Four decades of building, repairing, and restoring across the Hudson Valley.
The Work
Severin has spent his career in the Hudson Valley — framing new houses, repairing old timber frames, managing complex renovations, and working on properties from modest farmhouses to significant historic landmarks. He knows how buildings go together, what they cost, and who does good work in this region.
Earlier in his career he also worked in New York City on interior renovations and ran a cabinetry business serving high-end interiors — work that sharpened his eye for detailing, millwork, and the coordination a project demands.
Across forty years, that has meant hundreds of structures and nearly every kind of building problem — and a deep, first-hand familiarity with the trades, materials, and methods particular to this part of the world.
The Region
Severin knows the Hudson Valley the way only someone who has worked here for decades can.
How weather works on older buildings, season after season — and what it asks of materials and detailing.
The particular character of local stone, timber, and masonry, and how each behaves over time.
The landscape of review — which boards matter, which rules apply, and who to work with.
Heritage
A family built around craft — and song.
Severin is a descendant of the von Trapp family. His mother, Johanna von Trapp, was a daughter of Captain Georg von Trapp and one of the children who sang with the family on the concert tours later known the world over through The Sound of Music.
After the family left Austria and built a new life abroad, what carried through the generations was less the fame than the temperament behind it — a respect for craftsmanship, for doing things properly, and for the character of old buildings and the traditions that made them. That inheritance still runs through the way Severin approaches his work today.