself? Because we had lots of equity in that name. People were starting to know us and associate our quirky name with our great work. If you know Jim, he's usually a super laid back person, but is a force to be reckoned with when he wants something badly. After I told him I didn't agree with him—that we basically made our bed and had to sleep in it regarding our company name—he created an Instagram account called "Sligo Construction" in which he had 0 followers, but spent all of his efforts trolling me on the original Slygho account by sending me DMs about how I'm a poser and how we need to change the name—LOL. Here's Exhibit A of our private conversations for your viewing pleasure. It's been severely edited down as my Mama reads this blog.
Exhibit A:
And that's us in a nutshell, folks.
So it was determined that we should just go in a completely different direction from Sligo—something that could be relevant to both of us. Jim came up with the name Crawford Modern. To simply put it, Crawford is our last name and we have a passion for giving older things like homes and furniture a modern edge. I'm good with that.
So what gives about our new business direction?
The Change in Business Direction.
If you don't know by now, we've been flipping houses for a couple years in Moore County (you can read more about our beginnings here). In the past year, however, the market has gotten super crazy. It's good when we're selling a house, but it's challenging when we're trying to buy one. To be transparent, our budget for procuring homes and fixing them up to our standards in this area is starting to not cut it. We are getting outbid a lot more these days. We don't want to spend more to simply buy the house, thus resulting in doing the bare minimum / cutting corners when renovating. We want to be able to continue buying homes and putting in higher-end finishes and custom touches. We enjoy standing out from most of the builder-grade flips in the area. Maybe that's a silly way to approach things in terms of flipping, but we honestly can't put our name on builder-grade flips. It isn't for us. We know we could always get our realtor license(s) to save on profits or even get some investors, but that doesn't happen overnight. So we finally determined that we would take a little break from flipping homes for a bit and explore more opportunities with the connections we've made along the way. We're always trying to adapt and evolve, I suppose!
So what exactly do we plan to do? Home renovations (pending Jim's GC license) and staging will be our main focus; however the plan is to dip our toes in a little bit of everything, such as:
- Home renovations
- Staging
- Design consultation
- Interior decoration
- Flipping / investment property consultation
- Custom woodworking
- Art
- Photography styling
- Antique booth(s)
. Anything else you think we can do for you? Drop us a line.
The Web Site.
It's been a long time coming; however we finally created this web site to showcase our portfolio and also provide more details of our process through the blog. While Instagram is a great platform for sharing pretty photos, we're hoping to share a little bit more behind the scenes of what we do and experience—the good, the bad, and the ugly. It will not be all pretty Instagram squares here. We will be transparent about the not-so-fun aspects of renovations and flipping. We will even share our screw ups so you can learn from them as well. We're also hoping to show a little bit more of our personality (sass).
We hope you enjoy and find some inspiration here on this site!
