When Sally Stetson first saw mock-ups of the kind of modular home she now lives in, she thought, “Mm, no.” The graphic designer and Vermont Crafts Council board member has a taste for cheerful colors and beautiful handmade objects.
She wasn’t impressed by the renderings of unremarkable rectangular boxes with shed roofs, standard siding and a jumble of differently sized windows that were on the website of VerMod, the Wilder company that would eventually produce the dwelling that Stetson, 65, and her partner, Peter Dodge, 70, now call home. The style looked “like a single-wide trailer,” Stetson recalled during a recent tour of the house, which sits in the Morrisville hills above Stowe.
But the couple had already considered every option — buying a house in good shape, restoring a crumbling one, building new — and modular homes were, by comparison, far cheaper. Additionally, Stetson and Dodge were interested in the extreme efficiency of VerMod’s product, and they didn’t need a lot of room. The couple met hiking eight years ago and lived apart in fairly limited spaces until they moved into their modular home in January 2023.
“I was tired of seeing these 8,000-square-foot homes with no efficiency,” Stetson said of their search.
Their house is the exact opposite: 1,480 square feet, tightly insulated and powered solely by electricity from a small solar array on the property. Their August electricity bill — which covers heat and air conditioning from a heat pump, an advanced air-exchange system called energy recovery ventilation, hot water, lights, all appliances, and a charger for their Chevrolet Bolt — was $2.32.
Since construction, they’ve generated two-thirds of their power; the rest comes from the grid. In summer, the solar panels often produce more electricity than needed. The couple sell some back to the grid and store the rest in a Tesla battery bank in the house’s utility room — useful during the area’s frequent power outages.
Like all modular homes, this one is made of boxes whose width and length fit the legal limits for flatbed trucking. They were constructed in a climate-controlled environment in about four months and arrived on-site on a scheduled date, already outfitted with all windows, floors, tiling, cabinetry and appliances.
The house’s three modules — two side by side lengthwise and one positioned like an end cap — were lowered by crane onto a cement foundation. Porch modules were added on the front and back, and Dodge built an extended viewing deck. In three days, VerMod sealed the joints between the modules, trimmed out the inside openings between them and anchor-bolted everything to the foundation. All that was needed after delivery was to hire an electrician and a plumber for hookups, including to the existing well and septic.
Getting to that point wasn’t quite so simple. The couple began by purchasing their seven-acre plot with Stetson’s 30-year-old horse, Dancer, and pony, Cowboy, in mind. They cleared some trees and decided to site the house on a crest of ledge rock.
Then Dodge worked with VerMod for about a year to create a custom house. A former ski racer and longtime head coach of the Dartmouth College men’s Alpine team, he has built several houses over the years as a general contractor and had already designed a custom modular home in West Lebanon, N.H., with the Claremont, N.H., company Preferred Building Systems.
He steered Stetson toward VerMod this time in part because of its products’ modern look: shed roofs, clean lines and little fuss. Up End This in Johnson makes a similar product in micro form. Other modular-house companies, such as Huntington Homes in East Montpelier, create traditional gabled structures such as New England Capes and colonials.
While some VerMod home owners have experienced structural issues with their homes, as Seven Days reported in 2019, Dodge was well versed in construction methods and able to visit the production site frequently as well as consult directly with VerMod’s founding owner, Steve Davis. (Davis has since retired and the business is permanently closed.)
Using VerMod’s basic units, Dodge designed the house’s plan, including upgrading the windows to European-style tilt-and-turns and creating a custom pantry so that the kitchen could have open art shelves and be contiguous with the main room.
The resulting feel is far from manufactured. The exterior is clad in standing-seam metal topped by shiplap pine with a Vermont Natural Coatings gray stain. The colors blend seamlessly with the zero-maintenance landscaping of gravel, Dutch white clover and bunched ornamental grasses. A stretch of exposed ledge in front of the entry functions like a fun welcome mat.
Entering the house through a small covered porch, a visitor is presented at once with a beautiful southerly view opposite. It’s visible through a large 8-by-10-foot sliding glass door and a roofed deck that overlooks a long field lined with woods. The sense of interior spaciousness is deceiving — you are only looking at the width of two flatbed trucks — and it’s heightened by the shed roof, which angles up toward the view to a height of nine and a half feet.
The entrance foyer contains a bathroom and mudroom for the couple’s outdoor apparel, including for Stetson’s road biking and Dodge’s skiing. Beyond, the main living area opens up, extending to either side in one long, open stretch. With a swivel of the head, visitors can take in the kitchen, long central dining table and sitting room.
Stetson, who works on everything from brand logos to art direction to interior consulting through Sally Stetson Design, used a spectrum of blues and oranges throughout to create an inviting atmosphere with pop. Most walls are white, but Stetson painted two a rich greenish blue that reminds her of underwater river rocks. The hue picks up related shades in an abstract artwork belonging to Dodge and a trio of abstract oils painted by Stetson, who works at an easel in her office. An orange accent wall in the kitchen echoes a rust-and-black handmade raku bowl on the opposite side of the room.
The most prominent visual element is Stetson’s arrangement of overlapping aluminum circles and discs, which takes up the entire wall above the couch. She gave the designs and metal sheets to MSI, a water-jet cutter in Morrisville, to fabricate. Each element is suspended by two fishing wires from a thin curtain track hidden behind a panel, which makes them appear to float. She can alter the arrangement merely by sliding the track grommets back and forth.
The house has a main bedroom, two full baths and two offices, one of which doubles as a guest room. In the bedroom, a horizontal three-panel window looks out on the upper sections of trees, giving the room a “tree house” feel, Stetson said. The effect is heightened by the raised bed, which sits atop a smaller storage base.
Storage is at a premium. A separate garage the couple built helps, but much of its space is apportioned to a small, two-story apartment that they rent on Airbnb. In the main house, his-and-her bedroom closets each measure 6 feet 8 inches by 3 feet 2 inches.
“We really edited out [our possessions],” Stetson said. “There’s a place for everything and everything in its place, as they say.” Recently, she received a new raincoat in the mail; by the end of the day, she had cleaned, folded and donated her old one.
Stetson and Dodge plan to age in place in their modular home, which is why they chose a single-story structure (most modular units can be stacked) and a walk-in shower off the main bedroom. All told, the home is a savvy investment: At the time they were looking, new builds cost $400 to $600 per square foot; their modular costs were $350, with “twice the efficiency,” Dodge said.
It’s also — despite its size — a comfortable, airy and delightfully decorated forever home.
“Even though I’m a visual person, I was always worried it was going to feel dark and low-ceilinged,” Stetson said. “It is way better and more fantastic than I ever imagined.”
Dodge added, “It was what I had planned, and it worked.”
The original print version of this article was headlined “Little Boxes on the Hillside | A modular home in Morrisville has a small footprint with big payoffs”
This article appears in Nest — Fall 2025.
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