For Christian and Jami Pinilla, the road to opportunity led straight to Ardmore.

The owners of The 82 Design have spent two years in Ardmore, renovating condemned housing and building custom homes. The natives of Dallas had never been to Ardmore until they found out about the housing market from a friend.

“We have a realtor friend that has a house here at Lake Murray and she told us to come up here,” Jami said. “We had never heard of Ardmore and so we came up and saw that things were really affordable.”

Christian said that he had only been to Oklahoma once and that was to float the river in Muskogee when he was a freshman in high school. There was also the rivalry between Oklahoma and Texas, which came with the preconceived notions. But a trip to Ardmore opened their eyes.

Jami said they were surprised by the number of condemned houses, counting over 300. It all came down to the math when getting started.

“When we got to Ardmore, the first time we walked in and having never seen it before, we were like, how?” Christian said. “There are so many empty lots, so many condemned houses. We walked through a lot of houses when we first got here.”

The plan was to partner with their friend who had told them about Ardmore. After punching the numbers, Christian and Jami talked with their friend, who gave them a blessing to move forward on their own.

The road to entrepreneurship

Christian was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico and moved to Texas at an early age, living in places such as San Antonio, Austin and Dallas, He said he never lived in one place for more than a year until he was in high school. Jami lived in Kokomo, Indiana until she was 12 when her family moved to Dallas. Christian and Jami went to high school together but did not get together until later in life.

After graduation in 2000, Christian joined the Air Force and served 12-1/2 years. Toward the end of his service, he reconnected with Jami on Myspace.

“That is how old we are,” Jami said. “Our kids are like, ‘What’s that?’”

“The rest is history,” Christian said. “Our relationship moved really fast. I wouldn’t recommend it, but it worked out for us.”

After getting out of the military in 2013, Christian went into business for himself and opened a custom gun shop. He then decided to become a police officer and served in law enforcement for three years.

Meanwhile, Jami was in the door industry specializing in custom doors, fancy door and barn doors. That was her career for 17 years during which she gained the experience of running two companies before deciding to strike out on her own and flip houses.

“I always wanted to do this,” Jami said.

Jami and Christian had remodeled both of their houses, saw the programs on HGTV and felt they could do it as well.

Getting established in Ardmore

In October 2022, Jami and Christian’s first project was a condemned house on E Street that they fixed up and sold. There were other projects including two that were fixed up and became rent houses once the market turned. Last fall, they began doing custom houses.

Jami said the goal was to remodel affordable houses in the $150,000 to $170,000 range.

“That seemed like an affordable goal for us and that is where we wanted to stay,” Jami said.

Christian said coming to Ardmore has grown on both of them. His background was not great growing up and being able to provide affordable homes for people has really hit home for both of them.

“There are not many places in the nation that you can do that,” Christian said. “The average home price now is like $400,000 or something crazy. There are lots in Dallas that are $200,000, for an empty lot. And it is not even in Preston Hollow and the expensive parts.”

Jami said they have brought their style, things they can get in Dallas and incorporated them into their projects in Ardmore. Christian said he also has a passion for business. There has been an adjustment between working in the market in Ardmore compared to a bigger city such as Dallas.

“Seeing how things are here and how different it is, comparatively to big city business is … different,” Christian said.

He said there are pluses and minuses. While it has been a learning experience, one aspect that is most important is relationships with employees, clients and other contractors. There are some investors that may come in but struggle to succeed because they have not developed relationships.

Jami said they focus on not only staying on schedule but also staying on top of a project.

“They said quality and speed, you don’t get both,” Christian said. “We are super organized. Whenever we work with people it is very organized. We have budget spread sheets that are constantly updated. We work very closely with people. I answer my phone 24/7.

“I think the excuse of fast and good or good and fast not meeting, in this world, I feel like it is an excuse of poor organization and poor management. We do a really good job of that. We are on top of stuff.”

Mixing marriage and business

Christian said he has done the math and between home and work, he and Jami spend 99.3% of their life together. And he feels if you can remodel a house with your spouse, you can survive anything together.

“There have been points where we just don’t hang wallpaper together,” Jami said. “That is a no-no.

“For the most part, we get along. We just have disagreements.”

Christian said they are both they are very similar, which can be good and bad. In style, creativity and wanting to get things done and management and success drivers.

“All that stuff we are very, very similar,” he said. “We are very, very opposite at home. I don’t clean anything at home. I don’t even know how the dishwasher works at home. And I am not saying that in a manly way. She has taken that role on since day one. We were both raised very traditional, very old school.”

That being said, the dynamic changes while on the job.

“On the job site, we are polar opposites,” he said. “I have swept more and cleaned more houses on the jobsite than I ever have at home. And she is a mess, she is a wrecking ball on jobsites.”

The differences result in a successful partnership as they complement each other. Christian said neither of them have many friends as they focus on raising a family and stay busy running a business.

“We are kind of our own friends,” he said. “We don’t really get tired of each other, Even when we have the chance to not be together, we are together. It works out well for us. It is not easy. It is definitely not easy and most people, they probably couldn’t handle it. But we have been doing it for a while now. We have always liked each other’s company.”