The Homes That Built the Brand

At twelve years old, I stood outside a 100-year-old Queen Anne Victorian after church and told my parents I would live there someday. I don’t know where that certainty came from. I just knew.

Twenty-five years later, I bought it; tired, divided into rental units, and in need of work in every single room. We started with a renovation budget of only $25,000. We restored the original hardwood floors rather than covering them. We preserved the stained glass. We added shiplap ceilings, sourced antique corbels from a demolished 1800s Wisconsin mansion, and designed a Scandinavian kitchen that is calm, functional, and genuinely beautiful.

You can take a full tour of our 1903 Victorian home here.

Then, when the pandemic canceled a planned family trip to Europe, we redirected that travel budget into something we will never regret. We converted a garden shed on my grandfather’s property into a 12×32 off-grid tiny house cabin. It sits in the trees, surrounded by four lakes, on the last privately owned quarter section before 150 quarters of Crown land. It is the stripped-back version of the same philosophy I live in town, fewer things, more meaning, more quiet, and it gives my two kids a taste of the farm life I grew up with.