Building Modern Cabins in Red River Gorge: An Interview with Everly Lodging

In this episode, we explore what it takes to build a truly standout modern cabin in one of Kentucky's most scenic regions. Sonia and Jeff, founders of Everly Lodging, joined us to talk through their journey turning raw land in Rogers, Kentucky, into a cluster of thoughtfully designed, high-performing cabin rentals. Nestled in the heart of Red River Gorge, their A-Frame cabins and modern rustic retreats blend minimalism with mountain charm, creating a one-of-a-kind experience for weekenders, hikers, and design lovers alike.

Sonia and Jeff walk us through their process — from selecting the land to completing their first A-Frame cabin using DEN Outdoors plans. They share what it was like navigating the local permitting process, prepping their site, and executing a design vision that prioritizes simplicity, functionality, and connection to nature.

This episode also goes behind the scenes of their rental business. With over 90% occupancy rates, Everly Lodging is proof that good design and thoughtful hosting can create serious returns. Sonia and Jeff share how they approached staging, photography, guest communication, and pricing — and how they carved out space in the competitive Red River Gorge cabins market without compromising on what made their homes feel unique.

Find Everly Lodging's main site here, their Airbnbs for the Outpost here and the A-Frame here, and their Instagram here.

Discovering Rogers, Kentucky: A-Frame Cabins in Red River Gorge

Mike: Welcome to another episode of the DEN podcast series, where we interview our customers to hear how their projects went and the realities of what it means to build something in the United States. We're joined by two new folks today — I'll let them introduce themselves. We'll start with the easy questions, guys. Who are you? Which DEN design did you build? And where?

Jeff: I'm Jeff Walker, and this is my wife, Sonia Scorsone. We started this about three years ago. We built in the Red River Gorge in eastern Kentucky. The Red River Gorge area is about 29,000 acres of sandstone arches — some of the best rock climbing in the world, 500 miles of some of the greatest trailheads. It attracts a lot of outdoor enthusiasts. There's like a million folks a year that come into this very small community to do outdoor activities. And there aren't a lot of places to stay.

Sonia: No, there aren't.

Jeff: We've been going there since we were younger, hiking. And we thought, what a great thing it would be to own a piece of property out there. My wife is a real estate professional — she's sold quite a bit of property, works all over Kentucky — and I'm in brand strategy and marketing. So we kind of combined our two.

Mike: Oh wow. You guys are truly a power couple, huh?

Sonia: Well, we both have great strengths that complement each other. It definitely helped in this project.

Mike: Amazing. I love both of those topics, actually — real estate and brand strategy. Fun fact: I've actually climbed in Red River Gorge.

Jeff: Oh wow.

Mike: Yeah, in Muir Valley. Right down the road from your place, right?

Sonia: Very close.

Mike: For some reason the cornerstone institution of that whole area is Miguel's Pizza. Why is that? Have you been to Miguel's?

Jeff: Many, many times. It's been around for years — it was the first place to eat, and it's grown and expanded into a camping area, an outdoor area where you can play basketball. Families that do outdoor activities go there to eat. It's huge, and usually so crowded. And Miguel's son bought a hundred-acre farm and opened up a barbecue place — that seems to be the new hot spot.

Sonia: Which is amazing as well.

Jeff: About five miles from our cabins, so we frequent there.

Mike: So cool. So it's sandstone and limestone — one of the few places in the US with really great limestone formations for climbing. For our listeners who are also climbers, limestone is just great for sport climbing, in my humble opinion. So do you guys hike, climb — what's your poison down there? Or just real estate development?

Sonia: We're not major climbers by any means — we have family that climbs. But we definitely love to hike. There are so many wonderful areas and trails.

Mike: Amazing. This is also why I started this company — to meet cool folks like yourselves, developing in really cool parts of the United States.

Why Sonia & Jeff Chose DEN's Modern Cabin Plans

Mike: So tell us, which DEN designs did you pursue?

Jeff: We bought a tract of land, and our vision was to first have one or two cabins on it. There were a couple of older cabins there, and we ended up tearing those down because they didn't fit the aesthetic we were looking for. We love modern design, and when we found DEN we were just like, 'oh, that's it. This is the aesthetic we want.' There's a lot of traditional cabin-style stuff down there, but not many modern, architecturally distinct structures. We knew there are a lot of people who love that type of aesthetic. So to answer your question — we didn't build one, we built three.

Mike: I'm looking at the site right now — so you have an A-Frame and an Outpost, and then…

Jeff: An Alpine cottage that's in construction. We're finishing that one up right now.

Mike: Wow.

Jeff: We are DEN experts.

Mike: So you've built across three designs in our catalog. As I look at these images on your site, you've done such a great job executing the designs. These look like our renders. It's amazing. Congratulations!

Building Modern Rustic Cabins in a Tight-Knit Community

Mike: Did you GC the project, work with a GC — what was your approach to constructing these?

Jeff: First of all, let's just say we have no experience building.

Sonia: Anything from the ground up was new to us.

Jeff: We've done a lot of remodels and flips, but this was totally new.

Mike: Most of our customers are new to construction. Our goal is to demystify the process and create a more accessible entry point — so people who've never done it before can bridge that gap of experience and confidence. We do that by giving people incredible designs plus a support layer with the DEN team itself, to get people over that chasm of not starting. So it's cool to hear you went back to the well three times. We must be doing something right.

Jeff: It's the resources that come with the plans. It's not just the plans — having a running list of every single piece of material spec'd out, guides for materials, recommendations for furniture. Everything, the flooring — it was so valuable in the process.

Sonia: And the plans are so well done in general — easy to read, easy to understand. It helped a lot.

Jeff: But the community down there — we really had problems finding a contractor. Everybody's busy. Our project started three years ago. We'd get a contractor and be down the road, and they'd be honest and straightforward: 'Hey, I just got a bigger project, I'm sorry, I can't really do this.' So we had a lot of false starts. We ended up buckling down and saying, 'this will never get done if we can't do it ourselves.' So we found a group that did framing, and we framed all three cabins at the same time.

Mike: Oh wow.

Jeff: From there we did a lot of hands-on work. This was a project that involved our daughter, our son, us — and the community. We're from Lexington, about an hour away, so we tried to find people there who'd come down and work, and they didn't want to. So we started meeting our neighbors. It's a very close-knit community. Rogers, Kentucky, where we are — the population's like 480 people.

Jeff: When we tore the old cabins down, it's a very underserved rural community, so we did it in sections and strategically tore them down so we could give the material away for people to reuse. That led to meeting people — there's a corner Marathon station where all the workers meet, and once you get into that group, you start to meet people that do excavation, concrete…

Sonia: All the different trades. We became our own general contractors and hired out for the trades. The community, as Jeff said, is great and tight-knit — when you get to know people, you know who does a good job and who you can count on. We were very fortunate.

Mike: The visual quality of the projects speaks for itself. It looks like you did an incredible job, and whoever you integrated into the project clearly executed well.

Jeff: And it's funny — if you hire a local person, their reputation's on the line. There's a lot of pride. Somebody from out of state, they're in and out, may never see you again. These people we see all the time. The electric company engineer, the fiber optic guy — we have names in our phones, individuals who are now friends, who'll come over. I don't know how many times we cut our fiber optic line…

Sonia: Building by building.

Jeff: And we call our engineer Jason — 'oh, dang it, okay, I'll be over.' It's not like you're in a queue with a help-ticket number. It's very personal down there.

Mike: The other thing I love about this story is that your careful approach — upcycling the legacy buildings — had the benefit of both reusing the materials and getting you introduced to the local community who helped build these projects. Recycling is good for the planet and good for community development. Y'all better recycle — that's the PSA hidden in this podcast.

Designing Kentucky Cabins That Blend Into Nature

Sonia: Another thing we did — when we started, we wanted a blank canvas to see our vision fresh, but the land itself needed developing. We had to build the road and clear where the cabins would go, a lot of excavation, but it was very important to preserve as many trees as possible. We didn't want it to feel like a subdivision in some city. We wanted it to feel rural, a real getaway. So instead of building up top near the road, we developed the road to go down the ridge, so the cabins are farther away and you don't hear any traffic.

Jeff: They're perched off a ridgeline. The deck is like 20 feet off the air. Our property's surrounded by the Little Fork of Devil's Creek, so looking down off the ridge there's a lot of wildlife. Our backyard is basically forest that's never been developed. Like Sonia said, in some cases we modified the plans so we wouldn't encroach on a tree — we did not want to take down any we didn't have to.

DIY Cabin Building With Family in Red River Gorge

Mike: I'm noticing some really tasteful decisions in these photos. You buried all the power lines — the transformer box is at grade, right?

Jeff: Actually Sonia and our daughter buried the Schedule 80 pipe, 36 inches down. We had an excavator digging, but they were bringing in the pipe, pulling it together.

Sonia: We had supervision that knew exactly what they were doing. We actually own a pair of bibs that we wore.

Mike: Everyone can just hop in the seat of some heavy machinery and give it a whirl, huh?

Jeff: Listen, our daughter operates an excavator now, and she loves it.

Sonia: She's quite good at it.

Mike: Amazing. And I'm looking at the photo of the Outpost — that one tree right next to the deck. What is that, a foot or two off the deck?

Sonia: It feels like you're in a treehouse when you're back there.

Mike: So cool.

Inside the Everly A-Frame: Design Details & Views

Mike: So of the two finished buildings — the A-Frame and the Outpost — let's talk about your favorite aspects. Starting with the A-Frame: what drew you to it, and what's your favorite place to hang out?

Jeff: It's gotta be the wall of windows. That was the biggest pain in the ass for construction.

Who knew windows would take four months to come in?

Mike: Did you use Marvin windows?

Jeff: No, we used Andersen. If you wanted anything but black you could get them quickly, but black — that's what everybody gets, the architectural series. They're beautiful. And our front door is an Andersen — a high-end metal door with three brackets that go in, and when you open it, it's just like a safe at a bank. Since I'm a brand guy, everything adds to or takes away from your brand. The first thing you experience walking up to that cabin, besides the visual, is your hand on that lever — that feeling of security when the heavy metal door opens. I love that.

Mike: In the industry we call that the entry sequence — what it's like to drive up to a property, enter a home. If that sequence is powerful, it's great for guest experience and for people who live there.

Jeff: I don't know who designed these, but they deserve a medal. When you first walk in, there's that little mudroom — the ceiling's a little lower, so it gives you a feeling of being enclosed. Then you turn the corner and there's that huge wall of glass. It accentuates that initial expression — it's so powerful. And if you're upstairs in the loft, you've got that huge bank of windows. You scan around, surrounded by trees, constant movement in those trees, but so quiet. It's mesmerizing.

Mike: Very romantic. The DEN design team is responsible for creating this design.

Jeff: Nicholas Potts — Potsy. We followed him on Instagram, collaborated a little, took some design cues from him. We opened our plans up, pushed out what was the washer-dryer room, and put a home office in there. And we did a larger 12-foot wraparound deck since the outdoor area was so important to us.

Mike: Potsy was one of our first customers, and I've been in his A-Frame. That was another transformative moment for me — the first time I'd ever stood in that design. I felt the exact feeling you're describing: you enter, and you have this massively tall cathedral ceiling and wall of windows. A really impressive space.

Sonia: One of my favorite things is that you can be up in the loft when you wake up, and the way the light comes in, it doesn't blind you — it's far enough away with the distance of that window wall. You can appreciate the sunrise. And down below in the living room, the way the sun comes in from that bank of windows is breathtaking. Those are two of my favorite spots. But then the wraparound deck really transforms it — because of the height, it feels like you're in a treehouse. You can just be one with nature. I love that so much.

Mike: Jeff, did we get a direct answer from you? What's your favorite spot?

Jeff: Tough question. If I'm just hanging out, we have a couch in there — I love sitting in the corner, the view out the windows and the kitchen wall, which I'm very proud of.

We have integrated appliances — the modern details, how clean it is, gives me so much joy. I can read a book in the corner, take a few minutes to relax.

Mike: So you're either a house cat in a former life, or you'll be reincarnated as one.

Unique Rooflines & Design Wins From the Outpost

Mike: Let's move on to the Outpost — a very unique design. You've got the A-Frame, super differentiated from a lot of the other assets around you, and then the Outpost, this prismatic design we came up with a couple years ago that's yielded an entire series. We have the Outpost, the Outpost Plus, and we recently launched the Outpost Medium, a three-bedroom version. What drew you to that design, and same question — favorite place to hang out?

Sonia: The uniqueness was a huge appeal. It's a family business, and our son was a big decision-maker on that one — he loved the uniqueness. And the concept of the deck, again a nice wraparound.

The way we placed the deck, it's in front of that bank of windows, so you can be inside enjoying the view or right outside. In the evening you can look into the space — it's a neat concept to look up at all those windows and see the lofts. I don't know how to explain the charm of it.

Jeff: My favorite feature is the roofline. It's so unique. It took me a while to wrap my head around it — I've tried to draw it a few times. It's almost like a saddle, but it looks different from every angle. You can get a wide-angle lens up close and it exaggerates it, looks so bizarre. Every angle has a completely different look.

Mike: For folks listening, the innovative thing in this design is we ran the ridge beam from corner to corner, instead of gable-end to gable-end. It creates this beautiful prismatic effect in the geometry. As Jeff says, it's hard to capture — the only way I've seen it accurately expressed is drone photography, overhead. It has this almost beguiling effect from various sides. How did you approach framing it? Was your framing team scratching their heads?

Jeff: There were a lot of questions, and a lot we didn't know the answers to, so we contacted your team a couple times to get answers, but we got it worked out. The windows were very hard — there weren't a lot of Andersen experts, and if we'd chosen Marvin we might have had a different experience. We downloaded every PDF possible off the Andersen website. They came in sections and had to be assembled and joined together in the field, so we built the deck first to have a platform. We finally got them put together — god, it was so satisfying to sit back and see that thing up, raising that final pane of glass and nothing broke.

Sonia: Holding our breath several times.

Jeff: What a feeling of accomplishment. That wall of glass is the architectural detail common amongst these cabins, and it's just fantastic.

Sonia: And that's what we love — building three at the same time, we wanted the exterior aesthetic to be similar, a lot of similar components, metal roofs, the windows. But inside they're all different — not just the build, but the decor and feel.

Mike: There's a lot of intentionality in how we plan our catalog. We have the intention of ensuring there's a holistic design language between our buildings, so you could develop three totally unique designs and they all make sense sitting next to each other. They share the same design intent from the ground up, so they complement each other. Cool to hear that's expressed and noticed in your project. And it's funny — so many people share in the anxiety and satisfaction of windows. That magic moment is very similar across many customers we've interviewed.

Jeff: We were hell-bent to honor the design aesthetic. We didn't want to alter it — we got so much pushback, 'oh, you could do this, we never do it this way.'

Mike: That's amazing.

Jeff: Stick to the plan!

Mike: It's super apparent in the photography. It looks like our renders have come to life. As someone who's spent so much time thinking about how to productize architecture and standardize outcomes — our thesis is, if we give you an overwhelming amount of information supporting every detail, all you need to do is execute, and you'll get to a standard outcome. It's crazy how often people color outside the lines, because there's this inherent tension with local service providers lobbing things into the project that take it away from its core specification. So it's always great to see people who stuck to the playbook. And guys, it's visible — holy shit, this looks incredible. You should be proud. It's our mission come to life through your project.

Sonia: Thank you so much.

Mike: I can't wait to see the next one.

How Everly Runs High-Performance Cabin Rentals

Mike: Tell us about the business itself. How did you come up with the name Everly Lodging? It's family-run — do you manage it yourselves? What do bookings look like?

Jeff: Well, you came up with the name and the brand.

Sonia: Everly means woodland clearing. It was iconic — we wanted to preserve the land and the trees, and that was our mindset as we cleared this land and created the vision. It's very much a family-run business, started that way. We knew we'd use it as an Airbnb business, but it was also something that could become a legacy our children and grandchildren could enjoy. It wasn't just a business venture, it was a passion project. There's a lot to the Airbnb business and different ways to go about it. We even came into it thinking it was more of a passive income venture — but it really depends how you approach it. We've become very hands-on.

Mike: This is the fallacy of real estate investing and short-term rental operation — people air-quote passive income, but it's anything but passive.

Jeff: Exactly. I'm a marketing data nerd. I've done a lot of research on the area. We hang out at restaurants and I take pictures of people's hiking shoes — I look at how much they cost, like 'that guy's wearing $500 climbing shoes,' and I'm looking at license plates to see where they come from.

Mike: We've got a quant brand guy here. Amazing.

Jeff: I know exactly how many Airbnbs are in our market, and I probably know more about their performance than they do. The average occupancy among all these cabins — there's over 1,200 — is about 30%. A lot of them use management companies, just turn it over and collect a check. Nothing wrong with that. But if you want a high-performance cabin that's very profitable, you've gotta be hands-on, understand your competition and pricing.

Sonia: The market around you.

Jeff: What amenities bring people in, what the historical demand is. We're onto all of that. We have a hybrid approach — a full-time communications manager who manages communication for us. We manage the marketing, revenue management, the cleaners, all the other aspects.

Mike: So one comms person — local or third party?

Jeff: An individual with a lovely communication style. He has his own Airbnbs, lives in the city where we live, within Kentucky.

Sonia: Our cleaners are local as well.

Jeff: We automate where we can, use AI in some instances. But you have to have that base — a very attractive product, a consistent experience. We're down there several times a week, checking over the cleaners, making sure everything is staged exactly the same — music going, the way it looks, the way it smells, the lights. We want that experience consistent. That takes time, personal attention, and training cleaners so it happens the same way every single time. As far as performance — this month was 100% occupancy. We average about—

Mike: What?!

Jeff: —90% occupancy. Almost since the get-go. Our cleaners are turning cabins every two days. We've got a shed of supplies so they don't have to carry a lot. It's very much a business.

STR Success: 90%+ Occupancy for Two Modern Cabins

Mike: Do you do all your acquisition through Airbnb?

Jeff: We're experimenting with VRBO on one cabin. I'm an expert on Airbnb's algorithm and how to modify it so you come up in search. To learn that takes a while — we do A/B testing on everything, the language and text, our title, to see how it performs. To do that in VRBO is going to take another year to learn the platform. We're getting such good performance with Airbnb that we haven't concentrated on VRBO, though we have the big A-Frame listed there too.

Mike: I just searched Red River Gorge, and both the A-Frame and the Outpost are in the first row of results — both listed as guest favorites, with a little trophy on the A-Frame.

Sonia: We've worked hard for that.

Mike: Holy smokes. Between page one and two of the results, we have four DENs across three different projects, three different owners, in this area. That's proof positive that design matters — and an incredible approach to operating and providing hospitality matters immensely. So people find you on Airbnb — do you offer direct bookings through your website?

Jeff: We were going down that road eventually, because it is unnerving to only be on one platform in case something happens. But if you study Airbnb, some regulations have changed and they're trying to protect their customer base, so I'm afraid to do that — I don't want to be penalized. There've been a lot of changes; we're trying to stay ahead. We're already booked out two, three months. I'm so happy with where we are, I don't want to mess with anything right now.

Sonia: We got a booking for February of 2026 already, which was pretty neat to see.

Jeff: We've got people booking both cabins at the same time. One guy's like, 'as soon as the third one's going, I want to rent all three at the same time' — he wants to put his family up.

Mike: I'm looking at your calendar because I love to climb, and you guys were booked solid until November.

Jeff: It's terrible — our friends are like, 'we want to rent your cabin,' and I'm like, 'we can't even stay there.'

Mike: Well, I'm so sorry your business is a runaway success. Actually this works out — no one wants to climb in hot, sweaty weather, so it's better to climb in November. I might book some time after this call.

10. Advice for Building With DEN Plans in Kentucky

Mike: One last question — what would you tell your friends if they were trying to pursue a similar project with a set of DEN plans?

Jeff: She gets mad — she doesn't want me to tell anybody. We're so protective of our business. It's almost like this recipe we've created. Honestly, we couldn't recommend DEN more highly, but we're scared to recommend it because we don't want any more competition down there. We couldn't have done it without the DEN plans, the resource files, the great plans, the support from the company.

Sonia: DEN's been fantastic and we're all about DEN. Regardless of whichever plan they choose, patience is key. There's a lot of detail, which is fantastic — take the time to absorb it, to learn it, ask questions. You all have a great team and you're very responsive, which we appreciated. There are going to be challenges with contractors maybe not showing up, finding the right fit. But it's so worth it.

Jeff: And something people don't mention — if you've built a DEN cabin, there's this comradery. The guy at Clear Lake Cottages has helped us. Potsy's helped us a lot.

Sonia: It's a community.

Jeff: We're in different markets, so we'll help each other — 'what did you use on your cedar?' There's an information sharing going on between builders. It's amazing.

Mike: That was unintentional. We just try to put out a good product and support our customers. Every time I see DEN customers commenting and liking each other's posts, I'm like, 'what a crazy, organic side effect of this whole experiment — we inadvertently created this community.' It's awesome to witness.

Sonia: Great outcome.

Mike: On behalf of the whole DEN team, thank you so much. The proof is in the pudding — the photos look great and we can't wait to stay. Great job, guys.

Jeff: Fun sharing our story.