Why We Built a Studio in a Kentucky Barn.

The first question people ask is, "You're really in a barn?" The second is, "Why?"

The answer isn’t a business plan. It’s a story about a journey I never expected to take.

I spent years in the glass towers and trendy lofts of Chicago and Indianapolis. I lived the agency life, and I know the game. I also know the crippling overhead and the creative compromises that come with it. But I never planned a grand escape. In fact, I never planned on Kentucky at all.

Life brought us to the Cincinnati area for my wife's medical residency. The plan was four years, then on to the next city. But a funny thing happened—we fell in love with the place. The people, the energy, and the rolling green hills of Northern Kentucky just across the river. What was supposed to be a temporary stop became home.

A trip to Ireland around that time awakened something in me—a deep, almost primal love for things built of stone. The ancient walls, the sturdy farmhouses; it all felt strangely familiar. I later learned why. The hills of Appalachia and the crags of Ireland are geological cousins, distant relatives of the same ancient landmass, the Central Pangean Mountains, that broke apart millions of years ago. That feeling of connection was real.

Back home, a PBS special caught our eye one night. It told the story of German immigrants who settled this very part of Kentucky in the mid-1800s, building their farmsteads from the abundant local limestone, just as they had for centuries in their homeland. The seed was planted.

With a little bit of timely luck or was it fate? We found our property. It had one of those historic stone houses and on it, sat the barn. It was the stuff of dreams or nightmares, depending on the day. But tucked inside the barn was a small, modern shed with heating and air conditioning, which the previous owner had used as a woodshop. I cleaned it up, ran some ethernet cable, and for over two years, that was the Tenet studio.

I worked from that little room, surrounded by the massive, decaying beauty of the larger structure. Every day, its issues and my dreams of what it could be stared me down. Eventually, they caught up with me.

The laundry list of problems was miles long. The stone foundation was collapsing. The bases of the huge oak beams had rotted out. The unanimous advice from everyone who looked at it was to tear it down.

That just doesn't fly with me. You don't throw away that kind of history.

So, I took several months off from client work. I learned from YouTube videos and weekend seminars how to repoint stone, meticulously matching the original lime mortar. I worked side-by-side with my good friend and carpenter as we rebuilt the foundation, replaced the beams, and re-clad the exterior in white oak, stained to match the ghost of the faded red that had protected it for over a century. We saved every original board we could, returning them to their rightful place.

This barn is our entire philosophy made real. The patience of working from a small shed for two years, waiting for the right moment. The refusal to take the easy way out when everyone tells you to. The meticulous, hands-on craft of bringing something back from the brink. It’s the same obsession we bring to every frame we create.

Today, instead of a structure left to collapse, this barn has a new legacy. Fiber optic cables run next to hand-hewn beams. Inside these 160-year-old walls, we use the best tools on earth to build the future. We are grounded in history, and busy adding to it.