Home Diaries: How a Couple GC’d Their Forever Home Together
Home Diaries Issue 04 | June 24, 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’re in a small town in Michigan. We've actually been coming to this area of Michigan since 1966 as kids.
Lucia: 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?
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.
Lucia: Beautiful. 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. Initially, we were actually going to build the Hangout — but then realized we wanted the home to be a bit smaller and single level. When we saw the Kinfolk V2 we knew it would be the right fit. It really has been amazing and we know we made the right choice 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. We ended up building for about $220-$240/ square foot, which we feel really good about. Of course, that doesn’t include our own labor. The biggest cost savings for us was hiring labor and providing the materials ourselves.
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: We did a few 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 blueprints and made our walls, which arrived on a semitruck.
Cindy: We also 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 classes and started asking, “who does this kind of thing?” And people could have taken advantage of us and no one did - that speaks to the quality of the referrals and integrity of the local contractors.
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: Being your own GC is no small feat — do you have any advice for others who are interested in taking it on for their own project?
🌶️Phil & Cindy’s Hot Tip #1:
Be realistic about how long things take. Be prepared to adjust the timeline when it doesn’t go as planned – and manage your subs accordingly. Keep them informed of where you are in the process by sending e-mail updates as you hit important milestones so they can start to pencil you.
🌶️Phil & Cindy’s Hot Tip #2:
As a client/GC, you have to manage things like follow-ups, schedules and deliveries. Be very conscious of making good relationships with your subs. They already have good relationships with contractors and you’re an unknown (not as experienced, potentially not prepared, etc.), so you have to prove yourself to them at some level. When they’re on site, let them do their job. Be available from afar, but don’t hover.
🌶️Phil & Cindy’s Hot Tip #3:
Being your own GC is a daily job. In the end, the buck stops with you and you have to own it. Be prepared - do your research and do everything you can to avoid making changes during the actual build. With each step in a build, the cost to change something goes up.
Phil hard at work painting.
The kitchen being installed.
Lucia: That’s great advice, thank you. I’d love 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 95% of it is from the plan. We really appreciated working with Holly. She always made the process really easy and fun. She's relaxed. She was always responsive to what we needed and her design helped us start the project with a solid footing.
Having a well thought out plan (and tweaking it before we started building) was very important to our success. Holly’s help at the formative and planning stages was key to us starting off with a solid footing.
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. 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 great room.
The finished kitchen.
Siding up, sun is in!
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.