What is to become of it?

How many times does it take for an occupational therapist and a construction engineer to figure out a layout? I lost count somewhere around eight. Close to eight trips, walking through, measuring, sketching, erasing, and re-sketching—nothing about this place was straightforward.

Picture this: behind the office sat a mechanics garage. But calling it a “garage” was generous. It looked more like a storage locker that hadn’t been opened since Y2K. Floor to ceiling, wall to wall—stuff. Piles of tools, boxes bulging with who-knows-what, half-broken machines, and random treasures that looked like they’d been rescued from five different yard sales and then abandoned.

If you’ve ever seen Hoarders—it was like that. Except with more grease, fewer cameras, and definitely no clean-up crew waiting for the signal.

Every time we squeezed in with our tape measure, we’d bump into something—a random engine block, a leaning tower of lumber, a box that rattled ominously but we didn’t dare open. The floor was buried, the walls were a rumor, and more than once I wondered if we should’ve worn hard hats just to take measurements

But here’s where Rafael shined. His engineering brain could look past the chaos, straight through to the bones of the building. Where he saw walls and angles, I saw function, flow, and accessibility. Together we started to carve out a vision—him with his creativity and precision, me with my practicality and obsession with making things people-friendly.

To anyone else, it was just a junkyard. To us, it was a possibility—buried under twenty years of clutter, waiting to be pulled into the light.

Little did we realize that once we removed the clutter, the true chaos—and the genuine magic—was lying in wait.