Lidia Valdivia Is Building Something Different
At Moonstone Design & Build, a foundation in the trades meets a fearless approach to color, a reverence for craft and a determination to give old homes new life.
Lidia Valdivia took an unconventional path to interior design but it’s one that gave her deeper insights into the trades and artisans that bring design to life — and it’s one that led her to found Moonstone Design & Build, her firm based in Minneapolis-St. Paul in Minnesota.
She’s now in the process of rebranding the firm — new logo, color palette, typography, messaging — to showcase its evolution from a builder who offers design to the 10-person creative design studio with building expertise that it now is.
Learning from the ground up
Valdivia came to the United States from Nicaragua in 2018, landing in the Twin Cities because she has a brother there.
“My first job was refinishing hardwood floors with a company,” she says. “I also worked with the siding crew, and my job was to pick up all the nails and screws with a little magnet.”
She didn’t mind the physicality of the work. “I always was a tomboy growing up. I wanted to get dirty. … So, it was easy for me, because of my personality, to just jump into construction. It felt fun and it felt like a challenge. I remember the first day I demoed for the siding crew. They were like, ‘Oh, she’s not coming back tomorrow. She’s going to be so sore.’ And I was like, ‘Nope, I’m still going show up even if my whole body hurts.’” She was sore. And she showed up the next day.
When her boss, who didn’t speak English, wanted to find more subcontracting work, he asked Valdivia to make the calls.
“A lightbulb turned on, and I was like, ‘Oh, my god. I don’t actually need to do the (physical) work. I could use my Spanish and English to get contractors good subs and be the middle person.’ … I would do subcontracting for painting companies, for roofing, for siding,”
But it was a connection with a company that specialized in whole-home remodels that led Valdivia to her role as an interior designer.
“They needed a contractor so I started working with them and that’s when I truly fell in love with design because they would let me pick the tile for the bathroom, pick the vanity. I would buy the most expensive tile even if they wouldn’t pay for it because I wanted to make the house beautiful.” (I talked with Valdivia earlier this year about her passion for tile.)
Valdivia started investing in real estate, renovating homes to broaden her experience with all aspects of remodeling, and she got her general contractor’s license.
But when she chose the name of her business, which she started in 2023, Valdivia wanted a moniker “that didn’t sound like a typical contractor.”
“Moonstone just felt very soulful and that’s what I wanted the company to feel like,” she says. Her website homepage picks up on that idea, promising clients: “Renovations with heart. Homes with soul.”
Renovations are at the heart of Moonstone’s business. Valdivia prefers those over new construction. She likes the challenge. She likes preserving and honoring the history of a home — and Minnesota, where her work is concentrated, has good housing stock that many homeowners are willing to invest in to update and preserve.
“I don’t get as excited with new construction,” she says. “I fell in love with the world of surprises in renovations.”
Valdivia and her Moonstone team always have one spec project of their own that they are working on. Right now, that project is a Colonial Revival that was promoted by the real estate agent as a demo/new build opportunity.
“That’s how people pitch most of the spec projects that we take on. That’s not a Moonstone thing to do,” she says. “Why are you going to demo the house? It needs work but it’s fixable.”
But that doesn’t mean the house isn’t getting a big makeover. All the mechanicals have been updated, and an extension and additional level are taking the home from 1,600 square feet to 3,600 square feet. “It’s like a new house in an old house,” Valdivia says.
Craft and art
But what excites Valdivia about the project is the design: “We’re really involving artists,” she says. A ceramist is creating a kitchen backsplash of handmade tiles; carpenters built a coffered ceiling in the home office that’s being hand painted by a local artist.
Her personal experience working in the trades gives Valdivia a deep appreciation for craftspeople.
“We just stared a makers series (on social media),” she says. “We’re working with a metal guy who’s building a custom railing for the Colonial project, and we are documenting the whole process with him,” she says. “With AI taking over the world, it’s so important to appreciate our tradespeople. They’re not just building things, they are literally creating art.”
“I’ve realized that’s one of the missions for me with Moonstone: having people understand the level of art in our projects,” she continues. “It’s not just a pretty cabinet: They built it with their hands and it’s the result of so many design decisions along the way. I want to make sure people understand the level of craft and art that goes into what we’re building.”
Valdivia says interior palettes in the Upper Midwest tend toward safe neutrals or, as she puts it, “very white and beige.”
But her interiors are known for richer, brighter and layered colors.
“I do love color and pattern. I love vintage things and sculptural things. And I like weird things that are going be conversation starters in a room,” she says. “That what I really lean into, and I think that’s what makes our design more interesting.”
Valdivia’s aesthetic is also shaped by her upbringing in Nicaragua. “In Nicaragua, you are driving around and there’s a fuchsia house. There are yellow walls, orange trim. People are not scared of color. I saw it growing up, throughout my whole life. There’s also Nicaraguan folklore. We have traditional dances and all the costumes are primary colors — patterns, masks, handmade objects, just visual energy everywhere. I think that gave me a different relationship with color,” she says. “I also traveled a lot. I backpacked through Europe by myself when I was 18. I went to Egypt for six months. … I’ve been involved in all these different cultures and ways to live. That shaped my design without me even knowing it was shaping it.”
More Moonstone
As her business has grown, Valdivia has faced the same challenges as many owners of design firms: learning to delegate as the team expands, encouraging people to feel safe making decisions — and mistakes, creating processes and procedures, honing instincts when it comes to taking on a new client.
“Not every client is our client and that was really hard for me to understand in the beginning,” she says. “… At some point, I had to make the decision to only work with clients that I knew that would respect our process, our work.”
Although she’s recently hired an in-house carpenter, Valdivia doesn’t want to expand her team significantly.
“I don’t want to be bigger. I want Moonstone to be more and more Moonstone,” she says. “… I don’t want Moonstone to become boring and corporate. I want to protect the creativeness of our business because that’s really what makes me happy. That’s why I do this.”
