Michael and I moved to Tucker County from New York City in 1996 to start fresh.
We had met on a project renovating a loft space in Tribeca, and after it was completed we were ready to build our next thing. We fell in love with Mozark Mountain after our first visit to this place – even though at the time there was nothing yet built here, no running water or electricity! Ever since then, we’ve been building, designing, and making the life around us to as we dreamed it, as we needed it. Our one room cabin eventually, slowly turned into our two story home, and to this day our kitchen still has unfinished drywall.
We think of ourselves as part of the slow house movement – everything in life has always been a big work in process. To build out our home, we needed a woodshop, so we built one and started filling it with 19th century tools. Then, we needed a metal shop to restore and maintain our vintage toolsets. So you can see, if we need something, we make it. We make our dinner from vegetables grown in our own garden, on the table we made, in the house we continually build outward. We trade locally, and we believe in bringing the old and discarded back to life again. Everything we make is informed by the idea that form, function, and design are deeply connected and inseparable. We believe a life well designed is a life well lived.