Lakeside on Lake Michigan: Laura x Mike

1. Intro & Marshmallow Origins

Mike: Welcome to another edition of the DEN Customer Interview podcast series. We are joined by a new customer, a new guest. Tell us: who are you, which DEN design did you build, and what state did you build it in?

Laura: Sure. I'm Laura Curtis. I live near Atlanta, Georgia.

I run a marshmallow company, Malvi Mallow, and we just finished our build of the Alpine 2.2 in Fenville, Michigan, which is close to Saugatech.

Mike: Awesome. Awesome. You know, it's not every day that we have the founder of a marshmallow company roll through the doors. So, before we even talk about anything DEN related, you gotta give us the backstory on the marshmallow company.

How did you get into that? Tell us a little bit about the company.

You know, as an entrepreneur myself, I'm fascinated to hear about people's founder stories and where they're at with their businesses.

Laura: Yeah, definitely. And they are connected actually. So, I grew up as a girl scout and more importantly, I grew up spending my summers on Lake Michigan, right across the street from where we built our DEN house, at my grandmother's house.

We'd have evenings on the beach with bonfires, roasting marshmallows. We were just getting to my childhood with those memories of Pure Cove and Michigan and all that joy and happiness of childhood. Running in the lake, getting dirty and playing with cousins and all of that. So I ended up going to culinary school down the road, got really into cooking.

I thought I was gonna be a chef, but I have this sweet tooth and marshmallows were just on my mind constantly. So I started experimenting. We were living in Hoboken at the time - my soon to be husband and I, at that point - and I would just experiment and come up with flavors. And my challenge to myself is to make a marshmallow with flavor.

Because as you aerate a marshmallow, it may start with a lot of flavor and color, but it just gets diluted down as all that air gets incorporated. So I came up with some pretty awesome flavors. We kickstarted it, moved to Atlanta in the meantime. Also, you know, we keep the company all natural, which is another challenge, especially when you're going for flavor.

But we keep all our ingredients all natural. We source the best possible ingredients. We started also making a s'mores, like a pre-made s'mores with shortbread cookies around them. And this really started small about 12 years ago, but we got to Whole Foods pretty early on, we just had some lucky breaks at the beginning and we've been growing into now four regions of Whole Foods. So you can find us along the East Coast. Our flavors, like we make passion fruit, fluffy nutter, which is peanut chocolate, honey marshmallow, honey vanilla, which is like the classic roasting marshmallow.

Cotton candy is the most popular flavor, to be honest. It's pretty awesome. It has all natural sprinkles. Yeah. It's all so great for roasting cocoa. Yeah, but like I said, it all goes back to Michigan and my childhood memories there.

2. Building a Business from Scratch

Mike: Amazing. Amazing. Yeah, I'm like also like super fascinated by these like direct to consumer food and bev companies, you know?

And it's amazing to also hear that you guys like have distribution in Whole Foods already. But that's so cool. I'm always like, whenever I see these things that like, have good branding, good positioning, and like good products, right? I'm like, 'was this born in some sort of like PE think tank or is there like a real, is there like a real story and like a real founder behind that?'

Laura: Oh, this is a real story. Yeah. This is like late nights in the shared kitchen, hauling our equipment behind us in a pickup truck in the middle of the night. Like, that's where we began. And just slowly growing, working with different artists on our branding and photography and really developing products.

And, I mean, we're still small, but we've just been steadily growing it and learning and going. But with that original, like, I just have a true love for marshmallows. For s'mores. There's nothing better than a just marshmallow.

Mike: That is amazing. That is amazing. That really tickles me. And I see the Shopify.

Laura: Yes, of course.

Mike: Hell yeah! Shopify fam! Us too.

Laura: Yeah. I couldn't have done it without Shopify.

Mike: Yeah, same. We have some like proprietary stuff within our tech stack, but yeah, same thing. Like we couldn't have done it in the early days of DEN, like our tech stack was like so brutally simple. It was like just Shopify.

Awesome, Laura. We said that we had like a hard stop at 4, and hopefully we can still finish this thing on [time], but your marshmallow story is like, too good to not bite into, pardon the pun. But that is so cool. That is so cool.

3. Why They Chose DEN & the Alpine 2.2 

Mike: So tell us a little bit more about the project itself. Why did you select that design? As opposed all the others in our catalog.

Laura: Yeah. So. Oh, I'm gonna give you a little tiny bit of history 'cause my family has history in this area of Michigan. So it goes back several generations and my grandmother, like I said, had a house across the street where we built. We ended up losing my grandmother's house through erosion.

So we had this extra lot across the street and consolidated. I kind of did a little family shuffle. My father and I decided we were gonna build something. It's a very small, narrow lot, so we were limited a little bit in our size. And I had - I do not know, the first time I heard about DEN. I'm sure my husband, who loves just like beautiful modern things, had come across it, on socials or somewhere at some point. I'm pretty sure he's the one who mentioned it. And I started looking into it and thinking, 'well, gosh, if we could...' the idea of building something so that we could continue going up to Lake Michigan and my kids could experience what I got to experience was just so on my heart.

And I thought, 'well, if we could merge like this beautiful design and make use of this narrow otherwise like very difficult to fit around space, how cool would that be?' So yeah, we started there. I really wanted something that my parents and I could go [to] together with like my family with two kids, two young kids, and my husband and I, and my parents who are older, on the older side. So.

The design worked with the lot itself. It worked with our family dynamic and what it really worked with too is that it took advantage of this lot, which though small is right facing Lake Michigan. So in the front you've got this panoramic view of the lake and with those windows, yeah, that I knew I wasn't gonna be able to find anything better that would really like fit the space so perfectly as the Alpine 2.2.

We did some tweaks, but it seemed like it was meant to be.

4. Finding the Right Builder

Mike: Awesome. Awesome. I mean, that sounds incredible. So lot confinements kind of dictated the shape of the house and then the opportunity to capture the view like really aligned with the window programming of that particular design.

That's really cool. Maybe tell us a little bit about how you got the project up off the ground. Like in terms of the team, like did you work with a local contractor? Like did you and your dad do a lot of the GC'ing, like what did that look like for you guys?

Laura: Yeah, my parents pretty much, they've helped us get the lot in place with our family and helped us financially somewhat, but they really handed the reins over to my husband and I to get the project done.

So I just started reaching out to contractors, just googled builders in the like southwest Michigan area, and came up with a list and just did phone call interviews and we were only up there once or twice a year, so I just planned our trips to meet up with as many people as I could. So we ended up meeting face-to-face with I think, three different builders. And it was like Goldilocks and the three bears, like one was awesome, but way too expensive. Another one was cheap, but maybe not as quality as what we needed for this build.

And then Scott, the builder we went with, was just right, super laid back. You could tell he had been doing this for years. He was willing to work with us long distance since we were really doing this build from back in Atlanta. And the price was right. We could make it work.

Mike: Awesome. Awesome. And then, tell us how the DEN plans facilitated some of those early conversations, you know, trying to get to [a] high confidence price with these three potential partners.

Laura: Yeah, so I cannot emphasize enough. This is something I never had done, never thought I would do. I mean, building a house was completely daunting, but finding the builder was step one.

We got in touch with a engineer, an architectural engineer, I suppose, in Atlanta. So he took the plans and we really had to work within our zoning. We were at, I think at 15% - we could only use up to 15% of the land space. For our building, which included decks and driveway. So that really put us in a spot.

But we did know we wanted to kick out a little space for more of a living area. We wanted kind of a separate space for living and dining room. So we kicked out a room on the side, so it's kind of an L shape instead of just one long structure. Which worked out so beautifully. It gave us a deck on top, which you can go out and again, like do yoga and with a full view of Lake Michigan.

Laura: It's beautiful. But the engineer, yeah, engineer-

Mike: Sorry. Sorry to cut you off here. Have you shared pro like photos of the project?

Laura: I'll send them, yeah. I sent photos, but I'll definitely send you more. It's fantastic.

Mike: Yeah, because this sounds amazing how you're describing it.

Laura: Yeah, it really is. It even gets better with the landscaping and everything, but...

Garrett from Loon Lake was the guy. If you're in Michigan, go to Garrett from Loon Lake. 'Cause he was phenomenal, very reasonably priced and just really understood what we were going for and kind of took my layman's understanding of building things and made it workable. I don't know, with the lighting and the electrical and the plumbing and everything.

And he and Scott, our builder from nail up builders also worked together really well. Again to see like 'is this stuff that I'm talking about even possible, how does it work?' And then taking it back to zoning, they made us extend a wall, so basically our kickout room, which was gonna be just a little kind of sunroom, became a long room, which required extra support and all of that.

But yes, they figured it all out between the three of us. Nice.

5. Customizing the Plans & Construction Logistics

Mike: And then the DEN plans as like a basis for all of that helped you how?

Laura: It gave us the... we did tweak the windows a little bit, but mostly, everything was in line so well, so perfectly, and I just feel like it was meant to be in so many ways.

It worked out well too because Scott, the builder - with the land, there was a slant on the land... I'm gonna get a little into technicalities, but like, the way the land slanted, we had to build higher up further on the north side of the land and put the build up higher.

So, instead of just being on a flat cement pad, we had to build basically a large crawl space, which is almost like a little basement underneath. And it worked out so well because our utilities go down there, they shoot straight up through, the bathrooms are in line. Everything's just so lined up perfectly, in the house and how we built it.

Laura: And it's so easily accessible and it leaves the outer shell like open to nature. So we've got the windows up front with the full view of the lake in the back room. The master bedroom on the bottom has huge sliding doors that open up to a wooded space. There's actually a ravine preserve back there, so it's just woods behind us.

Not the master bedroom, but one of the bedrooms

Even the side windows that do look at our neighbors somewhat. We have like an old farmhouse on one side and a cute bungalow on the other. So just the way it's opened up to nature is incredible. And that's what really what we were going for. And I love how like the DEN space itself is so cozy.

So beautiful. You feel so serene inside, but it also really encourages you to get out, which is what the house is all about for us. Get out beyond the beach, go and walk in the woods and bike down the road and stuff. So, that was great.

And then the decks, like the indoor outdoor spaces, again, how the sliding doors just invite you to kind of step out. And take in the view, enjoy your meals outside. We've got lots of dining tables and fire pits, of course, for roasting marshmallows, and everything else you'd want on the property.

Mike: Nice, nice. This is like a brand showroom for you.

Laura: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And I mean like choosing the materials for it, seamless.

You know, we referred back to the DEN photographs, 'cause it was really tricky, especially once we started furnishing the house like we wanted. So tempting to, [put] an extra dresser here or table there, like a coffee table. People say you have to have a coffee table. People say you have to have a rug.

But we just kept coming back to DEN and saying, 'we want this to be minimal, serene, like clean. Just like we saw it when we first picked the plan'.

Mike: Mm-hmm.

Laura: So we kept going back and like those photos reminded us like, you don't have to do this. And we kind of built this to be perfectly just what you need as far as like closet, space and pantry space and kitchen.

6. Design Philosophy & Minimalist Living

Mike: That is amazing. That is so cool to hear because I try my hardest to live life with a minimalist approach, right?

Laura: Yeah.

Mike: It's so crazy. It is so crazy to try to maintain that, because it's like really easy to just - whether people are like giving you stuff or like you incrementally get stuff - it's like so easy to just continue to add stuff to your life. And also over decorate an interior, right?

Laura: Yeah. Just to get a painting. 'Cause you think you need a painting so you get...

Mike: Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

Laura: That doesn't mean anything to you, but yeah.

Mike: Yeah. I'm happy to hear that like our kind of minimalist creative direction has like, inspired you down down that path as well.

Laura: I have to say, it just reminds me like when I had kids, and you have young kids too, like when you have a baby, people make you wanna think that you need all these things to raise a baby.

In reality, you realize like you don't need much. Like you can change 'em on the floor. And similar to this house, this house is our baby. People might wanna sell you all these things to fill it with, but really, if you have a beautiful house -

Mike: - that's all you need.

Laura: That's all you need. Yeah.

Mike: Yeah, exactly.

So you mentioned a lot of different design aspects and spaces within the house, but if you had to pick one as your absolute favorite, what is your favorite place in the DEN that you guys built?

Laura: In the house, would have to be the entrance. Just when you walk in the door, and turn left and see the window. I think I stood there for about five minutes before we left the last.

The fact that I got to preserve this place in the world that's so special to me for my children. It's like that we get western facing and just the way the sunlight comes in. So, it just stopped me in my tracks the last time I stood in that doorway. And yeah, it's a beautiful view, but just to me also like walking into the reality that we were able to build there was, pretty amazing.

Mike: Awesome, awesome. You mentioned that you like only traveled to the property like once or twice a year. So like your builder kind of like shouldered the project in the interim, right? Like how -

Laura: Yes.

Mike: How was communicating with the builder during the project timeline.

Laura: It's amazing to me.

Scott again, I mentioned he's very low key, low tech. We really just did it all by texts and emails and very sporadically at that. We traveled up there really just at framing. I mean, we met with him before we saw it when it had just been graded. And then we came back at framing and then two times to finish up.

So we've been about four or five times in the last year.

Mike: Oh, wow.

Laura: And it's pretty remarkable. Because he did a great job. I never knew what we were gonna get when we went up there, but every time it was spot on. Like exactly what we talked about.

Mike: Awesome. Awesome. Well, okay, cool. So, you mentioned that you were like able to witness the framing portion of the overall project.

Laura: Mm-hmm.

Mike: A lot of our customers have told me that they really, really loved the framing phase because they can like finally see like the geometry of the building take shape.

Would you pile on top of that opinion or was there like another aspect of the overall build that you really love to see and to participate in?

Laura: The framing was amazing. And yeah, I agree with that statement. Seeing the geometry of it, the scope of it, the size of it, and how it fits on the land.

After just seeing everything two dimensionally and - I'm not good at translating that into real space - it was cool. Also with the kids, like just having them see, come up and run around. This like strange space with the beams and seeing how a house is built. I think that's a cool experience that they got to have as well.

Mike: That's really cool to hear. And your builder, Scott, is a diamond in the rough, right? Or like you're like the perfect client.

Laura: Absolutely, yeah.

Mike: Or combination of the two, right? Because I would say that a lot of people have like a hands-on approach to their projects, right?

Like in a hands-on approach with their builder. You know, like are really like in the weeds on a lot of the details, with their builder especially, right? But it sounds like you like cultivated this working style with Scott, where like you were remote, you checked in via text, and you guys ended up with a beautiful outcome.

Tell us a little bit about how all of that worked, because really, one of the questions that I ask people are like, "did you finish with the same builder that you started with?"

And some customers say "no". So like, hearing [about] this magical unicorn of a builder, Scott, like the story of your project is fascinating and I would love to hear more.

Laura: Totally. Yeah, it's our first time, so I can't compare it to anything, but I do think we really hit the jackpot and I mean, we're pretty easy going, but we definitely wanted this done a certain style.

But he would just walk us through every option that I think mattered. And probably he made a lot of decisions about options that didn't matter. I don't know, probably. I'm glad. I don't know. But, you know, how we wanted the windows set, just, the wiring, the placement of outlets. We were up there for the rough-in or for the framing that then we made decisions about outlets and technical stuff.

Mike: Oh, that's really cool.

Laura: I think he just laid it out for us in a way that, we were able to maybe Google and educate ourselves a little bit and make a decision on.

Same with like the painters were great. They sent us photos of all the different, like, staining options, side by sides and gave us different angles if we needed it. So I wouldn't say that it's because we're in any way, like an ideal client.

I really give the credit to Scott and his team and I think his experience, and just understanding, helping us make it happen.

7. Advice for Future Builders

Mike: Cool. That's cool to hear. So, last question, is; if you had a friend who wanted to do this, what advice would you give them?

Laura: I mean, certainly pricing is... we budgeted as thoroughly as we could to make sure we had everything we needed set away for this project.

But still towards the end there's always extras. Extras that you just want to add to make it as optimal as you can to just get it right all at once so you don't have to go back and redo. It's like the different kinds of cable rail options and we added a sauna. We wanted to make sure that the sauna was there from the beginning.

'cause that's important to us and for the area. I think it's a great amenity. And landscaping, I mentioned landscaping before. We again, like, really got lucky with our landscaper. He just lives a couple doors down the road and has done everything remotely and same as Scott. I mean, very similar to Scott.

Now we have the ring cameras up so we can kind of check in on the progress, but he's just wrapping up right now. He put the fire pit in. It's gorgeous. And a little dining area on the front, with some flagstone and pebbles and, a little grill out there.

So, yes, I would say budget as well as you can, but have some extra or something that you can pull on for when you really wanna add something at the end.

You're not constrained. Yeah, and I guess, definitely do your research upfront. 'cause I think somehow the little that I did paid off with just talking to as many builders as I could and narrowing it down and I guess going with our gut paid off too. I don't know how else to credit it. Or, I don't think there's a method that could get anyone else there on Scott, but I hope everyone can find their Scott.

Mike: Nice. Nice. That's great. So in summary, use your DEN plans to get a Scott and your project will go swimmingly. And you know, try to use your gut whenever things get a little hairy and hopefully everything turns out great. So, thank you so much for that, Laura.

I cannot wait to see pictures of this project. And yes, on behalf of the whole DEN team, I just wanted to say thank you for being our customer. Thank you for pursuing, DEN Design and we're really happy to hear that this project, across a number of dimensions is just so meaningful to you.

And we hope you enjoy for years to come.

Laura: Thank you so much for making this possible, for giving us a picture of what our dream could and should be, and, yeah, we look forward to enjoying it.