Tell us a little more about yourself

I’ve always considered myself a creative person. I became interested in photography when I was thirteen. I read every book on photography in the school library and then went through most of the collection at the Denver Public Library. By age sixteen, I was synchronizing slide projectors to a pre-recorded tape. Before I graduated from college, I was already making commercial slide shows. That turned into the largest corporate presentation company in the Rocky Mountain region for twenty years.

 

I also loved tech and used it for creative projects and business development. Working with venture capitalists, I became the CEO, and we recapitalized a failed public company. It was the first business to provide commercial location mapping on the Internet in 2000.

 

When I retired from the public tech company at 47, I still had plenty of runway, so I delved into community involvement and public policy and founded the Economic Council of Eagle County (home of Vail), which focused on workforce housing. Along the way, I undertook diverse projects, including marketing and strategy consulting with medical practice groups and a regional wellness center.

 

In 2012, my wife and I bought a Winnebago Navion motorhome. In eight years, we traveled over 100,000 miles (we went through three rigs), and I stumbled into a wide-ranging consulting relationship with Winnebago that took me from the shop floor up to the C-suite.

 

Friends have laughingly called me a polymath (let’s de-emphasize the math part—I’m more of a writer) and a perfectionist. I think I’m more of a “practical perfectionist,” as I hold myself and those around me to high standards. However, I believe in the saying that “perfect is the enemy of the good.”

 

Were you nervous about building a house from scratch?

No. I’d drawn out space plans for my various businesses and offices for thirty years. Of the 14 real estate properties we’ve owned, three were single-family homes that all saw varied improvement products. In our Vail Valley home (20 years), we did a 1,200-square-foot addition and a full house renovation after that. That experience was very close to building from scratch.

 

I have always been confident about trying something new, diving in, and taking the time to come up the learning curve. At its core, building a house is a very straightforward process. The key is understanding the process and finding the right people to help you.

 

Were you worried about the cost?

Not really. Over the decades of building and managing companies, I’ve had my fair share of “near-death” financial experiences. I understand cash flow, procurement, and budget tracking, but I’m more of a visionary, not a bean counter. Sure, I knew to watch all the line items, but the simple cost-per-square-foot metric was a trusted way to ensure I stayed in my lane. Including the land cost, the project came in at $1.4 million, and sure enough, that was right within my expectations. It would sell for at least 20%  more in today's market.

 

What was your biggest surprise?

We built right in the heart of the pandemic, and supply chain issues were crazy. It’s a good thing that homebuilding is a slow process, as I found myself ordering products with a much longer-than-normal lead time—up to a year ahead. The one thing we didn’t see coming was a tripling of lumber costs and a $40,000 overage from what our contractor expected. I swallowed hard when I wrote that check, and in a few months, that moment was in the rearview mirror.

 

During construction, our contractor had seven heart stents put in, and his three crew members all had a week or two of Covid time off. Thankfully, everybody is fine today.

 

Why did you write a book about your experience?

I have won many creative awards and business honors, but envisioning something from scratch, watching every step of its construction, and then personally being able to touch and truly live in the result is the most creatively satisfying thing I’ve ever done. But wait. . .the cherry on top is seeing my family and our friends enjoy and use the house. It’s super gratifying.

 

Writing about my two-year journey is like a long exhale. It was a great way to synthesize my decades of experience. And just like ripping through the libraries of photography books when I was a teenager, one of my first steps in this project was seeing what books were on the custom homebuilding shelf. There weren’t any. Most everything written is geared more toward the save-a-buck, do-it-yourself reader. The Dream House Book speaks to more sophisticated owners who understand the financial and emotional value of good design, quality materials, and excellent craftsmanship.