Skip to main content
At first, the stand of indoor mailboxes is the only sign that the Honeyman Hardware Company Building—a handsome brick edifice just off the North Park Blocks—is filled with apartments. Although I’ve been given good directions, I have to circumnavigate the entire block just to find the entrance. From the outside, the Honeyman Hardware Lofts building looks impenetrable, which it’s not, and historic, which it is: Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1989, the oldest portion of the complex just celebrated its 113th birthday.
Once inside, I’m still lost: I see only a sleekly outfitted leasing office and the entrance to a covert parking garage, nods to the 21st century. But then, Terrelle Brown, the 25-year-old sports marketing lead for baby brand Nuna, appears. He leads me confidently through the labyrinth, his miniature poodle, Comet, in tow.
Although Brown’s apartment opens onto the street, it’s suffused with a sense of privacy—of being hidden in plain sight. The soft city soundscape only reinforces the serenity Brown brings to the decidedly modern split-level loft space. The vibe is eclectic and cool, which is unsurprising for a man who operated a thrift shop before even graduating college. That’s when he became interested in “not only sourcing clothes, but thinking about furniture and other things,” he says, developing not only his eye, but—as he puts it—an appreciation. “I’ve never been able to shave that,” he reflects.
Finding the best hidden gems for resale trained Brown in the art of the find. “Facebook Marketplace is my screen time action,” he admits. Case in point: the red Vitra wall organizer over his desk. “I’ve loved this piece for a really, really long time,” he says, but he was committed to finding it in the wild versus purchasing it new.
The organizer is Brown’s favorite piece in the apartment, featuring prominently in many of his social media posts. (Along with his full-time gig at Nuna, Brown also collaborates with brands on Instagram and TikTok, where he has more than 360,000 followers—@tdotbdot, for the curious.) “It kind of represents how my mind is, in a lot of ways—lots of stuff going on,” Brown says. “Organized chaos.”
Not everyone can immediately see the order, but he can. “I am the most creative,” he says, “in a little bit of a mess.”
That sensibility is reflected in the rest of his space, too, which is less cluttered than curated. There’s a lot to look at—especially considering Brown has only been in Portland since 2022. “I just came with my one suitcase,” he says. Since then, things have certainly expanded.
Still, every object in sight has a story Brown is happy to tell. “I love knowing where everything came from,” he says, “because also, when I begin to not remember where things came from, I’m like, OK, maybe I have too many things.”
The trippy green lamp, for instance, lighting up a low shelf on Brown’s console—which draws the eye even in its less than obvious location. “It’s designed by this French guy named Thomas Vincent,” Brown says, schooling this clueless journalist on award-winning housewares. The brand for which Vincent is the creative director, BẰNG, is based in Vietnam, and the line from which this lamp comes is called Lớp, which means “layers” in Vietnamese. Brown scored his Lớp—which retails for $195—as part of a brand partnership.
Brown also walks me through a perfect, miniature photo album filled with the perfect, miniature designs of Tanaka Tatsuya, whose exhibition he saw in person in Seoul earlier this year. It makes sense that he’s into Tanaka’s work, which is all about creating a big impression by curating tiny details: Brown brings the exact same ethos to his living space.
Along with his many finds (plants scored from estate sales; framed posters from the kinds of thrift shops where you can “buy stuff for the actual low,” like Tigard’s Union Gospel Mission) and local brand representation (a retro-looking vinyl cabinet from local furniture company Sidetracked Workshop, which specializes in analog media storage), Brown’s apartment also features a few items designed even closer to home. Along the steps leading to his lofted bedroom, for example, hangs a large green tapestry. JESUS WAS A SENSITIVE MAN, it reads. Brown created it from scratch using the sewing machine I find tucked close to his computer—the part of the apartment he calls “his little laboratory.” Immediately next to this banner is an abstract rug of his partner’s design. The couple attended a rug-making workshop at nearby creative production studio Landdd, where experienced rug makers helped attendees draw up the blueprints—and then brought them to life.
I could go on far longer. But if there’s a pièce de résistance in Terrelle Brown’s home, it’s the massive depiction of Woodstock and Snoopy, sitting on the red doghouse roof and gazing skyward. “Keep looking up…that’s the secret of life…,” Snoopy’s thought bubble advises. (Everyone’s favorite comic-strip dog makes plenty of cameos elsewhere in Brown’s home, too.)
Although Peanuts is already 75 years old, Brown feels a generational alliance with Snoopy’s character. “He’s always super laid back,” Brown says, “even though he’s chronically going through a lot of nonsense.”
Given what Gen Z faces—coming of age during a global pandemic, a rapidly warming planet, and proliferating warfare, just to name a snippet of the history Brown’s seen in his lifetime—‘“there’s this forced nonchalance in some way,” he says. To see if I’m tracking, I reference the “this is fine” meme, wherein a different comic-strip dog sits with forced nonchalance in a burning building.
“Exactly,” Brown says. “Exactly.”
Good thing the outside world falls away when you take such loving care in crafting the one inside your home.
0 of 12
Click here for more Nester Magazine.
Nester Magazine is free, distributed all over Portland, and can be found at these locations.
