Data scientist and entrepreneur Vlad Dubovskiy grew tired of New York City’s bustling scene and spending hours on end in front of his laptop each day. He wanted to live in “beautiful natural settings” away from the city and his computer. So, he began building his own tiny house.
“I knew nothing about construction. So this was one of those things where I would just spend weeks in a YouTube rabbit hole watching other guys who build tiny homes on wheels,” says Vlad.
Once his 150-square-foot tiny home on wheels was complete, he hit the road, traveling across the United States, stopping in places like Rocky Mountain National Park, Joshua Tree, and the Grand Canyon.
Vlad was even featured on HGTV’s Tiny House, Big Living due to the work-life balance design his tiny home provided. The home, which he recently sold, had a picturesque workspace with a large window, a loft hammock, and a hanging garden.
Tiny home living allowed Vlad the freedom and space he was looking for—something he wanted to share with others. It also planted the seed for his next business venture, ELMNTL Shelters & Saunas, a prefab manufacturer building eco-friendly dwellings.
Vlad paired agile development and rapid prototyping cycles from his software background with beautiful designs and his experience crafting small spaces. He founded Longmont-based ELMNTL in 2017.
“[The business] was informed by this desire to bring beauty into the world and also allow more people to experience what I’ve experienced, which is to get out to the great outdoors in a beautiful place that really feels like home, or that hugs you in a way through its design,” Vlad says.
ELMNTL began with a bespoke portfolio of cabins and saunas in Colorado’s mountains and has since transformed into a prefab manufacturer of cabins, ADUs, and saunas. The company offers 12 base design options, starting at $36,000, and hundreds of customizable options.
Its structures are built at the company’s facility in Longmont in about seven months. Once the dwelling’s walls, windows, doors, and other components are brought to a customer’s home or plot of land, installation takes just four hours, says Vlad.
The quick build and installation process is just one way Vlad is using his business to change the user experience in the construction industry. Rather than working with unpredictable or overrun budgets and timelines, which are typical for new builds, ELMNTL offers fixed-price guarantees and timelines up front.
But ELMNTL’s ethos extends beyond numbers and dates. The heart of the company is building beautiful structures made for and from the planet and bringing people back to nature and the “spirit of adventure,” says Vlad.
“We weren’t built for inboxes and asphalt. We were made to gather around fire, to feel the bite of wind, the weight of stone,” he says, referring to a poem about his company. “ … We craft spaces and tools not to escape life, but to return to it—to the grit and grace of living closer to what matters.”
Be it an ADU or backyard office in a Denver backyard or a cabin in the Olympic Mountains of Washington, ELMNTL’s builds enhance customers’ surrounding landscapes and environments. The company’s designs, created by head of design Jonno Holden and Vlad, draw inspiration from the rugged beauty of Colorado and feature expansive floor-to-ceiling windows that bring the outside in. Each sauna, ADU, and cabin is made from “pure materials” that are safe to breathe and be around, Vlad says.
“We go above and beyond,” he says. Each build meets the most stringent energy codes in Colorado and features airtight doors and windows, and a continuous insulation blanket that makes living comfortable and heating the space affordable. “We don’t use any plastics, and that’s a little philosophical; we don’t like the idea that a building cannot go back to the earth in totality. … We want to make sure the building has an end of life that ends in the earth or can be repurposed for future builds.”
As ELMNTL continues to design and build spaces around how people interact with nature, it’s also expanding. The company recently launched a turnkey service for hospitality clients and a new cabin design, Shelter S2, that features glass on three sides of the dwelling. It’s also offering more module options that show how several cabins or ADUs can be fitted together and grow as clients’ needs and families evolve.
In the near future, ELMNTL will offer new roof designs and quadruple its capacity, expanding its physical footprint in Longmont.
Learn more at ELMNTL.io.