The Designer Behind Trilith and Serenbe Is Rethinking Modular Homes | Behind The Build

Lew Oliver helped design Trilith, Serenbe, and Vickery, some of the most sought-after walkable communities in Georgia. His next act might surprise you: modular homes.

In this episode of Behind The Build, I'm in Clarkesville, Georgia near Lake Burton with renowned town planner and designer Lew Oliver. We talk about the Lew Oliver MOD collection, modular homes designed with the same classical detail as his custom work, built to make walkable neighborhoods attainable for people who have been priced out of them. We also walk the Burton community, tour his newly renovated office, and get into his new millwork collection with Magbee Contractors Supply, including a wall that exists nowhere else in the world.

What's inside:

 ✅ The MOD collection: why modular construction is not a commodity, and how Lew is designing modular homes with high-end finishes and solid construction

 ✅ How modular homes can cut construction cost and cycle time so communities like Trilith and Serenbe aren't only for the affluent

 ✅ Traditional neighborhood development and new urbanism: 100 houses on 15 acres instead of 100, preserving forests while building real community

 ✅ The one-of-a-kind poplar tongue and groove wall from the Lew Oliver Millwork Collection

 ✅ Cavetto crown molding with Egyptian origins and baseboards modeled after column bases

 ✅ Why Lew designs windows with the golden rectangle, the same proportion used on the Parthenon, and why Pella Windows is his top pick

 ✅ A custom 42-inch by 9-foot thermally modified ash door by Magbee, kiln-cooked at 850 degrees with zero chemicals

 ✅ Thermally modified pine floors, Portola Roman clay finishes, Emtek Hardware, and exposed original brick

 ✅ Roofscaping: the community design detail most people never notice

 ✅ A shou sugi ban table finished on a barbecue grill by Deadwood Tables

Featuring:
 Lew Oliver, Lew Oliver Inc.
 Liz Treadwell, Lew Oliver Inc.
 Austin Treadwell, Builder
 Magbee Contractors Supply
 Craig Decker, Deadwood Tables

Explore the Lew Oliver Millwork Collection at https://magbeeluxury.com/the-lew-oliver-collection/

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Transcript

Lew Oliver Behind The Build - Draft 3 - July 10, 2026

[00:00:00] Stefanie Couch: Welcome to Behind the Build with Stefanie Couch. Today we're in Clarkesville, Georgia, near Lake Burton at Burton Community Subdivision. I personally think it is the most beautiful place in the world, but I'm a little biased. I'm with Lew Oliver and we're standing in front of, it's a pretty magnificent wall.

[00:00:16] Stefanie Couch: Tell me what we're looking at here, Lew. 

[00:00:18] Lew Oliver: This is a tongue-and-groove paneling that is suitable for interior or exterior use and this is made out of five quarter by eight material. 

[00:00:30] Stefanie Couch: You drew this molding, so this is one of your profiles in your new Lew Oliver millwork collection, which you're partnering with Magbee Contractor Supply.

[00:00:37] Stefanie Couch: This is the only wall like this in the world right now, right? 

[00:00:39] Lew Oliver: It's the only wall in the world like this right now. This wall is amazingly made out of poplar, and poplar is generally a paint-grade material. Mm-hmm. But once we got this on the wall, uh, Austin, our builder, was like, "It'd be a real shame to paint this."

[00:00:56] Lew Oliver: And so- Yeah, it is 

[00:00:57] Stefanie Couch: so 

[00:00:57] Lew Oliver: beautiful ... we're, we're leaving it alone because we think the, uh, variation in the color is beautiful. 

[00:01:01] Stefanie Couch: And this crown at the top here you also drew? 

[00:01:04] Lew Oliver: Yes. That is what's called a cavetto mold- Mm ... because it's gouged. 

[00:01:08] Stefanie Couch: Yes. 

[00:01:09] Lew Oliver: It has Egyptian origins, and it's meant to really elevate moldings back to where they were 100 years ago.

[00:01:18] Stefanie Couch: Well, let's walk through here. Show me some more about this house. So I see this curved wall here, and then you've got this amazing circle window with a view that looks like it's never gonna be obscured. 

[00:01:28] Lew Oliver: This view will never be obscured. The casings are from our collection, the plinths, the baseboards, and all of this really works together and it, it creates a cohesive package that really celebrates and amplifies the spaces.

[00:01:45] Lew Oliver: We do communities that are affluent. We do communities that are more attainable. With our new MOD collection, we're really wanting to give school teachers the option of also affording walkable- Mm ... neighborhoods. And to me, it's very important. We're at an intersection in our country where we've largely lost the idea of communities.

[00:02:14] Lew Oliver: Most people don't have that experience. They have the experience of driving through their subdivision, driving to the mall, driving to work. And so we've, we've really replaced the idea of community with a, uh, driving culture. When I go down to 85, I look at the 20% of forest that are left- Mm ... rapidly evaporating.

[00:02:40] Lew Oliver: And when you hear about new development coming in, you know that a forest is gonna be taken out, leveled, and the, uh, freeway littered with billboards, and the rest of it just become something that is production and entirely based on money- 

[00:02:59] Stefanie Couch: Mm-hmm ... 

[00:02:59] Lew Oliver: and market needs. And these kind of places do provide housing for people, but they're, they're never soulful places, and the element of nature is almost entirely removed- Mm-hmm

[00:03:12] Lew Oliver: unless, unless it's something that's just cannot be used anyway. And so this is a development pattern that does not have to exist. There's an alternate called traditional neighborhood development. There's another word for that, new urbanism. The mission is to create walkable communities with real town centers, with significant architecture.

[00:03:38] Lew Oliver: And these places are more compact, so they encourage walkability, they encourage social interaction, and they stimulate you to want to walk through the town. The nice thing about this kind of compact development is when you take 100 houses, and normally w- that would take 100 acres to put 100 houses, you can do it in 15 acres.

[00:04:08] Lew Oliver: Mm-hmm. And that enables you to create civic spaces, and it, it enables you to preserve massive amounts of countryside, whether it's agriculture or woodlands. You can save all of that and have a great, um, sense of community and a great economic model at the same time 

[00:04:31] Stefanie Couch: One of the things that we've worked on together that I'm so excited to see come to fruition is your MOD collection.

[00:04:37] Stefanie Couch: So you have designed some beautiful homes that are modular homes, but not what you think of when you think of modular homes. They're actually so classically well-designed. Tell me a little bit about what is MOD collection, what inspired you to create it, and what's the future for MOD collection? 

[00:04:55] Lew Oliver: Oh, thank you.

[00:04:55] Lew Oliver: And, and to be transparent, Stefanie has helped us with marketing materials for MOD and conceiving of the logo, the graphics, a l- lot of the thought that has gone into this in changing the public perception of modular construction. I think the public to date thinks of modular construction as a commodity, as something less than.

[00:05:24] Lew Oliver: Stefanie's group has helped us reconceive of that notion that MOD, uh, the, the name of this is Lew Oliver MOD, uh, short for modular, can be thought of as superior construction- Mm-hmm ... and with really high quality, elegant finishes, solid construction. And MOD will be something that we can use to populate our, um, walkable neighborhood plans.

[00:05:57] Lew Oliver: MOD is also something we are hoping that will, um, reduce the cost of construction, reduce the construction cycle so that communities like Trilith, like Serenbe, like Vickery, which to date are, for the most part, high-end, even though we have small houses there, they're still high-end houses, uh, and they take a certain level of affluence to, to be a part of.

[00:06:25] Lew Oliver: MOD is something that we're hoping will, will make, uh, desirable neighborhoods much more attainable- Mm-hmm ... for people like school teachers- 

[00:06:36] Stefanie Couch: Yeah ... 

[00:06:36] Lew Oliver: which, which to date have been priced out of these kind of places. This is a huge challenge, and, and for me, it's the thing I'm most passionate about. Do I love doing custom houses?

[00:06:47] Lew Oliver: Yes. Do I love expensive finishes? Yes. But what drives me to continue in my career is to, to make excellent places that are more attainable, environmentally friendly- And incredibly stylish. I want those places to be attainable to most people. Just like animals live in nests- Mm-hmm ... and ants live in anthills, and, and birds live in flocks, hu- humans also are part of the ecosystem, but we've destroyed our own habitat.

[00:07:21] Austin Treadwell: Yeah. 

[00:07:22] Lew Oliver: And so these new walkable communities are an attempt to bring back our habitat and, at the same time, respect the natural world, um, that our own habitat is in. And the beauty of, of walkable neighborhoods, anytime you can condense development, you can also save a lot of natural areas at the same time, that you can play one off the other.

[00:07:48] Stefanie Couch: Yeah. And this area is somewhere where I grew up and I love, so I like seeing things like this be preserving what's beautiful about it, because it doesn't need much. The backdrop is- Mm ... pretty perfect as it is. 

[00:07:58] Lew Oliver: Yes. 

[00:07:59] Stefanie Couch: One of the things I admire the most about your work is you always take such great care on the windows and doors, and your grid patterns and all of those things work so beautifully.

[00:08:08] Lew Oliver: I love Pella Windows. I have very few upper brands that I choose. Pella is at the top of the food chain to me, because it's a great product, varieties of colors, and just incredibly well-made, and a very old company that I, I'm proud to be a part of. These windows- Are, um, designed to be the golden rectangle, which is a ratio of 1.618 to 1.

[00:08:36] Lew Oliver: And the golden rectangle is considered the most perfect proportion in the world. 

[00:08:41] Stefanie Couch: Mm-hmm. 

[00:08:41] Lew Oliver: It, it was used by the Egyptians and the Greeks on buildings like the Parthenon. 

[00:08:46] Stefanie Couch: I love how thoughtful you are and how you bring history in, and things that seem so simple like, "Oh, that window's just there." So pensive in the way that you put this together.

[00:08:55] Stefanie Couch: Beautiful. 

[00:08:55] Lew Oliver: And Liz Treadwell did a great job with color on this building. Mm-hmm. She, she does all our finishes and colors. And really, instead of doing the windows in a color or doing them in white or in black, she wanted to really blend the materiality of everything. The kitchen, we wanted to spatially drop the ceiling from this area to the kitchen and make the kitchen a little bit cozier.

[00:09:24] Lew Oliver: Instead of just the beam ceiling in the kitchen, I wanted to do something a little more complex. The door was something we worked on. We wanted something visually stunning. This door is 42 inches wide and 9 feet tall. 

[00:09:39] Stefanie Couch: Thermally modified ash on this door. Mm-hmm. And you've got this beautiful reeded detail.

[00:09:43] Stefanie Couch: Who made this for you? 

[00:09:45] Lew Oliver: Magbee out of Winder, Georgia made this door, and they are my go-to millwork supplier. They have old world craftsmanship. They're probably the most prominent old style millwork shop left in Atlanta. 

[00:10:01] Stefanie Couch: Yes, and this Lew Oliver Millwork collection in partnership with Magbee Contractor Supply, you have all different types of moldings that would fit different vernaculars, different house styles.

[00:10:11] Stefanie Couch: Yes. 

[00:10:11] Lew Oliver: You can choose these different types of moldings from this collection, along with transom windows, along with doors like this. 

[00:10:22] Stefanie Couch: Mm-hmm. 

[00:10:22] Lew Oliver: And you can put them together, they're pre-curated, to come up with a powerful kit of parts for moldings in a room. And what we're trying to do is make it easy to do powerful trim packages again.

[00:10:36] Stefanie Couch: One of my hallmark things about Lew Oliver that I love, the first time I ever saw this was at the Trilith properties, was we walked this subdivision, this beautiful community that you had built, and every single house was a totally different look. One might be modern, one was craftsman, one was Georgian.

[00:10:51] Stefanie Couch: So amazing. You've got incredible rock on the facade, and we're gonna go in here and see some details. 

[00:10:57] Lew Oliver: One thing you see at Burton is a variety of building styles. This house is definitely a much happier mountain house, because it has a much lighter palette and demeanor. But it's also anchored to the setting by the materiality, which is traditional Southern siding and native rock.

[00:11:19] Stefanie Couch: We come upstairs. 12-foot ceilings. This molding on the top from your collection is so stunning. 

[00:11:25] Lew Oliver: This is a part of the Lew Oliver Collection Magbee partnership. As most people call it crown molding, I would call it a cavetto molding. And the baseboards, the baseboards are very beefy. They are two-by-eights with a massive base cap, which is part of the collection, and that base cap is modeled after a column base.

[00:11:51] Lew Oliver: The cavetto molding, you appreciate it here, but you really see the profile in this inventive return that Austin and the, the trim carpenter cooked up. But what they did is they mitered it in on itself and created a return that really shows you the drama of the profile in little details like that. 

[00:12:14] Stefanie Couch: One of the things I like about how you've positioned these homes, and I know this was extremely intentional, there actually is a home on the other side of this house, which is kind of above it, but when you look out that kitchen window, you do not see that house.

[00:12:25] Lew Oliver: When you're looking at the mountains, you look in the foreground and you see these roofs, and there's a lot of repetition of forms. Mm-hmm. And so we call that roofscaping. And when you're doing a community, really the thing that's the most important is the roofscape and establishing almost a landscape quality- Mm

[00:12:47] Lew Oliver: to, to all of these forms 

[00:12:51] Stefanie Couch: We are here in Lew Oliver's new office. Austin Treworth, thanks for joining me on Behind the Build. Of course. We are gonna showcase some of the stuff that you did, but I wanna talk a little bit about this building first. This thing was horrible when you got it, huh? Tell me about it.

[00:13:04] Austin Treadwell: So it was, uh, it was awful. It was, uh, really old, two different units, uh, two different levels of the slab, and we came in here and just completely gutted, um, down to concrete and the roof above. Busted out this entire front entry and, uh, replaced the roof, and really just let it tell us what to do from there.

[00:13:24] Stefanie Couch: Yeah, it turned out beautifully, but I have some before pictures that tell me the story before wasn't so great. I wanna talk a little bit about the finishes here, 'cause you've got some cool stuff that you're showcasing. Mm-hmm. So we're here in Clarkesville, Georgia, and we are using some products that I haven't seen really before.

[00:13:39] Stefanie Couch: This door is actually a custom-made door by Magby Contractors Supply, and they've made this out of thermally modified ash, which- Yeah ... I've heard a lot about thermally modified. I haven't seen ash as much. 

[00:13:50] Austin Treadwell: Magby came in and, um, took measurements for what the space we had. What they do is they run the material through a kiln at 850 degrees.

[00:13:57] Stefanie Couch: Mm. 

[00:13:58] Austin Treadwell: Cooks out all the moisture content, all the sugars, and it's a, a chemically free way of doing pressure treating. Um, so Lew designed the door, uh, did a hand sketch, and Magby took it from there. This is Emtek Hardware. Liz really knocked it out of the park with the selection here- Mm-hmm ... and it goes, pairs perfectly well with the coloring of the wood.

[00:14:15] Stefanie Couch: Yeah, nothing better than that dark wood with that beautiful brass. Over here in the corner, you have left some of the original touches, which I love, 'cause a little kiss back to the past while you're framing up the future. Tell me what I'm looking at here with this exposed brick and this plaster. 

[00:14:30] Austin Treadwell: Yeah, so when we got to go in to demo, there was a lot of- It was in bad shape.

[00:14:35] Austin Treadwell: So a lot of original plaster and then you had a lot of it from different water issues and stuff had, had fallen apart- Mm-hmm ... and was just needing to be taken out anyway. Well, when we started getting into it, we realized there's beautiful original brick behind, and this is a brick structure building. So we took a couple hammers and opened up a couple more viewpoints to s- uh, bring more of that into play.

[00:14:58] Austin Treadwell: This is a Portola Mariposa. It's a Roman clay line that they have. It's a really great company out of California. Okay. It's a no-VOC product. Mm. And it, it's a basically a really viscous paint that goes and trowels on application. Okay. So you can get a lot of hand work on it, get a lot of texture, and it's a great way to do, um, plaster on a, you know, somewhat on a budget.

[00:15:19] Austin Treadwell: We really love the product. We did actually three different colors in this building. 

[00:15:23] Stefanie Couch: And you did actually use this in Burton, I saw earlier- Yeah ... on your, one of your hood vents as well. So it's super cool way to get a little bit of texture without doing a ton. I wanna come back over and talk a little bit about the floors here, 'cause we've got a moment in the foyer and then this entire building has beautiful floors that are actually thermally modified wood, and they're in pine.

[00:15:42] Austin Treadwell: It is a thermally modified pine, as you mentioned. We didn't want too new in the old space, so you do get some character in that soft wood. It does live. It, um, it comes in- Like a old feel too. Mm-hmm. So, so you don't get that stark, stark new, and it kinda gives that, you know, industrial, old feel to this 

[00:16:02] Stefanie Couch: spot.

[00:16:02] Stefanie Couch: Yeah, and I love how some of these little knots are peeking through here. Yeah. And we're in Georgia, and there's pine trees everywhere, Austin, so we gotta give a little bit of kiss to our natural landscape here. Of course. And this floor is doing that. What a beautiful moment. 

[00:16:15] Austin Treadwell: These are, uh, thermally modified windows, um, that Magbee did build custom for us.

[00:16:21] Austin Treadwell: Lets you get some privacy without closing off and get- working in a dingy, dark environment. 

[00:16:25] Stefanie Couch: So tell me about these beautiful live edge desk. Mm-hmm. These are so great. Floating desk. A local artisan made these for you? 

[00:16:32] Austin Treadwell: Yes. Craig Decker with Deadwood Tables. These are walnut tables. I saw them for the first time when they were installed and was more than thrilled with the final product.

[00:16:40] Stefanie Couch: Yeah. Um- And you've got one area here that has the storage space. Mm-hmm. And then on this side you've got just some exposed area. I, I love the way it turned out. I think it's exquisite. Lew, you partnered with some amazing people to make this office a reality. I see this really cool table. So tell me a little bit about this, 'cause you said this was a local artisan?

[00:16:58] Lew Oliver: Well, yes. My partner John and I have a place on the side of a mountain nearby, and this is a tree that died and we had to have it cut down. Okay. And, uh, it was just on the forest floor rotting, and it was like, "This has a great form. We're gonna take this to our friend Craig Decker with Deadwood Tables and see if he can do a shou sugi ban finish."

[00:17:21] Stefanie Couch: Yeah. 

[00:17:22] Lew Oliver: And I brought it in there and he was like, "Never done this," because he does live edge wood table tops. 

[00:17:28] Stefanie Couch: Uh-huh. 

[00:17:29] Lew Oliver: And he said, "But I'll give it a try." And so the next time I went in, he had given it a try. He was working on it. He had put it on his barbecue grill- ... and was grilling it. 

[00:17:39] Stefanie Couch: Wow. 

[00:17:40] Lew Oliver: And it turned out like this- Yeah

[00:17:42] Lew Oliver: with a lot of processing. This is 

[00:17:44] Stefanie Couch: so cool. So 

[00:17:44] Lew Oliver: that's a fun- And- ... local piece ... 

[00:17:46] Stefanie Couch: I just saw that actually online, that they burn this and that's how they get this finish- Yeah ... is they actually burn the wood. 

[00:17:52] Lew Oliver: Yeah. 

[00:17:53] Stefanie Couch: Well, thank you so much, Lew, for giving us a tour of your office. Yeah. And it is, it's turned out exquisite.

[00:17:57] Stefanie Couch: We love it. And if you're interested in, uh, mimicking any of these moldings or millwork in your space, you can go to magbeeluxury.com and find the Lew Oliver collection.