?As soon as I walked in, I was like, ?we need to buy one of these?? Every New Year?s Eve, Kamissa Mort and Elizabeth Edwards have a tradition of making plans to complete a project for the next year?summiting a mountain or adopting a puppy.
But in 2017 they decided their project would be selling their 1890s farmhouse in southeast Portland, Oregon, and finding land on which to build a new home in another part of the city. ?We looked around our 1890 house and realized that we were decorating it like a modern home,? explains Mort.
As the best laid plans often do, the couple?s strayed from the expected path when they went to an open house for a residence designed by prolific Portland builder Robert Rummer.

Salt Chairs by Ton gather around a Mid-Century Expandable Dining Table by West Elm, and Renee Hartig?s painting ?Gearhart Beach? hangs behind it. A Story bookcase from Design Within Reach casts a shadow at left, and a Modern Cabinet Bookcase by West Elm sits on the right. A terra cotta planter by Rejuvenation stands in the corner, and an Alto pendant by Cedar & Moss illuminates the space.
A peek into the the enclosed atrium at the center of Mort?s and Edwards?s Rummer home.

Rummer and his wife Phyllis, now in their nineties, are fixtures of Oregon architectural history: In the 1950s, Robert Rummer was an insurance adjuster who dabbled in design. Initially influenced by what Joseph Eichler was doing in Walnut Creek, Califo...