I have been fascinated with building processes throughout my life. My first exposure with watching my dad figure out how to renovate our small farmhouse in northern Minnesota. My first effort in making a structure was building a playhouse with scrap wood with my brother. I was involved with making a machine shed on our farm when I was in high school. We used an old foundation and moved walls from an old turkey building to create the core of this structure.

During my 20 year tenure as the principle of Johnstown Christian School, I was part of figuring out how to add to the original building to accommodate the growing school population. I learned much from friends who were architects and contactors.

While serving as the executive director of Merry Lea Environmental Learning Center of Goshen College, I helped to plan for many building renovations and new construction projects from 1997 to 2019.

Over the years there have been many home renovation projects for me. Each project from upgrading bathrooms to redoing rooms to building a patio to completely remodeling the kitchen provided hands-on learning experiences. My two major building projects were designing and constructing an apartment in the quonset garage in 2013-2015. In 2019-2020 I built a garage on our Fruit, Nut and Berry Orchard.