The People Behind the Craft
The designers and builders who turn backyard visions into immersive experiences engineered to be enjoyed for generations.
Meet the Crew
Every Board Placed for the Way You Live
Northern Outdoor Living is led by owner Dan Pettit and a small, dedicated crew based in Hastings, MN. We design and build custom outdoor living spaces across the Greater Twin Cities, and we treat each project as a chance to create something no one has seen before.
Our work is meticulous by nature. Perfect board alignment, fully skirted framing, and hidden serviceable details are the standard, not the exception. When you work with us, you work with people genuinely invested in getting every detail exactly right.
A Musician’s Ear, Turned to Building
The Instinct Behind Every Build
Before Dan Pettit built decks, he built songs. As a teenager in Iowa he was already performing several nights a week, and he later moved to the Twin Cities to study music seriously. To support that path, he took a job laboring for a carpenter — and approached it the same way he’d approached an instrument: paying close attention, practicing on his own time, and pushing to get better at the fundamentals.
That eye for detail carried him onto high-end builds in Minneapolis’s most demanding neighborhoods, long before Northern Outdoor Living existed. When his family grew, music stepped back — but the instinct behind it didn’t disappear. It resurfaced in how he approaches every outdoor space: thinking in terms of layering, balance, and atmosphere, the same way he once thought about a performance.
That’s the instinct behind every build today — treating light, shadow, and material as instruments for creating a feeling, not just finishing a structure.
Let’s Create Something Together
Share your vision with Dan and the team, and we’ll map out an outdoor living space designed around the way you want to live and gather.