This Kid-Friendly Bachelor Pad Appeared in Sunset in the '70s

It takes a certain kind of person to buy a vintage house sight-unseen, to dive headfirst into the rough waters of reviving a property’s faded glory without even opening the front door.

Josh Hissong, the Spokane-based principal of HDG, is that guy.

Patrick Martinez

“I’m a bit nomadic. I’ve renovated and sold 10 or 11 houses, which is why I’m single,” says Hissong with a laugh. “No, that’s not true! That’s not the reason. I’m sure I have other faults. I just love taking things that were once beautiful but forgotten and making them beautiful again.”

Hissong founded his design firm back in 2010, after he was laid off from a previous job, and took a scrappy approach to establishing a name for himself. He and his partner, Armando Hurtado, renovated drive-through coffee stands, small commercial properties, modest residential projects, and really “anything that would come our way.” Steadily, they built a design portfolio that spread from Spokane to a wider swath of the Pacific Northwest.

“Now we do $30 million houses and work in 12 states,” he says.

Patrick Martinez

HDG is hired to build sprawling vacation homes from the ground up in exclusive enclaves like Gozzer Ranch in Idaho, but Hissong’s sweet spot, or at least his pride and joy, is the smaller-scale remodels of modern homes that showcase clean lines and clever use of smart materials. In 2019, one of those homes Hissong bought on blind faith and then restored ended up on the cover of a popular modern design magazine. It was clear from the beginning that Hissong had tapped into something interesting.

“Lately, there’s a huge upswing in people looking for these homes. When I was in that house, I had 15 people in a single year knock on the door and say, “Name your price,’” he says. “Eventually, when I wanted to sell, I contacted four of those people on the list. And the fourth one took it.”

Patrick Martinez

Part of what makes his work in western Washington state so satisfying is that there is a surprisingly robust inventory of modern houses, many of which are in need of TLC. Spokanites have the modern architect Moritz Kundig to thank for creating that legacy. The Swiss-born and trained architect emigrated to Washington in the