October 28, 2025
Lee Steiner has me fantasizing about spending a few million dollars to build a house from scratch. I’m not saying I will, but I am very inspired to do so. You know, the way Chris Hemsworth inspires me to have his body, but then I eat an entire carrot cake.
We meet on a quintessential late-September morning at a blasted-out hilltop in Kent, one of two sites he’s shaping along the same private road. Standing beside a poured foundation with mountains of displaced earth around us, the 56-year-old paints a vivid picture of what’s yet to come for his clients: main house, garage, breezeway, westward views, gym, infinity pool. Lee’s so detailed, I can’t help but picture myself living here happily ever after.
And then Lee ruins my fantasy by talking about things that make my head hurt. Gradients, frost lines, drainage, elevations, stuff that would confuse Russell Crowe’s character in A Beautiful Mind. I try to nod along like I’m some sort of off-duty environmental engineer, but the tiny black flies aren’t exactly helping me look intelligent. They dive-bomb my corneas, seemingly intent upon entering my cranium. I swat them away as Lee and his chinstrap-bearded sons, Riley and Zach, regard my flailing with faint smirks.
“I walk onto raw land, and it’s a puzzle,” Lee says. “Everything’s already there; we just have to figure out the best use of it.”
As puzzles go, it does seem like a pretty fun one, situating a beautiful home in a beautiful part of the world. Maybe it’s even more exciting than completing Wordle in two moves. Maybe. I ask Lee if he ever turns off the part of his brain that calculates slope and soil. His sons laugh, and Lee tells me about a recent vacation in St. Martin. “We got this little condo right on the beach. I wake up early, around 5, and the seaweed’s terrible. There’s a guy out there on a backhoe. The way he’s doing this, I know it’ll take him all day! I also know Sharisse is going to want to go to the beach when she gets up. So I walk over to the guy and say, ‘Can I get in that? I know how to run it.’ He lets me. I finish the job in an hour.”
Later I speak with Sharisse by phone. She’s Lee’s wife, the fourth and final piece of Ground Breakers, the Steiners’ family business. (At 26 and 24, Riley and Zach are already partners, having operated heavy machinery since pre-puberty.) Sharisse handles project management and real estate deals mostly, having been a Realtor since high school. I ask her if her husband is as obsessive as he seems. “Oh, yeah. He’s always like that—when it comes to work,” she says. “He thrives on it. When it comes to excavating and building, he can juggle a hundred things at once.”
Does that extend to home life? “Let’s just say …household chores are not his forte.”
I leave the job site thoroughly impressed by the vision and the know-how, but mostly the family dynamic. While, personally, I can’t imagine spending that much time with anyone I’m related to genetically or legally, the Steiners really seem to enjoy it. And I’m happy for them. As I drive home I wonder whether I should cash out the ol’ 401(K) and build something from the ground up. I’ll make my decision tonight. Right after carrot cake. ——groundbreakersct.com
