Q & A Episode 66 - Inside 45 White Oak: Staircases, Skylights, & Serious Craftsmanship
Episode #66 | Q&A with Mark D. Williams | Inside 45 White Oak
In this Q&A episode of The Curious Builder Podcast, Mark takes you inside one of the most talked-about custom homes in the country: Nick Schiffer’s 45 White Oak. From hand-troweled plaster to 800-lb sliding doors and a $250K sculptural staircase, this tour is packed with "moments of delight" and mind-blowing craftsmanship. Hear how a retired plaster artisan came out of retirement for one last project—and why this modern home in Cape Cod feels more like a grounded sanctuary than a showpiece. Bonus: Mark finally admits that not all skylights are evil.
About The Curious Builder
The host of the Curious Builder Posdast is Mark D. Williams, the founder of Mark D. Williams Custom Homes Inc. They are an award-winning Twin Cities-based home builder, creating quality custom homes and remodels — one-of-a-kind dream homes of all styles and scopes. Whether you’re looking to reimagine your current space or start fresh with a new construction, we build homes that reflect how you live your everyday life.
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Mark D. Williams 00:00
We're excited to announce that we're bringing back Sonic camp 2.0 on March 20, from two to 8pm we had this last year. We had 42 owners. This year, we're maxing out the capacity of the camp, which is going to be 60 people. We're going to have a wellness panel with some Everest summiters, as well as some iron men and women to compete and all about wellness and how they prioritize their health and wellness, not only in training, but in their lifestyles and in their business. And then we're gonna have a two hour window of sauna and cold plunging in the lake, and then an amazing wood fired grill, Mediterranean style food at the end of that. So if you're interested, please head to cures, builder.com under retreats, you'll find everything there is about sauna camp on March 20 in Minnesota. You can do really great modern work, but it could also be very approachable, very grounded. And it was very well done architecturally, as you would imagine, it feels very nestled, very grounded, both from the color, but also the shapes. And when you're in the backyard, it's just like this really tranquil, quiet feeling welcome
Mark D. Williams 01:11
to the curious builder Podcast. I'm Mark Williams, your host. Today is Thursday, and I've got a special episode for you today. I'm going to give you a recap of the 45 white oak tour. So most of you are probably aware of Nick schifrin's build out in Boston. So Nick schifer, for those that don't know who I'm, who he is, is one of my business partners at the contractor coalition Summit. I met him three years ago at the contractor coalition summit in Nashville. And really that group, I've spoken a lot about the contractor coalition and how much it's impacted me career wise, and it just have had these great, meaningful relationships, you know, with each person. That's part of it. We have our next one coming up here in Chicago that starts Friday and goes through Monday. So if you're listening to this episode and you're not there, it's too late. You already missed it. Unless you want to fly in on 12 hours notice. The next one will be in Denver in April. We'll talk more about that later. But the goal of this is, Nick has been building this home, and a year ago we were out there for the Boston contractor coalition in September. So it's been about 1314, months since we're out there. It was at rough end stage when we were there, and they're just finishing up now, they probably have, if I had to guess, probably 4560 days left of the home. I'm sure Nick would say 30. But looking at it, as we all know, those last 30 to 45 days, that's where all the magic happens. And so I wanted to come out, see where it's been. We were miked up, and just kind of do a ride along. So Nick picked me up that morning, 515 and we went to the club. Worked out, as we both do, went to breakfast and really just talk shop all day, so we're miked up. We headed to and motif media followed us around. So we'll be doing a bunch of video content here in the weeks and months to come. We actually did a live podcast, or not live podcast, we did a recorded podcast in Nick's studio at the end of it. So that'll be a whole dedicated hour to just lessons learned, things that Nick has observed, things that he's reflected on. What the point of white oak is, all these other things. What I want to do with this episode is I've been building for 21 years. I love building. I love architecture, I love design. But this home, there's just something different about the way that Nick has approached it that's left a big impact on our community. Not to draw too many comparisons, I have a home we're doing right now called Misa, who's whole home based around wellness, and he and I are actually giving a brand talk. He's speaking about 45 white oak I'm going to be speaking about Misa house, and we're going to kind of compare, of like how a brand and how a home can sort of embody a brand. That was one of the questions I actually asked Nick on the podcast was, is 45 white oak a house or a brand? And he said it's a house that reinforces his MS builder brand. And I like that answer by contrast Misa, whose is a brand the home itself, and so just little nuances, as I was sort of trying to understand what made Nick tick and really the level of execution, I've been following his build on his Instagram page, as well as his YouTube channel. He's got a massive following, like 150,000 followers on YouTube. He's pretty much, I think, top of his game in the country for what he does. And he's very, very talented. So to coin a term that Melissa oland, one of my designers for misos, she often says, moments of delight. So on the airplane ride back, I mean, I had a whole day riding along with Nick, and it was a rare treat. It was awesome for him to do. We had a great conversations, both on and off the record, just chatting about life, business, family, all the things that he and I like to talk about. But what really left an impact on me was just sort of my jaw dropping, just watching the level of execution that's at White Oak. It's super inspiring. And so I was Bushed. I probably just wanted to take a nap or watch a movie on the way home, but I. I thought I'd better write down all these moments of delight so I could do a podcast episode on them. So these aren't in any sort of order, but I've got, probably, to me, probably 20 to 25 things that were really amazing details. I think it's just the little details I can sure I could find another 30, but on the airplane, these are the what hit me. So I'll start at the top one is the siding. So the siding took 52 weeks, and it's an impressive sighting out and all the details. I didn't do a lot of research for this episode. I just wanted to say, like, what was top of mind? If you want to research what he's doing, he's done a ton of video series and content around this side, and it came from Europe. And maybe I should step back for a minute, this home it's got a Danish design of possible is the architect and Vincent, the architect and Nick have been in collaboration on this project for quite a while. It's going to be featured in a bunch of publications nationally as well, as well as worldwide, eventually, when it's done, probably not my place to share which ones they are at this point in time, but it's a it's a game changer. So when we back to the siding. So this siding took 52 weeks to install, incredible detail. Really, really cool. And what was really neat is on the inside, you'll see a ton of photos of Nick's Hohmann and the renderings that he's done, but he's got, like, an inverted atrium, and so he actually was explaining how difficult it was the siding is meant to, obviously be a cladding on the outside and how they hung it, but on the inside. And this is not a term I was even familiar with, but they call it bastard angle. On a bastard hip roof. We've got multiple angles intersecting, so cutting these angles are very difficult. But inside it's inverted. So the the skylight is actually a smaller aperture, and it comes out in a way. And it was, it's upside down, so you couldn't hang the shingle how you normally, normally would. And when they were asked about it early on, I love Nick's can do attitude, he said, we'll just have to figure it out. And so we walk through like how they did it. And it was incredible dedication to his team. So anyway, I just tried to think of like it takes us, you know, most of our homes are probably 10 months to 16 months to build, but I'm just blown away that a house would take 52 weeks to side. And so I remember when Nick said he got his last invoice, and he was like, it was like a July 4 moment when he knew you didn't have to pay any more signing labor invoices. The other thing that was really this beautiful moment is like how subtle and grounded the home is Nick's whole point was to do modern architecture in an area that is predominantly traditional Cape Cod, all the things that you would envision Martha's Vineyard, East Coast, Boston, that whole thing and but just to show like you can do really great modern work, but it could also be very approachable, very grounded. And that home site is actually a tuck under for a garage. So it's set up on a hill, and they had to blast all the rock, and it's really rocky right there. And but the home does not feel like it's up on a hill. Doesn't feel massive. It was very well done architecturally, as you would imagine. It feels very nestled, very grounded, both from the color, but also the shapes. And when you're in the backyard, it's just like this really tranquil, quiet feeling, we're actually on camera. Motif was videotaping us, and it was kind of drizzling in the rain, and I was just quiet for a second. And I said, you know, if this was my home, I think I would just sit on the rock during the rain and just, like, observe, like, how far this house has come. It was just kind of this really neat moment. And so, yeah, I guess I don't know how to say it, that a lot of times you build I think the idea of what next is doing is very grand, but I love the idea that this home was very subtle, very approachable. It felt very grounding. When you walk into the home, it didn't feel like it overwhelmed you. It felt like it fit like a snug leather glove that was custom made for you. And so I just, I really appreciate how it made me feel. The other thing that was really amazing was going up. Let's see. I got this note here. I mean, the lift and slide doors are impressive. One of the doors is 800 pounds, and you can move it with your pinky. All the windows. Don't think you mentioned what the brand was, but they're somewhere from Eastern Europe, and they're all tilt and turns so very European style. And then all of the window wood cladding is a white oak. As you would imagine. The name of the home is 45 white oak. There's a lot of white oak in the house, spoiler alert, but beautiful. Everything's triple glazed. Lift and slide. Just beautiful execution. But I just, I just love how, I mean, obviously I love natural light. So anywhere you can get that much natural light and and also allow you to access the outdoors. It just had a really, a really nice moment. The other thing that we don't do a lot in Minnesota in particular is the plaster work we're doing Misu is actually, I love plaster. It's never just really been in my client's budget, or I haven't pushed it hard enough. Now I'm starting to do more plaster than I have previously, but out of the east coast, especially where Nick is, there's not a house he does where the whole thing is in plaster. They don't even use don't even use sheetrock. Everything is plaster. And especially he said in his specific little niche around him, like it's 100% plaster, amazing artisans. One of my favorite moments was actually there was a gentleman there. I forgot his name, but he came out of retirement just to work on this house. He was so inspired. Inspired by what Nick was doing. And I think his son owns the plaster company that he said, I'm coming out of retirement to work on this house. And we chatted for 510 minutes, and it was just really, he was so into the nuance and the doing it with a straight, you know, edge on his trowel and just craftsmanship was through the roof. It was so cool to watch him work number one, but also hear him talk about it like, I'm just thinking someday of, like, being retired. I'm just picturing, like, you know, the stereotypical retirement, you're on a beach and like, a house would be so exciting. You're like, you know what, Honey, I'll be back in a month. I'm leaving this beach, I'm going back to Boston to Duke plaster. Like, that's a pretty powerful house that would make you do that. So that part was really cool. The other part was the outside porch. You know, typically in our market, we're doing four inch, five inch, you know, tng cedar or something like that, you know, just a very inviting, nice space outside. But their whole ceiling was actually plastered. I really like that, you know, I suspect that I'll be pitching that to my architects and design teams here in the future. I just thought it had a nice, very clean look. I always think of plaster inside. So it's first time I've ever seen plaster on the outside like that. So that was just kind of something unexpected. The beams, the beams, almost you could do a whole podcast on the episode of the beam. So first of all, all the wood came from Northern France, and he, Nick flew over there, and I think Madera is their trim work company, and I don't know that much about them off to do a little more research, but all of it is single sourced. The way they harvest wood over in France and in Europe is a lot different than they harvest here. Every tree, every cut, where it is in the forest, how many years it's grown, is all cataloged. He said he's actually going to have like a manifesto of every single tree that's in his house, which you could only do if you had sort of the pedigree of the records that they keep over there and the husbandry of the tree. But you're talking like
Mark D. Williams 11:51
5070, foot lengths of wood that are all no seams, single piece. You could never get that here. It's incredible. They're all pre finished, pre fabricated. So when I was here a year ago, or 13 months ago, the trimmers and the carpentry, the framers had actually framed up these spots for backing, for the beams. But then to see them all installed was impressive. And if you look on Nick's website, ns builders.com or 45 white oak.com or his or his Instagram, or we'll have it on our Instagram at some point, I'm sure you'll see that, you know, these big, long sections, call it 50 feet, whatever it was. How do you get a 50 foot beam up there? No splices, but that balance the the surrounding beams around are already created. And he said, they take a real thin piece of metal, like aluminum, sheet metal, and they and then they put it on the end, and then they put it on both ends. And they'll, they'll have three, three trimmers will be on the beam. It takes a full day to put in one beam. And I counted the beams. There was 17 beams in the great room and 25 beams in the kitchen. So you're talking about almost two months of work days in order to hang all these beams, and they're pretty finished as well. So it's like you just the craftsmanship and the detail is incredible. So anyway, you have these slip sheets of aluminum that maybe a 16th inch thick, or however thick it is, as thin as, maybe it's foil, I don't know, just so that you the wood on the wood wouldn't rub, you put it straight up, and then you slip those sheets out, you finish nail it, and away you go. But that was just really impressive to see that happen.
Mark D. Williams 13:31
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So in the laundry room, I'm sorry not the laundry room, in the pantry off the kitchen, they have this really cool interaction moment. So you walk in the front door and there's like this cool dining room. I think that probably the soul of the home is this amazing atrium moment. You have this beautiful, incredible plaster stair. I'll talk about that in a minute. Skylight, you know, directly above, with that inverted siding inside, on the second level, on the second story, but there's this really cool cabinet that actually opens up butterflies in, and that would be your dining room hutch, but on the other side is your pantry. And what they did is they had this really cool guillotine moment where in the wall they have ball bearings and a plastic PVC pipe. It honestly looks like a pipe bomb, in my vast experience of pipe bombs, and it's on a pulley. And so obviously it's perfectly weighted, just one finger up, one finger down. And so I just, I just, I was really cool, really neat moment, the stairs. I think if I had to pick, like, three things, I think the stairs might be in, for sure, in the top three. I mean, probably that whole atrium is all part of this. So that's probably one, two and three all in one, just a magical staircase. He had mentioned that, you know, maybe the whole stair cost 250,000 you're talking, I think over a month of plaster work on the stair, and all the white oak is a has no seams in it. Now they've been obviously bending, you know, thin sheets of white oak, and then it's sanded out so you can't see the seams. Incredible craftsmanship. You have to go on his Instagram and on his YouTube page to watch how they made this staircase. I didn't even know, I didn't even know that or that. So the whole wall basically comes down. It's got this cool shape to it, and it folds back on itself and reverses down into the railing down below. So it's all, I don't know how to describe it, hardly adequately. You need to be an architect or designer to use the right words all I know it was as impressive, and I think it makes you want to touch it and hold on to it. That's how incredible it was. In fact, the architect was flying in the day after I left just to see the first white oak tread go in, because they wanted to make sure it was exactly how they wanted it. So just really impressive, how you get everyone sort of together. They had their trimmers or plaster guide Nick was there their PM, and so just their kind of, their dedication to make this kind of key element just really sing. It was really impressive. Another thing that I learned was just, I thought it was, I forget how Nick said it exactly, but if you have two mediums, let's say, of the white oak Windows against the plaster, he always likes a little bit of a break, a shadow line, you know, it's a 16th of an inch, you know, whatever it might be. And the idea or three eights, whatever it might be, just so that you don't try to make everything flush and plain out, like you kind of want there to be a little break. Like, I know in my career, I often like to have things on plane. But I remember an old trimmer I used to have Todd. He always talked about, you know, having little breaks, or little subtle movements. Again, the home is going to move over time. It's going to crack. And by having those little offsets, it really hides some of the imperfections, not on day one, but on day year five, year seven, year 10, year 20. And so you're really thinking about this long term. And so I was just impressed at these little offset gaps. And really it was just stylistically very intentional. I know Nick was really intentional about he keeps all the plaster three eighths inch off the floor. There's no trim in the house, and so he likes that shadow gap. He said, We've played around with it being taller than that, and it just doesn't feel right. It feels like a gap too low. And you can kind of see how close it is to another straight line where three eights was about perfect. It helps hide a little bit of the movement of a floor or of a plaster bead. And so it just keeps that quiet negative space looking really good. One thing that was really impressive was the dining room table.
Mark D. Williams 18:11
It was two pieces of wood. It was a, I want to say, a six or eight foot long table made out of one piece of white oak. And the base was a giant stump that had been turned on a lathe, and I took a video of it. We'll post it on our feed at some point. On if you go to Mark Williams Instagram, it'll be on there at some point. It was just impressive. Just two pieces of wood, and it looks like a giant it looks like Goliath carved it with like a little whittling knife. I mean, it's just massive scale, but really simplistic in its its outcome and how it looks. But I mean, just, I think it's those simple, organic, really powerful things that I feel, we feel gravitated towards, or at least I do. I had a really the obviously, the turntable had been howled out on the inside, but it was still, I was probably three, four feet in diameter, so it's huge, and it was cracking pretty significantly, as you would imagine. So they're going to let it, whether it's been in the house to acclimate now for six months or so, they'll leave it there for another couple months, and then they'll actually butterfly tie it back together and fill it with epoxy or whatever, just to, you know, make sure it doesn't keep splitting. But it was just, it was impressive, very impressive. The other thing that was really neat was the roof access to her. It's kind of fun. So you're up on it's got a flat hip roof, and it's got a flat roof up above. So you go up in this little attic. We actually did some video content up there. So we go up in the ladder. He I looked at he's like, Hey, that's our ladder to the flat roof. So you can clean the skylight and go upsize upstairs and clean the gutters. And I look at him, you could just tell I had a twinkle in my eyes, like, you want to go up there, don't you? I'm like, Yeah, I want to go. Yeah, I want to go up there. So we went up there, checked it out, and, you know, I told them that I've always had kind of like two never, Evers. One never, ever is no skylights in a home that I've ever built. I don't like skylights because my my thought on skylights personally, this is obviously just my personal opinion. Is that it's not if a skylight will leak, it's when it will leak. And Nick definitely didn't buy that. He's like, tell me why? Why can't it be done? That's what I love about Nick. He'll challenge the status quo. He'll challenge your thought process. And doesn't make one person right or wrong. But he's like, are you taking the I could see in his eyes? Are you taking the easy way out? Are you and maybe I am, maybe I'm not. I just know that I have to warn you, house for 10 years. I'd love for my homes to last, you know, more than 100 years. And if you have a giant hole in the roof, you know, that's a problem, and so, but was really neat about how he executed it, and Vincent as well from above. Possible was, you know, the whole skylight was set at an angle, you know, the curb. I mean, it was just really well done, I think. And there's no question that natural light, through nature and like that just makes the home feel so different. So I think in that setting, I probably would be open to it. The other one, I told them is my never, ever is a window in a shower. And I actually it was on a project maybe a week or two ago here locally in Minnesota, where the architect had one drawn in, and I said, Can we please remove that the client wasn't super in love with it, so the client or the architect was fine. But again, you know, you're in a shower, tons of water, tons of moisture, tons of you know, just thermal dynamics happening. I'm like, why are we putting a just because you can doesn't mean you should, and there's no question that a wall is going to perform better than a window right there, you know, even if it's made out of fiberglass, or even if it's just bomb proof, I'm just man, at some point that when nothing is going to last forever, at some point, when that house fails, it will fail there. And so that's kind of my feeling on it. And of course, Nick pushed against that too. He's like, Why? Why can't you do it? And so anyway, was just kind of have a healthy debate. Again, I already spoke to this early, but the home has this really calm, cozy feeling to it. I think a lot of it just has to do with the plaster, the color palette, I mean, beautifully designed in terms of room layout. No room feels too big, no room feels too small. It just it feels like it was meant for you perfectly. You just walk in the home and you feel relaxed. And keep in mind, we're 60 days away from the house. I told Nick, because this is true of every home that I build, that the last 45 days, I'm probably better if I'm just not in town, because my OCD nature goes through the roof when you're 45 days out, and you're kind of, you see the end, but you know, you're so far away from the end. One of the things that was really neat was, in the kitchen, they had the front of the countertops, or, sorry, on the range, they had these beautiful gaganau appliances, but all the countertops were all Marvel marble, but the front edge was probably eight inches thick, and they actually had cut out, laser cut out the knobs for the Gagan Ian range. I just thought it was really cool. I've never seen anything like that before. They also to reduce the weight. The back side of the island was all marble as well. And all the fronts of all the cabinet doors, I'd never seen this before, the appliance fronts, the the garbage front, they were all marble as well. And so their cabinet shop had just basically created a door and allowed for, you know, they cut out the back side of the marble. So if the marble was, say, half inch thick, I don't measure how thick it was, but they cut back inside of it, so you could do a wood panel to lighten it up, but then they'd glue an epoxy that with the hinges. So from the pathway portion, it was all just straight marble. It was really cool looking. I like that a lot. I'll probably try to emulate something like that at a future point, just very classy and also super usable. I mean, in a kitchen, you're getting so much you've got water and liquid and just obviously the marble is going to hold up, really nice. Excuse me, the custom vents. It's funny, lately, vents have been my new latest target. For a long time. It was I have a couple of things that really bothered me on my job sites. One of them is a porta potty that's anywhere near my job sign. Another one is outlets. I really like to hide outlets. I don't like seeing outlets if I can't avoid it. And then now vents are now on my crosshairs. So seeing how Nick handled, all his vents were way above. I mean, pretty much all the vents are custom, and so they would have obviously the ductwork, you know, behind the walls and in the in the roof ceilings and wall details, but then the trim, the way they finished it. Sometimes it was black PVC and these long, linear diffusers. It was just gorgeously done. And I asked him, like, where he got him from? He's like, Oh, no, we didn't get those from anywhere. We made those. And so again, just a commitment to the little details, but I definitely appreciated it, and just really loved the execution of it.
Mark D. Williams 24:28
The we had this funny moment where he was showing up this he had this hardware for the doors, and they were, he said, Pick up this hardware. And the first time I picked it up, I was like, Oh, that feels good. You know how, when you feel something that's just like heavy, substantial, it just made it just feels like it was made for your hand. Well, turns out there's an $1,800 upgrade on hardware, and there's a company in the UK that had built all these, these hardware, all this hardware for, I think it was going to be a castle. Or a hotel or something like that. But then they never built it, and then a company bought the rights to all this hardware, and that's what this was. But it was just gorgeous. I love the story. I love the weight of it, and it was funny, because what he had originally chosen was very nice, but compared to this, it's like, the difference between holding plastic and like, like a lead, you know, handmade lead cast object, or, you know, a trophy Ian, one is plastic. One is like real fabricated by an artist. You could just feel the difference. And I think his comment was, is like anything that you touch and see in this house. I want you to feel. I want you to feel like you've got something just that you you resonate towards. And I certainly did want to tell this little story. Big shout out to blank and Ian, his name right now, one of his project managers on the job site. We were talking about, you know, being a brand ambassador. You know, Nick and I both do a lot of stuff with our brand partners and things that we use in our homes, but having people on your team that represent your brand is really cool. And he shared this story at White Oak, where maybe five, six months ago, he was having a busy day, probably towards the end of the week, probably just fried mentally, a lot on his plate. And his project manager said, Hey, I think we should redo this, whatever it was. And Nick was like, enough, it's good enough. It's fine. And so Nick left, and then the following day he came back and it had all been torn out and redone. And his project manager said, I know you said yes, but really, if you had taken the time to think about it, you would have known that what you really wanted to say, No, it wasn't. And Nick was really impressed in that moment. And the guy was right. And what I loved about the story, and it really came out in our podcast, was, you know, Nick has a vision. And I think leaders of companies have visions, you know, I think of somebody like a Steve Jobs, or Elon Musk, you know, with like a spaceships, or Tesla like, you know, setting an audacious goal, like for Ian is to go to Mars. You know, for Steve Jobs, it was to create, you know, this amazing product that would resonate with people's lives. And in you know, Nick's case, he wants to change how people build a home and what the stereotypes are like, what builder grade is like. Builder grade is, you know, could be a Ferrari, but he loves Bugatti. He had this great story about a Bugatti I'll share in a minute. And so I just love that his vision is so strong and so clear, and he communicates it so well to the broad public, but really to his own people, that they now are brand ambassadors for NS builders, and that left a huge impression on me. Like, I know that what I do through the curious builder as well as Mark Williams custom homes. Like, I want to have a clear vision so that other people can share that vision if you're driving the ship. Like, thinking about Christopher Columbus going to the Americas at the time, like, hopefully, you know, when he was sleeping, you know, the other people who took over, you know, were steering the ship, you know, had equal drive to get there. Now, it's maybe not the best analogy, because they're like, well, we can't go back. We got to go forward. So, or, like the example, when you're in South America and you burn the ships the only way forward. You know, I don't think we want a vision quite like that, where we force people into it, but I love the idea that nobody's forcing you to stay in a company. Nobody is forcing you that you have to do this when you passionately believe like your brand, your vision, attracts people like crazy, because they want they want something to believe in. They want something that they resonates with them. And so seeing his people, I mean, I know what Nick believes, but seeing his people also believe it. That was really cool. You know, kind of remind me a little bit of how you do the smallest thing is how you do the big thing. And so just kind of this willingness to not compromise on anything. And so anyway, we, after that tour, we were there for probably two, two and a half hours, returned a ton of content. I think Nick's gonna post it on his YouTube channel. It's kind of like, you know, when a builder goes and takes a tour with another builder, you know, we see things, you know, through the eyes of someone who's done this for a long time. So I'm kind of curious to see how they how they market that, or what they do with that. Then we went to another project that he's doing with Vincent of possible echo pond. And that one's much more approachable in scale and just really neat, simple design. I think what you if you've been following that project, you'll see it's got these, these big sheets of Baltic birch that they basically paint in the field with pine tar and linseed oil. It's all kind of a black and so they do all six sides. And, you know, have, it's called, you know, the mega shingle, or the super shingle. It's really cool. Actually, we're going to be building a cabin next year, and I'm looking at different siding materials, there's a part of me that says, Oh, that'd be kind of cool. I love, kind of the natural aspect of it's been done a long time, but it was a really neat house. I think it was because it was so approachable in size. Was a very big home and just a really striking lot. So anyway, that was a little bit longer than our normal Thursday episodes, but those were kind of the moments of delight from a tour at 45 white oak and if you're interested again, you can head to Nick's, many avenues, ns, builders.com, his Instagram. You can find it on ours here. We'll be teasing a bunch of I know we've done a few video recaps on Mark Williams custom homes, and then stay tuned. We'll be airing that podcast here in the coming weeks. Have a great week and tune. Next time, thanks for tuning in. The curious builder podcast. If you like this episode, do us a favor. Share it with three other business owners. The best way that we can spread what we're doing is by word of mouth, and with your help, we can continue to help other curious builders expand their business. 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