Meet Dallas Ranch Hands Tim Loecker and Justin Kettler

This month, we salute Tim Loecker and Justin Kettler for saving midcentury North Dallas ranches one house at a time. Their mission began with a 2,400-square-foot cottage on Cromwell Drive. They flipped that and followed it up with two more projects, including a 4,000-square-foot abode on Princess Lane that had ADA-approved wide doorways and handlebars. Today the guys are working on a house on Bobbitt Drive. So, why ranches? They have good bones. They were built with an infrastructure of slow-grown, sturdy wood and basic floor plans that are easy to open. Both guys dig in with sledgehammers and nails and get knee-deep in sawdust. At our photo shoot, Loecker had a gash on his forehead from a truant I-beam, which he displays like a battle scar at his job as a vice president for a global public relations firm. (Kettler doubles as a regional manager for a financial services company.) “We love the livability of the ranches,” Loecker says. “They are so functional with so little work.”