Reset Ranch: Beth x Ross x Mike

Why hello there!

Today I've got a special one for y'all! I recently got to catch up with Beth & her GC Ross - they built the DEN Eastern Farmhouse design, and are the first folks who've built that design whom I've been able to chat with. We covered what you might imagine: why DEN, why build instead of buy, Beth & Ross's building journey, and their favorite features of the house. Hope y'all enjoy this one!

1. Introduction to Beth, Ross, and the Build

Mike: Let's just start with some basic texture, right? Who are you guys, what did you build, and where did you build it? And what were your roles in the process? Let's start with Beth. 

Beth: So we built the DEN Eastern Farmhouse, on Ross's suggestion.

He sent it our way. And we are in Northfield, Vermont, on a five acre piece of former farmland, with a, you know, pretty nice mountain view. And my name is Beth Cole. 

Mike: Awesome. Ross, how did you find DEN? And thanks for referring Beth to us. 

Ross: Yeah, sure thing. Yeah, so my name's Ross Linthicum.

My company's called Sage Home, based out of Bethel, Vermont. We do new construction and additions, in the upper Valley of Vermont. Beth had come to me with a set of designs from an A-Frame company, they were just sort of getting a bit out of hand. And I'd seen DEN on Instagram, I'd follow a lot of different builders and architects on Instagram.

I'd saw you guys sent along the Eastern Farmhouse, which is what we built for Beth, 1600 square foot Eastern Farmhouse, pretty much to the plans. And yeah, you know, basically the other plans had started to get it out of hand a little bit and sent her those and they loved them right away and were able to move forward.

So it's great. 

Beth: It took five minutes to say yes. 

Mike: I mean, that's incredible. That's incredible. Sometimes, we're able to like nail a hole in one like that. But that's amazing. So Beth, how many homes have you built before? Or is this your first one?

Beth: Oh my god, so I have not, built a whole home, you know, a total whole home. But I have put on additions that are the same as this house. Three times. I always renovate homes. I don't know, it's in my DNA I guess. Ross was the perfect partner.

I really wanted to see if we could build a really tight energy efficient, all electric, no oil or gas, home that allowed us to downsize but still maintain like a quality of life, as we enter the third act of our lives. 

Mike: Got it. So you've had some experience doing renovations, in this particular part of Vermont.

2. Why Build New vs. Buy Existing / Early Collaboration

Mike: What made you wanna build something instead of just buying something that was already available on the market? 

Beth: Well, Ross could probably expound on that, but, I did look at places, and, you know, anything that you look at that's affordable, still needs to be renovated. There aren't a lot of energy efficient homes that are in Vermont that don't need attention. And there aren't a lot of new builds that you could buy either. And so, in my head I was just like, 'land, I'm gonna find the land. I'm gonna find the land. Maybe I'll put a tiny house down. Maybe I'll put a yurt. I don't really know'. But those were the goals.

Efficiency and, you know, and efficiency both in design, but efficiency in, heating and cooling. Um, and respect the environment 

Mike: In the kitchen did you guys go with a induction stove? 

Beth: Yes, we did. 

Mike: Oh, amazing. Okay. Good to - 

Beth: Yeah, it's all, yep. I don't know, Ross, I mean, you could speak more to what we did to make it tight and all of that.

Mike: Let's talk about like the wall assembly and the roof assembly and anything that was done, to make the house more efficient. But before we do, Ross, I have to ask you, because it's in the background, how many pull-ups can you do in this stance?

Ross: I'm in a client's house at the moment. 

Mike: Oh, okay. Okay. 

Ross: So that's not my pull up bar, but I did, I did wrench this arm a few years ago, so I'm probably pushing two or three these days. 

Mike: Gotcha, gotcha. Okay. I was like, 'wow. Okay. Shows up with the pull up bar in the background'. Okay, cool.

3. Building Without Inspections and First Impressions of Plans

Mike: So yeah, Ross, tell us a little bit about, how you like interpreted the plans initially. Right, like what you thought was beneficial in terms of like the construction documentation specification. You know, I'm presuming also that you worked with a structural engineer as well.

Ross: We did not. 

Mike: Oh, you did not. Oh, interesting. Okay, cool. 

Ross: So, you know. We live in rural Vermont, so things are pretty loose, as far as... or just, it's just like cut up, a lot of libertarian sort of things going on. There are no inspections in Vermont.

Or at least in rural part that we live in. 

Mike: That is - Wow, that is... 

Ross: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, Beth pulled a permit from the town, saying that we're gonna build a house and we've got a state approved septic system. Other than that, we just build.

Mike: This is such a testament to the plans themselves, right?

Because in all cases they kind of stand on their own unless a municipality requires, you know, additional definition, like structural definition. 

Ross: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So as far as, you know, as far as modifications that we made to the plans, not a whole lot.

We put a crawl space in instead of like slab on grade. 

Mike: Well, as a builder, what did you think of the plans in the first place? 

Ross: Yeah, I mean, I really liked the plans. I think there was a lot put into the plans as far as price consciousness, you know, as far as like, you know, working with the plans, somebody was definitely like looking at what materials are available and like sizing it to that. Right? So like we're using like a 24 ft width, which is really like pretty close to the max on the TJI joists that we can get, you know, that's, past 24 ft, we gotta kind of come up with some other stuff.

So there's definitely some forethought there, that I really appreciated. That both of the design and the structure had some symbiosis together with it. And then also the like, the budgetary worksheet that came with it, you know, I mean, obviously it's like not perfect, there's so many different decisions to be made.

But it really started with a blueprint, that we were able to keep pretty close to, you know, that like, that started us all on like a good path. And so I really appreciated that. I'm a big believer in like, the pretty good House movement is sort of like my shtick.

And a part of the Pretty Good House movement is really about having design plans that are like ready to go, and like not making like a whole lot of changes, starting with some basic shapes. 

And honestly from my research and from what I've looked at, there aren't a whole lot of design sets out there that are easily accessible, that are like, pretty much good to go. So like receiving, you know, this complete set of plans with this budget forecast that like, was pretty accurate in a lot of ways, really got us started off on like a really good foot. It's just me and then I've got like a crew of three or four people generally, so I don't have like a in-house estimator or sales person, like we're a small company, so, a lot of the estimating and a lot of that looking over plans is me, like nights and weekends. So having a lot of that stuff that was pretty well thought out, like really streamlined the process for us. And helped my lumberyard, they had really good plans to like look over as we were coming up with what materials we needed and that kind of stuff. 

As far as modifications that we made, we went with I believe zip R nine and a two by six wall. And then we modified the roof truss system a little bit. We raised the heel trust. We kind of changed it around. So we dense, packed I believe 16 inches of cellulose inside of the attic system.

We kept this attic storage space up there and sealed it all off and blew a bunch of cellulose in there. So between the two by six wall with zip R nine and dense pack in the roof. You know, I think we got a pretty good package. We haven't done an air blower test on it yet.

We probably will in the next couple months to see where we're at. 

Beth: It's really tight though. I mean, it's so tight. Well, we haven't, there is an air exchanger, right? Ross? Like a significant air exchanger. And literally we were just talking about it yet last night, like we can't hear when a truck comes up the driveway, like it's so impervious to, I mean - it's just well sealed and... 

Mike: Well done. 

Beth: I know what the terminology is, but it's...

Mike: Yeah, I mean the, the building envelope is really tight. I mean, that is the terminology. And then Ross, in the sidewall assembly, did you also dense pack cellulose or did you -

Ross: Yeah, we dense packed cellulose.

It goes the zip R nine two by six wall and then just the regular cellulose net. We didn't do any like intelligent membranes or anything on that. And then up in the attic space, it's OSB seven sixteens, OSB that we then zip taped for an air seal on the upstairs interior.

4. Tight Envelope, Insulation Details, and Communication

Mike: Nice. Nice. This question is for both of you, whoever wants to go first, just jump in. What's been the best part of building this DEN design or best part of the building that, for you probably? What's been the most fun that you've had in the process?

Beth: Watching Ross and his crew build it from Maine. We were in Maine, we weren't on site. We'd come in and check in and then it would be like, 'wow. Oh wow. You know? Oh, that's cool'. Ross is a great communicator. We just constantly, we're communicating and like, I think we both said, you know, the design was solid from the beginning.

At least, you know, from what we just talked about. And so, I had a lot of faith in both the design that Ross brought to us and also in the crew, and in Ross and Ross's leadership. So, it was fun. it was so much fun that we're building a barn with Ross that's bigger than the freaking house.

And if you want, if you wanna see, it's right here. 

Mike: Oh, wow. Amazing. Amazing. 

Beth: Yeah. Yeah. 

Mike: Amazing. 

Beth: And you can see that, instead of a window, we put a door here. I don't know if you can see that. 

Mike: Yeah. 

Beth: We have dogs and we did some modifications to the design, and that was fun too.

You know, it was like, 'okay, how can we make this really suit us?' so that was, that was fun. 

Mike: Yeah. I would, I would also assume that a doggy door really puts a massive penetration in the building envelope. It's better, better to have a patio door.

That's great. And then Beth, maybe for you again, like with regard to the design itself, like what's your favorite part of the house?

5. Favorite Features: Porch, Staircase, and Layout Modifications

Beth: No question, it's the corner. you know, it's this corner, with the really openness. And then, I mean, the porch, that's just fabulous. I had an old Victorian farmhouse. I've had other houses, that have had porches, but this is a substantial porch. Um, that I don't know if I would've come up with it on my own if I was like going to an architect and said, 'oh, I want this big', but it's just, it's fantastic. 

That whole thing, just like being able to see, out to the mountains from the kitchen all the way through the house and then, going out there, it's just this extension of the living space that puts you right into the nature and it's just , it's really cool.

Mike: That's really cool. Yeah. I think for me, you know, like we see these designs come to life like initially as like 3D models and 3D sketches. And then, we nominate like the production of an idea into a product, like a set of construction drawings and like the full package that we offer.

It always blows my mind. The first time that I like step into one of our buildings, because like for me, I know them as like these things that like, live on my computer, you know, and then I'm like, 'oh my goodness, the porch is as amazing as we thought it is'.

So that's like really great to hear. And Ross, I mean, you know, for you it's like you've built a ton of homes. What's your favorite part of this design? Like as you're walking through the space? 

Ross: I'm definitely with Beth, just like you got those nice big corner sliders that then open up into this porch, and the porch is 10 feet deep, which doesn't always happen a lot of times.

Just from a builder standpoint, you get to that 10 foot depth and you're creating an outdoor room. You know, you can actually put, you can put a dining table out there and have, a summer dinner out on the covered porch and you know, the rain can start coming down and it's still wonderful.

So I really love that part of the house. And then I really love the staircase. You know, it's this great staircase with this centered skylight that just kind of beams down into the room. Yeah. Beth, you could point up to that skylight. A little bit higher bit. With just like a lot of really cool angles and details, the way the light just kind of comes in that room.

Ross: Beth's partner, Jerry is a wonderful wildlife photographer and I know over the years we're calling that Jerry's gallery and a lot more photos are gonna show up on those walls. 

Beth: So you can see there's a dining space. Can you see it? I dunno. Yep. 

Mike: Oh yeah.

Yeah. 

Beth: We're actually building a pond. It's still hung up. 

Mike: That is amazing. 

Beth: Yeah.

Mike: That is majestic. That is like, I mean, that's some good looking country up there. 

Beth: Yeah. 

Mike: I think, Ross the first time Beth and I met, we were talking about how just Vermont has this like weird effect where it's like you just drive over the state line into Vermont and then like suddenly you're just like, 'holy shit, I'm in the most beautiful state ever'.

It's wild. I also take it, Ross, are you a fan of Maple Creamies as well? 

Ross: Oh yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah, yeah, yeah. 

Mike: That's great. That's great. Yeah, I've had a few myself through the state. And then Beth, so you're living in this DEN design full-time now, is that correct?

Beth: Yes. You know, we didn't start out that way. We were building this house because I had a house in Vermont. I sold it. I moved to Maine for my guy. Then we realized that what are we doing? You know, it's like we have a brand new house that's so energy efficient.

And then we have an older house that needs a lot of work. you know, I'm not a Rockefeller. We didn't win the lottery. And so, let's be smart. And so with a lot of pain, a lot of heartbreak we did, we sold the house in Maine, and decided to move here full time. Um, but when we did that we had eliminated the basement. We eliminated a basement, because the basement, I don't know, Ross it was like $60,000 right? 

Ross: I don't remember the numbers at the time. 

Beth: I do! 

Ross: We were, we like to always keep an eye on the budget, especially from the beginning.

We try to cut the costs and yeah, this was intended to be a second home, not a full-time space. So we didn't really prepare for some of those sort of larger storage things. This property does happen to be on a nice slope, that could have had a basement.

We decided to save some money with a crawl space. But now we're building a beautiful garage instead and it's gonna be great. 

Mike: And there's an attic, you know? 

Ross: Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's a wonderful attic. Yeah. And we put these wild motorized -

Beth: Oh yeah. You wanna see that? 

Mike: Sure. I don't even know. 

Ross: Let's go see the motorized stairs. 

Beth: Well, before we do that though, I just really wanted to point out one thing because, the kitchen's great, but the kitchen's small.

And so we took space out of the mudroom. 

Mike: Oh, extended the kitchen. Oh, oh, I see you've created a little pantry. 

Beth: Created a pantry. 

Mike: Oh, nice. Good idea. 

Beth: Right? And then Ross built the doors. And then the other thing, that we did, Ross, I don't even remember why we did this necessarily, but the other thing that we did was we eliminated the door that was here, going into this extra room that was gonna be, you know, closed off.

And we built the barn slider. And I apologize, this room is completely being torn up and changed, but we created like a little den office space in here. 

Ross: Yeah. I think there, I think the original plans have a closet in there. Yeah. 

Beth: Which for us is, was really important.

Yeah. There was a closet on this wall. 

Mike: There's a, there's a den in your DEN. 

Ross: Yeah. I think the original vision Beth, was we were gonna put a couch and TV in there and that was gonna be the TV room. 

Beth: Exactly. And we might still do that. so yeah, I mean, we might still do that.

The other thing, I don't know, Ross, do we do anything up here? No. We put a barn door. We put you know, there's wood ceilings. 

Mike: Oh, nice. Oh, I see. You've got the CAS cassette style mini splits. 

Ross: Yeah, we got three cassette mini splits upstairs. you know, for heating the house, we have a single 20 4K mini split downstairs.

And then three 9 ks in the three bedrooms which go to a 20 4K um, condenser. And then we have electric gradient in both the bathrooms.

Mike: Oh, nice. Um, that's great. 

Ross: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That, that was a fun one for sure. 

6. Lessons, Budgeting, and Advice to Future Builders

Mike: That's cool. Well guys, we have like one or two more questions, right?

Beth, after this transformer transforms back into a ceiling, we'll get back into it. Let me ask you this, right? 

Ross, I guess we'll start with you, right? If you had a potential client, you know, who is interested in, you know, pursuing a build, using a DEN design, what advice would you give them?

Ross: Yeah, I mean, I think the biggest thing is just really talking about what your needs are, you know? To be extremely honest, we are in an environment that's very expensive to build homes. and we're seeing a lot of people having to make hard decisions on where they're gonna live and how they're gonna live.

So it's really like. Man, budget is so important. And I think that's one of the biggest things I appreciate about the DEN plans was the budget that came along with it. I really think was like very on track, you know? And so yeah, we built a 1600 square foot home.

And there's a lot of people in this country that have lived in bigger spaces, and they're finding themselves, needing to like shrink down a little bit. And you know Beth's already said, Beth's lived in three and 4,000 square foot houses before.

She's got some furniture that she's had to pick and choose and different stuff. For a lot of families, for a lot of people, they're gonna have to downsize a little bit. And so I think it's maybe even more important to like really pick designs and pick spaces that are like both beautiful and engaging, and handle your needs. You're gonna maybe need to have smaller bedrooms. Things are gonna be a little bit tighter. If you got more money, and we could build bigger spaces, that's wonderful. 

Mike: Yeah, I think for us just to add stuff.

We as a company, we've like hung our hat on that, right? We're trying to balance beauty, thoughtfulness and design. Floor plan space efficiency, right? Yeah. And budget, right? Yeah. 'cause like, we constantly interrogate the question of, 'do you really need all that space?'

You know? 

Ross: And I think, with intelligent design, with thought, with designers and architects have been thinking about these spaces. You know, we can make these... For me and the buildings that I do I like to stay under, 2,400 square feet and under?

And I think that those spaces thoughtfully designed can function just as big as some of these 3000 and 4,000 square foot houses. And so I think, I think that's a great reason to look at DEN, you know? 'cause I think that, these things have been thought through.

Let's look at how we can make these spaces just smarter and like still feel awesome and still meet our needs and still like love to be in them.

7. Collaboration, Improvements, and Closing Thoughts

Mike: No doubt, no doubt, I do not need a pinball machine next to my bed. it's all good. And Beth, for you, like if you had a friend who was thinking about building a DEN, what advice would you give them?

Beth: I would say that, like Ross just said, for me, I've had big bedrooms, that I just sleep in. And so I knew from a house that I had, with a smaller bedroom that the bedrooms don't need to be large. 

I would rather have the other spaces be large. And so in terms of this design, I would say, look at the living space and, I think it will meet your needs. 

Mike: How did the DEN plans foster a strong relationship between you and Ross, the builder, and like how did it foster, like good collaboration between you two? 

Beth: Well, first of all, he rescued us from the A-Frame. So that's worth its wait in gold. I mean, honestly. but secondly, once we saw the efficiency of the actual plan, and saw it ticked off all these different boxes, then after that it was just Russ and I just agreeing to collaborate on trying to make it as energy efficient as possible, and make it a home for the future.

That just fostered a lot of back and forth and creative ideas back and forth and like, 'let's look at cork. Okay, now let's not look at cork. Oh, let's look at an alternative to granite. Um, that's kinder on the environment. Oh, let, okay, let's look at insulate. Oh, let's go with that'.

You know, so wet walls, I mean, instead of tile, I mean, we did a lot of that type of, collaboration, and searching. ' Cause you know, I don't know, as far as I can see, we're in this transition, of products and energy products, and just home interior finishes and exterior finishes and, there's a lot happening.

And so, making all those decisions, that aren't in your plan, but that make it, come alive as an efficient space. we just had great collaboration. Don't you think Ross? 

Ross: Absolutely. Building a house is complicated.

There's just so many things going on, and there's so many decisions to get made, and it can be a really overwhelming process. I think what the DEN plans did for us was they just shortened that list of questions. All of a sudden we had a really good house plan that had the sizes and the shapes that we wanted and DEN had already provided and pre-selected a bunch of different options for us. and so like that really just tightened that scope so tightly that we were able to just really reduce that list of questions, which relieved so much stress on both of us. A lot of budgetary questions were resolved. a lot of space questions were resolved and so, when we were able to focus on less questions, we're able to get better answers, and so a lot of design questions were already answered and we got to focus on more interior finished questions and really dial those things in. and so I think for me that was the biggest benefit. Beth and I met, we walked on land, just raw land.

You know, and we're gonna spend a couple hundred thousand dollars together and, how are we gonna figure that, I'm not saying any numbers, but it's, you know, whatever, more than a couple hundred thousand, you know? And, um. 

So, just being able to just have a blueprint that's starting us on a path and reducing that number of questions for both of us, to allow us the freedom to focus on the things that we really wanna focus on.

I think that was the beauty of the DEN plans for us. and it really streamlined this process much more than a lot of other clients I've had in the past. 

Mike: That's awesome. That's awesome. 

Beth: Can I just say one thing? 

Mike: Oh, sure, sure. Yeah, absolutely. Do you wanna keep going on record?

Beth: Just in terms of improvement for the future? One thing is is that, in Vermont, wood stoves are really important, for a lot of people and we struggled about where to put the wood stove. and it was kind of a complicated... where to put the pipe.

Right, Ross? 

And so it ended up taking out of the master bath and also like created a weird thing in this DEN, but it's, I mean, it's fine. And then I think the only other thing is that in Vermont, you know, or any like cold weather climate where you have snow, Ross put on like just a little, um, a cap above the door, to make the snow slide off, and not right in front of the door. So I don't know. I can't think of other like real, dings, or real like things that we kind of went through that, um, caused us to find a solution.

But, I think those are the only things. 

Mike: That's great. That's great design feedback. Yeah. 

I can imagine like with the amount of snow that you guys get, better to shed it this way than like right in front of the door. So, nice work, to the both of you. I'll just close by saying like you guys are awesome.

This is like really enjoyable for me. It's great to see also like the positivity in your relationship, right, as like client and builder. It's amazing that you guys are continuing to do new projects together and, I wish you both the best of luck.

[Pictured above, the non-DEN barn Ross built for Beth, as mentioned in the interview]