about the owners

Lorene and Travis met as architects working and living in downtown Los Angeles. They occupied an industrial loft space where they lived, worked and built furniture in a small wood shop. They both enjoyed exploring the outdoors through remote offroading.

In 2018 they spent Thanksgiving offroading in Death Valley. On their way back to LA, they ventured into Randsburg for the first time. After enjoying chili and a beer at the White House Saloon, they fell upon a house for sale. Tim (the homeowner) gave a tour of the house and explained how the original one-room miner's cabin dates back to 1905.

Lorene & Travis both immediately felt the draw of the place - the setting of Randsburg, the adjacency to offroading and the outdoors, a “manageable” restoration they planned to design and build themselves. They purchased the cabin before the end of the year and celebrated New Year's Eve at The Joint (local watering hole).

Nearly every weekend over the course of the next two years, Lorene and Travis took on every construction trade with confidence (+YouTube) which allowed them to renovate the house on their own. They enjoyed finding ways to restore and reuse discovered elements from the original cabin.

In 2020, Lorene & Travis found themselves working remotely full time in Randsburg during the pandemic. They found it easier to get through work weeks online with adjacent outdoor space to escape and explore. They were ready to cut their LA rent but needed more space in Randsburg to contain all of Travis's wood shop and growing bike collection.

Enter in Rand Motor Co. The building was privately for sale, so they walked the space and realized just how many antiques were included (the building had been largely untouched since its closure as Austin's Antiques). Though anxiety-inducing, their architect brains still saw the building's potential to be restored.

By February 2021, they finally had an empty building. Lorene & Travis spent the next 8 months working to revive the building. As with their house, they did the work themselves on nights and weekends.

The sign was recreated to match the original and hand painted by sign painter Derek McDonald.

With the sign installed and the double racing stripes repainted, the front of Rand Motor Co. was beginning to look like it did in the 1930s

Once they finished the restoration in October 2021, Lorene & Travis got hitched in Death Valley, where they offroaded prior to their first visit to Randsburg. They used Rand Motor Co. to host a dinner beforehand and a small reception when they returned from the wedding weekend.

after a little elbow grease

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