I grew up in rural Wisconsin, helping my parents take care of our property. Mowing, hauling, fixing whatever needed fixing. I didn't think of it as training at the time, but that's what it was — learning to notice what a place needs and then doing the work to take care of it. There’s a special satisfaction that comes from honest work.

As a kid, my favorite thing was spreading out every piece of LEGO we had on the floor and getting lost for hours. I didn't know it was called design yet. I just knew I wanted to build things.

In high school I found carpentry, and it stuck. The smell of sawdust in the morning, bringing an idea to life in a design, the joy of watching something take shape under your hands.

After college I started framing houses. That gave me a foundation in structure — how loads transfer, how wood moves, where buildings succeed and where they fail. When I moved to Los Angeles, I got into finish carpentry on some of the nicer homes in the area, which is where I learned to care about the details that most people never consciously notice but always feel.

Eventually I found my way to outdoor work — fences, gates, decks, arbors, pergolas — and everything clicked. The builds progress quickly enough that you can see the transformation happen in real time. The problems are interesting. Every property is different, every slope and setback and sight line asks something new of you. And you're working outside, in the fresh air, with your hands on the raw wood and in the earth. That's the sweet spot.

Today I run a small operation out of Shadow Hills. It's me and my apprentice Alex, one truck, one project at a time. I chose to keep it this way on purpose. When you call, you talk to me. When I show up, I stay until the job is done. There's no office, no sales team, no production line. Just the work.