After working for years in the tech industry, Mike Romanowicz and Lizzie Kardon, spouses and cofounders of a do-it-yourself-cabin-company called Den, felt that together they had acquired enough screen time to last a lifetime, and craved a change of pace and scenery.

They were looking for a challenge and yearning to create something physical with their hands. So, the husband and wife headed to the Catskills, purchased an 8-acre wooded plot of land, and set out to build a small cabin.

“This was an arbitrary challenge for ourselves,” Romanowicz said. “Could we get out of our comfort zone and build something physical?”

The couple tested their limits to see what they could accomplish, and, while in the process of designing and constructing their own weekend getaway, they built not just a cabin, but a business plan, too.

“Having done that project and given our background, we figured we could make this experience easier for people to follow in our footsteps,” Romanowicz said. “Through that process we were inspired to create the cabin company.”

Working with a few start-ups in the past, the couple knew the ins and outs of launching something new. Using some of the other variations of cabin plans they were considering, Romanowicz and Kardon turned them into a full set of construction drawings with an engineer, and then built a website to sell them.

Shop the Look

Originally launched as Walden, the company's cabin plans were intended to make cabin-building accessible for likeminded people. “We spent a lot of time with contractors and real estate developers and started to assemble a working knowledge of what it means to be in the design-build and development space,” Romanowicz said, who was working as a tech executive for one of WeWork’s subsidiaries at the time.

Not longer after, the couple rebranded the company, created a broader catalog of plans that included A-frame and barn house designs, and relaunched the company as Den in July.

At their personal weekend retreat (dubbed "The Fox Den") and outdoor building lab in the Catskills, the couple is gearing up for their next big thing, which they will launch later this fall. “Our intention was to experiment with building on the property,” Romanowicz said.

While they use the property to build prototypes for their business, it’s also the family's homestead. Living full-time just 45 minutes away in Rhinebeck, New York, the family uses the cabin for weekend retreats. Romanowicz will head there for meetings, taking along his 2.5-year-old son, Fox, for some father-son time.

“We don't have a TV and it’s very relaxing,” Den cofounder Kardon said. “It’s just us and the fireplace.”

The well-traveled couple drew inspiration for their pint-sized retreat from their journeys, specifically within Japan, Scandinavia, and California. “They all have their unique aesthetics,” Romanowicz said. “We tried to bring all of those together in our approach for this cabin.”

On the exterior, they used one-by-six, pine tongue-and-groove boards that were stained using the Scandinavian practice of pine tar and linseed oil to give the wood siding a Japanese shou sugi ban look. The dark exterior effortlessly blends into its wooded surroundings.

The couple embraced their love of minimalism, and applied it to the form and function of the cabin’s design. Their “less is more” and anti-consumerism philosophies went hand-in-hand with sustainability, and they thought long and hard about how to deliver on those concepts for their business.

They also took on a very opportunistic building approach — what materials were available, they used. They embraced a minimal palette of simple, off-the-shelf materials that were sourced locally.

During construction they used the standard sizes of lumber in the most optimal ways, so they weren’t making cuts and creating scraps that would be thrown away. For instance, the cabin sits on two, 24-foot beams, and they chose that footprint because that was the largest beam size available at their local lumber yard.

The 834-square-foot cabin uses simple geometry with a standing-seam metal shed roof that facilitates water runoff, which is then captured in a gutter system and transferred into a 1,000-gallon cistern. “Having a fixed water source is impactful in how you think about consumption,” Romanowicz said. “It changes how you do the dishes and take showers.” The system also treats all their gray water, so it returns to the earth clean.

On the inside the couple was drawn to the concept of “comfortable minimalism.” To achieve coziness, they used textured materials to add an organic warmth. Pine plywood walls were lightly finished and paired with slightly brighter white-washed pine plywood floors.

To enhance the cabin’s open-concept layout, they limited the size of sleeping quarters to maximize the communal living area. Rather than create a bedroom, there’s a queen-sized alcove bed built into a wall. And a small neighboring vestibule with a pocket door fits a crib or twin bunkbeds.

The small, six-foot kitchenette comprised of three wall cabinets and three base cabinets is off the main living space and the cozy bathroom is just big enough to fit a full-sized tub, compost toilet, and sink.

In the end, Romanowicz and Kardon created a low-maintenance getaway that also includes the comforts of home. And they figured out how to share their knowledge with other intrepid would-be builders.

“We used simple and inexpensive materials so there wasn’t a lot of preciousness around that,” Romanowicz said. “If the siding starts to weather, it’s not the end of the world.”

Learn more about Den: A DIY Cabin Brand Is Selling $99 A-Frame Plans

Also Appears In

The Cofounders of Den, a DIY Cabin Startup, Share a Peek Into Their Catskills Retreat