Couple tackles "huge undertaking" as first
big restoration bid in historic Orange tract

Browsing copies of Atomic Ranch magazine in their Kansas home and longing for a modern-style house, Jen Bailey-Coykendall and husband Matt soon acted on their dream—to a degree they had not yet imagined.

"We kind of got into the mid-century modern aesthetic," recalled Jen recently from her partly restored home in the Fairmeadow tract of Orange, in Southern California. "We just never thought we could have an Eichler."

Much less did they anticipate making Eichler history of sorts by becoming the first home in the newly designated historic neighborhood to go through Orange's new, rigorous design codes—and, in the process, permanently doff one of the largest 'hats' ever plopped onto an Eichler.

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