John and Nadia Aazad Dunn had lived in Portland for decades—he moved from Kansas in 1998, she was born in the Southeast neighborhood, and they first met while they both were working at Starbucks—but they didn’t learn about Rummer houses until 2019.

John is a design director who previously worked at Nike, and he first heard about the homes from his coworkers there. “A lot of Nike people own these homes,” John says about the residences, which were developed by Robert Rummer, an insurance man turned builder whose goal was to bring modernism to the middle class. Most of his projects are set in the Portland suburbs, where the Nike World Headquarters is also located.

Intrigued, the couple started going to open houses just to look, and they fell in love with the homes’ midcentury style and indoor/outdoor DNA. They were also curious about the communities that have grown up around them. “The Rummers are a cool historical thing to dig into,” says Nadia, a civil engineer. “It’s not just that they’re so beautiful and architecturally interesting, but that there’s different pockets of them around town.”

Rummer, who died in 2025 at the age of 97, built his first home in 1959. He was inspired by Joseph Eichler, and he hired the same architect, A. Quincy Jones, for his early designs. The focus for these houses was not on the front facade, but on the back. In many Rummer homes, an unassuming front entry leads into an interior glass-walled atrium, around which the house flows, culminating in floor-to-ceiling windows at the rear that frame the backyard.

Before: Atrium

After: Atrium

“You can walk through the house in the nude and nobody will see you,” Rummer told Oregon Home magazine of his floor plans in 2012. “Every house in the old days had a big front window and a big front porch where people could sit and watch the neighbors go by. And you go into one of my houses and you don’t know what your neighbors are doing because you can’t see them. The birds know what you are doing. The squirrels.”

Rummer built 750 houses between 1959 and 1975 in the Portland metro area, 300 of which are in the modernist style—including his own in the Bohmann Park Neighborhood, which is a veritable time capsule when you drive through its streets today. John and Nadia found their Rummer in 2022 on one of their open house crawls, located just two miles from their previous home, in one of Rummer’s early subdivisions.

Before: Kitchen Entry

After: Kitchen Entry

Workaday Design fashioned custom paneling that’s a contemporary twist on the midcentury paneling they saw in Robert Rummer’s own home. John and Nadia wanted the large-format tile, from Bosphorous Global, to call back to the cement floors typically found in these homes." layout="" credit="Photo by LUKE + MALLORY LEASURE" photoUserId="7090379111026262016"/>

The couple were immediately intrigued, not just with the intact atrium, vaulted ceilings, exposed beams, and window walls, but by the large, nearly half-acre lot. The latter is a rarity among these homes—and this one came with a Japanese-inspired garden and a 6,000-gallon koi pond to boot. “It really had a mystique to it that we weren’t finding in the other ones,” says John. “We knew it needed a little work to turn it into what we wanted, but it was the backyard that really captured our attention.”

After living in the house for a year, they reached out to Lara White and Jason Stamp, the founders of Workaday Design, to collaborate on a remodel. John and Stamp had met years ago at Nike, and the group quickly established a “back and forth” creative process, says White. “Collaborating with everyone really felt natural,” says Nadia. “It was like a fun project that we get to live in at the end.”

Before: Kitchen

After: Kitchen

The team didn’t want to sacrifice any character with a major overhaul of the 1,697-square-foot home, so they chose to target pain points, like the missing fireplace that previous owners had removed, and the foundation’s settlement. They started with the kitchen, which had a stepped wall with upper cabinets that blocked sight lines between the atrium and the backyard. “A major thing that we wanted to do was take down that wall, so that the moment you walk into the atrium, you see into the backyard,” says John.

Since John and Nadia love to cook and host, Workaday Design kept the kitchen in its central place, removed the offending wall, and reworked the layout. Now, a generous island enables circular flow, and every cabinet has been inventoried and maximized to make up for the missing upper units. “Laura and Jason did an amazing job of creating storage for us,” says John.

Before: Kitchen

After: Kitchen

One of their favorite spots is the dining area, which has storage packed into a built-in bench and a dedicated bar for their collection of wines and whiskeys. “Talk about nonnegotiables—the wine fridge was one of mine,” says Nadia. “We had wanted one for a while, as we love going out to wine country.”

Before: Bar and Dining Area

After: Bar and Dining Area

The blue-painted cabinetry is balanced with wood accents, including a new paneled wall that looks like it could be original, and custom white oak cabinets. In place of the stepped wall, the team added a custom storage unit with a series of recessed and extruded sections, inspired by a 2024 visit to Rummer’s own house while they were working on this project.

“Bob’s house had a whole room that was just old plywood paneling, which was really interesting,” says White. “That kicked us off to ask, ‘What can we do with paneling here?’” Their textured application is a nod to the original builder, but it also “works as a piece of art as you walk in,” says White.

Before: Living Room

After: Living Room

A new fireplace stands on the site of the old hearth, complete with grooved Japanese tile. “It brings a lovely texture when the sun comes in,” says John. A laundry closet now has a stacking washer and dryer and a custom white oak folding station, to make better use of the space.

Before: Living Room

After: Living Room

The group considered enlarging the primary bedroom and reducing a nearby closet, but in the end they settled for bringing in bright new finishes and adding a window to the shower. “Spending money where we could have the biggest impact was pretty important for the project,” says Stamp. “Adding that window made the room feel a lot larger than it is, and the little bit of spend on it offered a lot of reward.”

After: Laundry Closet

John and Nadia are always discovering new things about living in a Rummer—when the remodel was finished, they invited all of their neighbors over and listened to them tell stories about their own Rummer homes.

In the warmer months, you might find the couple sitting for long spells by the koi pond—“We lose a lot of hours down there,” says John—but the house works just as well in the cold, wet winters, too. “Sometimes in these colder months, I feel like I don’t go outside enough,” says Nadia. “But even when we’re in the home, we’re still surrounded by the outdoors. And that’s really calming.”

After: Gym

Before: Primary Suite

After: Primary Suite

Before: Primary Suite

After: Primary Suite

After: Backyard and Koi Pond

More Before & After stories:

San Francisco’s Famous Fog Inspired This Midcentury Revamp

They Bought a Midcentury Home Sight Unseen and Took On a DIY Revamp

Ghislaine Viñas Turns a Cloud-Gray Tiny House Into a Little Ray of Sunshine

Project Credits:

Architecture & Interior Design: Workaday Design / @workadaydesign

Builder: Modern Angle

Cabinetry: Big Branch Woodworking

Also Appears In

Before & After: To Inspire Their Midcentury Renovation, They Toured the Builder’s Own Home