I really want to know how much money they spent on this project…

If you’d asked self-taught designer Nikki Lloyd and her husband, Ryan Whaley, five years ago if they would ever move back to their hometown of Sandusky, Ohio, the answer would have been, “Not a chance.” But “every time we came home to visit family, we began to see a community on the rebound, and we really wanted to be a part of it,” says Lloyd.

The couple moved to the quaint lakeside town and invested in a dilapidated late-1800s building in the heart of downtown Sandusky. The building was a wreck, but Lloyd has made an art out of taking diamonds in the rough and creating shiny gems. She had previously improved a ho-hum prefab home near Breckenridge, Colorado, and a teardown-turned-charming-cottage in suburban Ohio.

But never had she tackled a project with such a history as her new home, once an early-1900s high-end bordello known as The Green Door.

Houzz at a Glance
Who lives here: Nikki Lloyd and Ryan Whaley
Location: Sandusky, Ohio
Size: 1,500-square-foot loft, plus a 750-square-foot office and a 750-square-foot cocktail bar; 2 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms