And The Journey Begins
Modified - The Kinfolk V2
It started as an idea. Can I build my own high-performance home in a place as expensive as Crested Butte?
We left Crested Butte in 2018 for family reasons and went back to Texas. At the time, we didn’t think we would ever move back, and we sold the home we built in Buckhorn (I have impeccable real estate timing!). My wife, Shelby, and I then got the opportunity to move back in October of 2023. We were lucky enough to land an amazing rental, thanks to Jason Berv. I immediately started working on how we were either going to buy another house or build again. Obviously, the market has changed a bit since 2018, so I knew I had to get creative.
I started doing a lot of research on high-performance and passive house building, even before moving back to Colorado. I knew I wanted to build differently this time and focus on building a very simple, easy-to-live-in, one-story, super-efficient home. I knew keeping it simple would help keep costs down. I must have searched thousands of online plans looking for ideas and inspiration. I kept coming back to a plan called The Kinfolk V2, by Holly Mumford, the founder of Hereabout Home.
It checked so many boxes:
One-Story
Simple design
Split bedrooms, with the master and secondary bedrooms on opposite sides of the house
A small office
An open kitchen, living, and dining room
A large kitchen with a large island
I reached out and scheduled a call with Holly to learn more. I was immediately impressed with her knowledge and willingness to make small changes to the plan and design a detached garage. She mentioned she had been talking to a company called B.Public Prefab (she is now a collab partner), which manufactures super high-performance enclosures. This aligned nicely with my desire to build differently this time, so we set up a call.
After my initial call with B.Public, I knew this was the direction I wanted to go. They build the prefab panels in a factory in Las Vegas, NM. The wall and roof panels are highly insulated with dense-packed cellulose, with R-values of 52 for the walls and 59 for the roof. The panels feature an exterior WRB and an interior smart vapor barrier, creating an extremely tight building enclosure. Once they are delivered onsite, the panels are assembled in 4-5 days.
Courtesy of B.Public Prefab
To learn more, I scheduled a visit to the factory in Las Vegas, NM, where I met Jonah Stanford, one of the co-founders. It was great to see how the panels were built and the level of detail and accuracy they can achieve. I left knowing this was the company to work with because of their proximity to Crested Butte and their openness to talk and explore options without being pushy. Keep in mind, this was in March of 2024, and we hadn’t even bought a lot yet!
So, we had a house plan we liked and a company to build the enclosure. But we still needed to find a lot that would work for the house's footprint, which isn’t small. We quickly ruled out building in Buckhorn and set our eyes on CB South. We looked at several lots but couldn’t find one that worked for us. We knew we wanted a relatively flat lot, again to control costs, and one with good southern exposure. Our patience paid off, and in July of 2025, we bought our lot and moved forward with putting the plan in place.
I wanted to start this blog to chronicle the build and hopefully develop a resource for others interested in building better. Subscribe to follow along!