Original subtitles

[music playing]

TESSA FRENCH: I had a really, really vivid dream of Zeb

and I living in an A-frame in the woods.

It was so far from the lives that we were living.

And when we came to look at this and check it out,

it was like, it was shocking.

Like, the house was oriented the same way

as the A-frame in my dream.

This A-frame has huge white pines out front

and a carpet of needles on the ground, similar to the dream.

There's a lot of indicators that this was the one.

We're in Boyne Falls, Michigan, at our A-frame.

We live at the A-frame with my daughter Zia.

So we met while I was living in New York City,

and he was living in California.

But we were working for the same development company.

Zeb was running new builds on the construction side,

and I was doing the design work.

Yeah, we were just really good friends for 10 years

until we weren't just friends anymore.

ZEB BURGE: Eventually, when we started dating,

it just-- it just made more sense for me to move

to New York at the time.

TESSA FRENCH: Life in Brooklyn was great.

ZEB BURGE: We had a cool place there

and we were doing a lot of renovations to it.

And it was kind of one of the first, like, projects

that we got to work on together.

Both of us were working remotely at the time.

Zia's school was remote.

So we were kind of at a point where we were just

there and going stir crazy.

And

Tessa's family has this property in northern Michigan.

And we were like, well, let's just jump in the car,

and we'll go hang out there for a while.

We were doing, like, these, like, kind of just fun

outdoorsy projects, and like had time to do it.

And I think we both were like, wait a second this is, like,

a different quality of life.

So that's when I think we got really serious about, like,

kind of designing a small house to build in Michigan.

And we came here with her mother.

And like, I could see the horror on her face.

Like, she was looking at this place like, oh, my god.

What kind of thing is that?

TESSA FRENCH: Zia came too.

And I think Zia was most horrified out of anyone.

ZEB BURGE: Yeah.

TESSA FRENCH: She didn't want to touch anything.

ZEB BURGE: No. But I don't know.

We looked at it and we're like, no, we

could do something with this.

This is going to be great.

Like, this is perfect.

Yeah, this is excellent.

When it came to, like, construction and demo,

it was just the two of us.

You know, Tessa knew what colors,

and we knew what flooring we were going to use

and things like that.

I mean, we had the freedom to, kind of,

we'd rip something out that we didn't anticipate ripping out.

And we were like, well, it's out now.

Let's just design this.

TESSA FRENCH: The design vision was kind of a modern A-frame.

Injecting this thing with color was

very important and in a way that's still

would feel fresh and airy.

The first thing that I bought for this A-frame

was the living room rug, which incorporates a ton of colors.

So it was really important to us to celebrate the A-frame

and bring it a new fresh life.

And we did that through incorporating the lighting

on the beams and really lighting the peak

and celebrating the height.

ZEB BURGE: You can kind of see our A-frame off

to the left hand side as you're pulling up.

We've painted it like a darker color, so it kind of blends

in with the surroundings a little bit.

We left all those, like, bright colors and, like, the happiness

and the color explosion for the inside.

TESSA FRENCH: When you walk in the lower level of the A-frame,

on the left, there's a little bench.

You can sit down, take your shoes off.

Go down a hall, and on the left hand side is Zia's room.

Zia's room is the real color explosion.

She has a big window that has a bench seat, where actually when

we bought the house, it was-- those were two double doors

that entered into the space.

And we decided when we kind of relayed out the lower level

that we would relocate the entry door

into what's now the hallway.

And what was kind of cool is when we ripped open the walls,

we found that actually, the original entry door

to the A-frame when it was built was in the hallway

exactly where we put it back.

ZEB BURGE: So we ended up putting our door right back

where the original door went.

TESSA FRENCH: When you wind up the stairs from the entry

level, you land in the kitchen.

Kitchen kind of opens up on your right hand side.

The stove backs up to the back of the fireplace.

And all of the cabinetry and all of the brick of the fireplace

is painted what we refer to as Zeb green.

ZEB BURGE: I mean, I'm not--

I'm not wearing it today, but like, a lot of times,

a lot of my clothing is some very

close variation of that color.

TESSA FRENCH: He frequently gets dressed

and he is camouflaged in the kitchen.

The kitchen kind of leads you out into the living space.

It's the first time through that whole journey through the house

that you get to experience the grandness

of the A-frame itself.

It's kind of magical moment leaving the kitchen.

There's a large seating area with a big couch

and the colorful rug and some fun chairs,

and all just a really kind of cozy place

that we spend most of our time hanging out together.

The fireplace is situated in one corner of the living space.

We have flat files that we've built in.

And those flat files hold a lot of the finishes

and design materials that we work with on a daily basis.

So it was nice to incorporate such

a functional kind of industrial element

in a really residential way.

When you're standing in the living room and looking up,

you can see into the loft with the glass railing.

And there's a little what we call the nest.

And it's a little seating area with a pendant lamp

and some bookshelves and a place that Zia

spends a lot of time reading when we're in the living room.

ZEB BURGE: After you kind of walk through

the little nest area that's--

that overlooks the living space, you go in the loft bedroom.

It's just really a quiet, cozy private space.

Tessa was like, I want, like, shelves

that we can put sneakers on.

We have an embarrassingly large amount of sneakers.

You know, some of them are really cool-looking.

TESSA FRENCH: It's hard to put art on a not straight wall.

And being able to create these flat shelves

and kind of arrange the sneakers in an artistic way

and bring color into that space was really the intention.

And it feels like artwork.

We moved in two days before Thanksgiving.

We had chicken pot pies that Zeb made on a blanket

in the living room.

I think there was a moment during that meal

where it was like, OK, I don't know if we can give this up.

But-- but, I don't know, we were still going

back to New York at that point.

But I think it really turned then.

I mean, this really ended up being our dream

and inspired us to be able to create what we think

our dream jobs are and create our design

build company Spot Lab.

ZEB BURGE: And my son Riley joined us.

TESSA FRENCH: Yeah, the A-frame gave us the freedom

to express our own aesthetic and really

figure out what that was.

And we do feel like we built the dream home.

I mean, this really ended up being our dream.