A personal note from Andy Stauffer
However You’re Feeling Right Now, It’s Okay.
If our note found its way to you in the neighborhood, this page is its longer form — no pressure and no obligation, just what we've learned walking beside Colorado families after a fire.
Dear friend,
Losing your home is one of the hardest things a family can face — and whatever you are feeling right now is completely valid.
Over my three decades as a builder, I’ve walked beside families after both the Waldo Canyon and Black Forest fires, learning that everyone finds their way forward in their own way.
If you feel overwhelmed, you don’t have to face the insurance maze alone. I work very closely with you and your insurance company to maximize your policy limits, ensuring you get every dollar possible.
Together, we will design and build a home that will be part of your family’s future — a place where you will build new memories.
There is no pressure and no obligation. When you’re ready, I’m just a phone call away.
With you,
Andy Stauffer
President, Stauffer & Sons
719-492-2639 · andy@staufferandsons.com
The record
Two fires. Twenty-one homes. A community that rebuilt.
What follows isn’t a brochure — it’s what actually happened after the Waldo Canyon and Black Forest fires, year by year, with the news coverage that documented it.
2012 · Waldo Canyon
One year after the fire, we handed back the keys.
On June 26, 2012, the Waldo Canyon fire destroyed 80% of the 178 homes in the Parkside neighborhood of Mountain Shadows in less than two hours. Just over one year later, we handed a family the keys to their brand-new home on that same ground — a rebuild we called the Parkside Revival, and the first home we ever entered in the Colorado Springs Parade of Homes.
One detail from that rebuild says more than any award: a tree the family had planted for their kids burned in the fire. We dropped it and milled it into the mantel over the fireplace in the new home — and their photo of the family with the old tree sits on that mantel today. The Gazette told that story.
2013 · Black Forest
Then the Black Forest fire took nearly 500 more.
A year after Waldo Canyon, the Black Forest fire burned through the pines north of the city. We went to work for families like Bill & Linda, whose home burned with flames already on the property by the time they got back to it. Six months later to the day, FOX21 filmed on their rebuild site — where the loss of the trees had opened up something the family never had before: a panoramic view of Pikes Peak.
By the spring of 2014, Andy had walked sixteen families through rebuilds across the two burn areas — twenty-one homes in all by the time the work was done — and had started fire mitigation on his own heavily treed acreage, because after that many rebuilds you stop believing it can’t be you.
2013–2014 · Tragedy into treasure
The burned trees became buildings.
While rebuilding a client’s home in Black Forest, we felled the fire-killed ponderosas on their property, trucked them to Venetucci Farm — the community farm that has given pumpkins to a million Colorado Springs kids since the 1950s — and milled them on site with a portable sawmill. That scorched lumber restored the farm’s century-old asparagus shed and finished the interior of its new barn. KRDO NewsChannel 13 covered it: “one construction company turning tragedy into treasure, one scorched log at a time.”
The Black Forest Community Foundation read about that work and hired us as general contractor for the New Log School Park pavilion — a gathering place for the community that had lost the most homes.
2014–2015 · The record went national
The rebuilds became the story.
NBC News told the national rebuilding story from one of our Black Forest job sites. Luxury Daily interviewed Andy on rebuilding cherished homes, and Builder Magazine brought him in on building defenses against exterior fire — hydrant proximity, fire-truck access, siting for egress — the same judgment that now goes into every home we place on a wooded lot. Colorado Springs honored the work too: our Black Forest rebuild for Kristian & Jaenette was entered in the 2014 Parade of Homes.
Experience you can count on
We’ve walked this road with Colorado families before.
- Building Colorado families’ homes since 1999
- Over 100 custom homes, barns, shops & garages completed
- Full-service design/build construction firm
- We work directly with you and your insurance company
- A+ rating with the Better Business Bureau
- Rebuilt 21 homes after the Waldo Canyon & Black Forest fires
When you’re ready to read more
The practical side of rebuilding, in one place.
We keep a full guide to rebuilding after a wildfire in Colorado — why a rebuild is a brand-new home rather than a repair, how the insurance and paperwork actually go, and answers to the questions families ask us most. Read it whenever it’s useful; it isn’t going anywhere.
