Occupation

Barnwood Connoissuer
Reality TV Star

Home

Lewisburg, WV

Booking Agent

Cindy Lavender-Bowe cindy@barnwoodliving.com

Mark began as a coal miner and keeps his blue-collar roots close to his heart and in everything he does. He worked in the mines while completing his Bachelor’s degree at West Virginia University’s College of Business and Economics. He also holds a Master’s degree in Safety Management, also from WVU.

In 1996, Mark created his business, Antique Cabins & Barns, where he and his crew rescue pioneer-era structures and frames to give them new life as parts of buildings and homes across the country. In 2013, Mark took this business and went on to host and star in the 17-seasons-strong Magnolia Network hit “Barnwood Builders.” He and his longtime crew have won the hearts of loyal viewers who celebrate the forgotten arts and pioneer ingenuity they work hard to preserve. Commanding over 1 million households each Sunday evening, the crew’s antics and ability to transcend politics, religion, and class to connect with real Americans, no matter their walk of life, secures the popularity of this docu-series to the popularity of this docu-series that remains the most-watched show in the DIY network’s history.

Over a career spanning thirty years, Mark has built and explored, pushed limits and discovered that the route to success is often outside the box. He’s honed traditional old-world skills and had the fortune to work on exceptional projects. Mark has replaced a slate roof on Andrew Johnson’s house, hand-blown glass, made bricks, built houses without a single nail, hand-cut stone from a cliffside to erect a chimney, made cedar shakes, and forged his own tools in the blacksmith shop he built. Mark has stood inside Native American cliff dwellings that less than 100 people have visited in 10,000 years and discovered Finnish settlements in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Uncovering the how and why—reanimating history not just explaining it—is what ignites Mark, and it’s what keeps his audience leaning in to see more.

In resurrecting the past, Mark lights on ways to build for the future. He has repurposed a shipping container as a log cabin and invented a folding house. He holds the patent on a R300, tornado-proof, hurricane-proof, and fireproof house design. Mark seeks to change the way we think about housing and shelter forever, but to do that, he returns to the past again and again to find the way forward.

Mark is simultaneously a fierce businessman and soulful philosopher, with a penchant for a good punchline. He is a storyteller, rooted firmly in the stories of his own rise, a laborer, still cleaning the dirt from his fingernails, and a seer  with a keen eye for what’s next.  He’s a natural charmer who can read a room, or a person, in a split-second. His secret? Paying attention to the details and looking for the connections. This isn’t unrelated to his ability to uncover the stories in the walls of our oldest human dwellings. It’s all connected, which is the main concept of what’s behind everything Mark does.