Welcome to Good Bones, my new column in the Santa Barbara Independent. You might be asking, “Who are you, and why do you have a column in the Indy Real Estate section?”
I relate. I’ve been asking myself the same question lately.
I can’t fully answer the existential version – that’s probably a lifelong project – but I can explain how I came to have this column. I’m feeling a little unworthy of these hallowed pages, so allow me to explain why I’m here.
My name is Emily Kellow, though a lot of you know me as Emily Ordas. I grew up here and so did my dad, Danny Ordas, a licensed and very old school blue collar plumber and electrician who wore Pendletons, Levi’s 501s, red suspenders, and smoked Marlboro Reds. His mother grew up here before him, and her parents before her. We’ve been here a long time. My mom, Annette Ordas, is the wild card, a genuine treasured import all the way from Queens, New York, who landed in Santa Barbara 45 years ago.
I have deep roots here, and I’ve always loved this city, its history, its quirks, and particularly its old homes. I grew up on the Upper East Side in a tiny shack on La Paz Alley across from the Unitarian Church, drooling and dreaming over the remarkable old homes that towered around us.
I was born, raised, and publicly educated right here in Santa Barbara. Starr King Parent-Child Workshop, Monte Vista, La Colina Junior High, San Marcos High School, and finally UC Davis, where, after a spectacularly challenging year abroad in Madrid (I was bored, which I do not recommend as a primary reason to move to another country), I graduated in 2007 and immediately moved to Portland, Oregon, an affordable, and devastatingly cool city, where I could safely dream of buying a house of my own someday. Also, more importantly at 21 years old, people could still smoke inside the bars, and drive slowly on the freeway. Two things I never did, but loved having the right to do. I wanted somewhere cool, grungy, and decidedly not Santa Barbara, and I found it.
A Monte Vista friend of mine got me a job at Grand Central Bakery serving the finest pastries and coffees, which somehow paid all the rent on an actual old house with a big yard that I shared with my best friend, who also grew up here. I spent a year as an AmeriCorps volunteer at The ReBuilding Center, which was a healthy outlet for my obsession with honoring what came out of the old homes being torn down all around a rapidly growing and changing Portlandia.
I got this from my dad, a reverence for the beautiful things that came out of old houses and were being tossed aside. I had a conviction that they deserved another life, or at the very least deserved to sit in my growing junk pile until I figured out what to do with them. Just like him, I was a salvage freak at any cost and took it upon myself to divert things from landfills and show a little love to old, beautiful treasures.
Real estate was practically inevitable. I come from a couple of Realtors myself, my mom, and my dad’s dad, Emilio, who encouraged her to get into it. I was licensed in both California and Oregon. In Oregon, I loved selling houses to my friends and people my own age. I loved showing them that buying a house was actually possible, explaining how it all worked, and watching it change the trajectory of their lives. I was a real estate evangelist, spreading the good news, sending everyone to my favorite lender to get approved and slanging homes like nobody’s business.
People other than my friends started to realize I was quite good at Real Estate, and was able to outwork and outsmart most of my competitors who seemed to rest on the laurels of their mahogany laden offices, fancy cars, clothes and past sales. I was punk and prided myself on this. Coming from Santa Barbara prices, real estate ownership felt like a rebellion; a real coup that anyone under 50 could buy a house, and I was there to usher them in and show them the way. Eventually I started my own little brokerage and property management company so I could help my investors, and the rest was history until I actually started wanting to do other things than work and make money. Things do change don’t they?
That’s when real estate became obsolete to me. I couldn’t do it unless it was all I did; it just wasn’t possible for me personally. So after a husband and a baby came along, that gig was up. My skin was no longer thick (it really never was), I had much less patience and tolerance for the real estate world, and I no longer could play the game where I out hustled everyone. At 35, my tank was empty, and it was time for a change.
Along the way, I met my husband, Kiel, the hardest working, funniest, and most handsome man I had ever encountered, who also happened to be a licensed contractor. I was smitten. We eventually traded the emo Portland gray for the sunny skies of home, moving back in the summer of 2019. Our sweet son, Danny, arrived the following May. I tried to keep doing real estate through that first year of new motherhood, but it was unnaturally stressful. By the time Danny turned one, I was ready. That year, I traded the lockbox for a hard hat, and together Kiel and I opened Kellow Construction. Kellow Construction turned five this year, Danny turned six, and I turned 41.
Santa Barbara’s design and construction world runs on relationships built over decades, sometimes generations. Architects and designers have their builders. The established, generational companies in this market have been around for decades and for good reason. Santa Barbara has some of the most talented teams in the state, and the standard they’ve set is genuinely something to aspire to. When you’re new, you feel the hierarchy fast, and the “who are you” energy is real. Not always said out loud, but we certainly felt it, and often still do. These early years have been humbling. But we kept at it and we believed in what we were doing, and little by little we have earned our seat at a table that felt like it was never set for us.
That persistence is what led me here. I started writing a newsletter about the realities of construction and design in this market, and people seemed to like it. And, being the good elder millennial that I am, I blogged those writings religiously. When I approached the Independent about celebrating Kellow’s fifth anniversary, I was hoping for a feature, if I was lucky. What came out of that conversation was even better: my own column, with a name I got to choose myself.
I enjoy being able to speak honestly about old homes, construction, and real estate in this city. Since I no longer sell real estate, I have just the right level of irreverence and honesty for a business that I’m no longer in myself, but that I appreciate and understand in a way that is unique. I’m not tethered to my next sale. I am a free agent now!
Sometimes I’ll write about permits, budgets, and why building in Santa Barbara costs what it costs. Other times I’ll write about the right brain stuff: what it’s like to be a working mom, what it’s like to do hard things, and break them open. I am always working on cracking some industry related nut, and I love to share about it.
My hope is that this column makes people feel a little more connected. I want to pull back the curtain in a way that feels real, human, and rooted in love rather than transactional. I hope it gives me a place to show up as my real self, because I’ve come to believe that when we let ourselves be seen, we give the people around us a little more permission to be seen, too. Being kinder, more open hearted, and more loving is always the goal. And if something I write helps even one person feel a little less alone, or gives them some courage, hope, or faith in themselves and others, then I did my job.
Emily Kellow and her husband, Kiel, run Kellow Construction, a design-build firm in Santa Barbara. kellowconstruction.com | @kellowconstruction
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