Home Diaries: How a Couple GC’d Their Forever Home
Home Diaries Issue 04 | June 21, 2026 | By Lucia Gagliardone
For Phil and Cindy Mason, building a home required a lot of humor, a lot of trust, and a good supply of celebration after the long build days. Leaning on 37 years of marriage, Phil and Cindy worked as their own general contractors as they built Hereabout’s Kinfolk V2 - coordinating the local build team, receiving deliveries of their SIP walls from Tennessee, and even sorting the construction dumpster most evenings to maintain the self-proclaimed “cleanest job site in the county”.
On a sunny, humid June afternoon, I spoke with Phil and Cindy about their completed home. Despite the high temps outside, their home was cool and comfortable because of the R40 exterior walls, R60 roof assembly, and an ERV creating healthy indoor air quality. They walked me through the gorgeous space with their iPad, pointing out their favorite features and small customizations. We laughed throughout the call as they looked back on their build journey from start to finish.
Foundation begins.
SIPS Walls are set in place.
SIPS Walls are set in place.
SIPS Walls are set in place - view from inside.
Cindy: We are Phil and Cindy Mason and we are calling from a town called Onekama, Michigan. We've been coming to this area of Michigan since 1966 as kids.
Lucia: Amazing, it’s wonderful to hear that you have a long-standing connection to this place! Can you tell me a little bit more about your land in Onekama?
Phil: It's rural, for one thing. and we like that. We really like that on our 2.5 acre property it is wooded and also has an open meadow area. We're between two lakes: Lake Michigan and Portage Lake. We're only about a mile and a half from Lake Michigan as the crow flies. We actually went to the beach yesterday afternoon and the breeze was coming across the lake.
Cindy: We just about froze.
Phil: It was so chilly that we had our towels laying across ourselves. I still got some sunburn. Laughs.
Lucia: When you were initially thinking about building a house, what was your vision?
Cindy: We wanted something simple. We want this to be our house until we have to hand it over to the kids. We wanted an open air feeling, lots of windows…
Phil: Energy efficient.
Cindy: Yes, it was very important for it to be all electric. In relation to Hereabout, we actually were going to build the Hangout and then realized we didn’t want a staircase and wanted the home to be a bit smaller. When we saw the Kinfolk V2 we knew it would be the right fit. It really has been amazing - we do not regret changing plans.
Phil: Part of what motivated us to change plans also was that we decided to be our own general contractors.
Lucia: Wow, that’s amazing. I'm curious how you made the decision to be your own general contractors? What was that experience like for you?
Phil: It was partly driven by cost. The contractors up here cost $300-350 a square foot to build a custom home. We wanted to simplify and bring some cost down.
Cindy: We have no construction background. Phil works in technology. I was a social worker. We both looked at each other and said, "Okay, this isn't that hard. We can do this." Laughs. I don’t want to make it sound easy, though. It’s not easy. There was a lot of give and take. All issues in the end were ours to deal with and figure out. Sometimes things didn’t come together until the last minute. Talk about stress! And Phil stayed working full time through it all.
Phil: I did things to plan and control the construction. For example, our exterior walls are SIPs. They were made by a company called Eco Panels of Tennessee. They took Holly's great design and blueprints and made our walls, which arrived on a semitruck.
Cindy: We hired all local people. We worked hard to make contacts with local folks and vetted them just by asking around. I joined book clubs and balance and stretch classes and started asking, “who does this kind of thing?” And people could have taken us for a ride a hundred times and no one did. That speaks to the local people.
We were intentional about celebrating milestones in the construction. We popped many bottles of bubbly along the way, because, why not?
The house has a roof!
Windows, drywall, and paint!
View from the Road.
Siding begins!
Lucia: I love hearing that… the idea that building your home becomes a neighborhood affair. How else have you interacted with the community throughout the process?
Phil: We've had a lot of people stop by. We're on a corner of a road, so we get a lot of gawkers and we're always waving. It's like, "Hey, come on in." We've shown it to a lot of people.
Cindy: One of the first people that helped us was a young man who was working to become a contractor. He would work with his crew and they were all really great. Since they worked with us, they’ve stopped in to see the finished home and check in. These were professionals. They came in and did their work. We would come in the evening, answer questions if needed, and clean up. But we didn't come out and hover. We let people be the professionals they are.
Phil hard at work painting.
The kitchen being installed.
Lucia: It really does seem to make a difference when you put in the effort to find people that know what they're doing. Speaking of, I want to know about your process with Hereabout. Did you make any customizations to the Kinfolk V2?
Cindy: We really didn’t make huge changes to it. I would say 90% of it is from the plan.
Cindy and Phil flip the camera around and walk me through the home.
Phil: We worked with Holly on a few updates in the kitchen and to add a chase up in the ceiling for the air handling.
Cindy: We adjusted the windows a little bit because the structural engineer with the SIPs panels needed to have some more space between them. I want to say: I really enjoyed working with Holly. She always made the process really easy and fun. She's relaxed. She was always responsive to what we needed. And I appreciated it when she wouldn't hear from us for a couple months and she'd reach out to say, "Hey, Phil, Cindy, how's it going?”
Lucia: You already mentioned sustainability and energy efficiency being core values for you throughout the process. I'm curious what other core values went into the build?
Phil: Hospitality. We enjoy entertaining and having people over. We have family that comes up here and so we fully expect to have people staying with us. And that's also a nice part about this design is we've got the two guest rooms down on one side of the house and our room is on the other side. So we also have our own space.
Cindy: We have been in the house for five weeks and we have hosted many people already! Making up for lost time. Another core value we have is not overtaxing the land. I think we only took down two trees when we decided on the placement of the house. We were really careful to use as many sustainable materials as we could. And hiring local people.
We were very conscious about waste. You go to a lot of new-build construction sites and they've got huge 20 yard dumpsters. We got through our whole build with one 15 yard trailer and it wasn't even full! As the general contractors, we'd come out in the evenings and do the cleanup. We often said we had the cleanest job site in the county!
Cindy: People would find me in the dumpster sometimes. They'd ask, "You're the homeowner?" And I would say, "Yeah, and I'm in the dumpster!" Laughter all around.
Lucia: You put in a lot of sweat equity to the build and that's really beautiful. I'm curious what you envision this home meaning for your family? What are your hopes for the future with this space?
I want to see this as a hub for people when they come to town for vacation or a visit. I want friends to be able to come out here for relaxation and retreat, for a glass of wine, for a good meal. We’ll always be ready to give people a safe space to come and enjoy Michigan.
Phil: We built this for the two of us. Our kids will inherit it someday, but it’s for us. One of the earliest genesis of us coming up here was when the technology company I work for decided to go fully remote. We asked ourselves, "Okay, if we could be any place in the world, where would we want to be?" And this was the place.
The finished garage.
The bright and airy dining room.
The finished kitchen.
Bedroom with forest views.
Throughout our call, Phil and Cindy bounced back and forth sharing answers about their home building journey with a clear sense of mutual respect. Taking a values-based and budget-conscious approach to the process, they celebrated small wins by popping bottles of champagne and trusting each other. It was easy to see how aligned Phil and Cindy are on the choices they made and how much pride they share about the home they built together: their Kinfolk V2 is a true labor of love.
To learn more about Hereabout Home, please visit www.hereabouthome.com or get in touch with Founder Holly Mumford here: hello@hereabouthome.com.
Hereabout designs ready-to-build home plans for those who desire a home they truly love. With over a decade of experience in residential design, Holly started Hereabout to bridge the gap between budget and design for those who seek a thoughtfully designed home. With a passion for design and a dedication to sustainability, she’s focused on making quality design attainable. Creating warm, livable spaces is at the root of her design philosophy, and she believes that homes are truly a space to belong and connect.
About the Author
Lucia Gagliardone is a Vermont-born, Brooklyn-based interdisciplinary dance artist and writer. Her work explores memory excavation, ancestry, queer worldviews, and play as a facilitator for change. Learn more at www.luciagagliardone.com.