Well Woven Stories with Casey Crust

Featuring Casey Crust

Welcome to "Well Woven Stories," a new series from Well Woven where we interview our amazing customers and get to know them and their favorite spaces. The Well Woven mission is to create compelling, unique and innovative floor coverings that inspire us all to furnish our space with love while maintaining affordability. We can't think of a better way to accomplish that mission than by sharing our favorite stories from customers who inspire us. Have a story of your own to tell?

Email us at hi@wellwoven.com or shoot us a message on Instagram @WellWovenRugs, we'd love to hear it!

For Casey, the decision to move to Snoqualmie, a small, but fast-growing, city home to roughly 14,000 residents, in the early 2010s was an easy one. "I am born and raised in Washington State and love it!” Having lived up and down Western Washington all her life, Casey knows the area like the back of her hand. She’s already familiar with the twists and turns of I-90, the locals of The Bindlestick, and is a passionate member of the 12s. She knows the taste of sweet Gala apples that each autumn brings and which alternate routes to use when severe weather conditions close regional roads. The area has already been a great home to her and, if you reminisce on your own stomping grounds, you know that new roots can never quite replace the memories or feelings of places past.

While a small, hometown feel was desired, it was vital that this Evergreen State native's digs fit her active lifestyle too. Located 30 miles east of the bustling city of Seattle and just minutes away from close family and friends, living in Snoqualmie would make it easy for Casey to keep busy. For a nature-lover and thrill-seeker like herself, the town’s proximity to the beautiful landscapes of Lake Sammamish and the Snoqualmie River, and local hiking and ski trails was also a big plus.

With her location set and after a thorough house-hunting experience, Casey and her family settled into a two-story, three-bedroom, two-bathroom Craftsman bungalow in the fall of 2011. While the fenced-in yard, back patio for grilling, and enough room for everything and everyone were what convinced her to move in, it was a breathtaking view of Mt. Si through the french doors off the dining room that ultimately won her over

In alignment with her love of history and her interest in "how people take [old] homes and breathe new life into them," Casey also ensured her family’s new house had character to match, “If you know anything about this small town, you know it’s an old mill town built along the Snoqualmie River just above the Snoqualmie Falls landmark. And lucky for us, we found one of those original mill houses that was, in fact, moved to its current location!”

To explain further, Casey hints at how the area's early settlers saw opportunity in the hundreds of acres of surrounding dense fir forests and lush flora. Although traditional farming was what initially brought sustenance, it was the rise of logging operations and lumber mills in the early 1900s, particularly the Snoqualmie Falls Lumber Company (later named Weyerhaeuser), that brought true economic success.

Lumber operations prevailed and loggers remained content throughout the Great Depression era, in part due to the Snoqualmie Falls Lumber Company’s investment in their employees’ happiness, which saw the building of 250 homes, a hotel, school and hospital. But by the end of the building boom post World War II, the area's population had stabilized and the region’s once-popular milling industry found itself on a steep decline. Now seeing their investment in hundreds of free-standing structures as obsolete to their ventures and, frankly, a burning hole in their pocket considering the rising costs of maintenance and property taxes, Weyerhaeuser mills began to downsize.

The organization decided to sell off the homes they had just built, with first rights given to tenants and under the premise that the new owners would move the structures to private property (an ambition that cost, at the time, upwards of $3,500 and 24 hours to complete). Remarkably, it was under this latter condition that the Crusts’ home and the other 30 or so dwellings of their residential neighborhood ended up across the river in the planned Williams’ addition of downtown Snoqualmie, WA.

With its roots planted in the area from the very beginning, the mill house, much like Casey herself, is a Washington transplant, picking back up right where it left off.

It’s been nearly eight years now since the Crusts moved into this gem-in-the-rough and despite the house not having the wrap-around porch and huge plot of land that Casey had always dreamed of having, it's been the perfect compromise and a place her family--their “mini” farm of two dogs and two mini pigs, included--enjoy calling home.

Even with this criteria in mind, Casey constantly changes things up in her home to keep her decor fresh and seasonal. To do so, she often gets creative with the pieces she already has. By moving trinkets to different locations in her home and finding alternative uses for objects like mirrors and tins, she's constantly finding new ways to display her favorite things.

To let you in on her best-kept secret for decorating without breaking the bank, invest in neutral basics. it's a lesson she's learned from her four Well Woven rugs and has since passed along to her daughter. "I also LOVE to change out my decor, so having a good neutral anchor to the room is important with the rug as well, especially since changing things out so much can be super expensive". A solid foundation can really be so versatile.

Her most prized possessions, though? For uniqueness, and maybe what some might call an homage to her home’s logging roots, Casey also decorates her home with one-of-a-kind, hand-lettered wooden signs, “ I started out small with a few stencils and did all the lettering by hand, painted some and then started wood burning for a more rustic, authentic look and feel” (be sure to visit @snoqualmiesignshop on Instagram to see more of Casey’s work).

Some of Casey’s finest signs and display in Compass Outdoor Adventures, one of two locations where she now sells her work.

While the Crusts still have a ways to go before her vision for the mill house is close to complete, Casey looks back on her decision to move into the 100-year-old dwelling fondly, "[the home] was [a] perfect fit for us and it’s been a labor of love ever since. It may not be the biggest house, but that’s what we love about it, and the view is just everything”.

Have a story of your own to tell? Email us at hi@wellwoven.com or shoot us a message on Instagram @WellWovenRugs,we'd love to hear it!