That American real-estate dream — a house encircled in a white-picket fence — does not appeal to the Skyway Mom.

“I don’t dream of having a yard and an old house to take care of,” says Kati Berg.

This is why, of course, the St. Paul woman is known as Skyway Mom (not Suburb Mom).

The Skyway Mom’s blog details how Berg and her husband, Jeremy, moved out of their 3,200-square-foot suburban-style home in Rochester, Minn. (with its five bedrooms, four bathrooms and three-car garage), and moved themselves and their two kids to Nicaragua for the 2013-14 school year — a “family sabbatical.” Upon their return to the United States a year later, the family decided to continue their downsized lifestyle in St. Paul — where the children, Ian, now 9, and Thea, now 6, attend Jie Ming Mandarin Immersion Academy.

At first, the family rented an apartment in downtown St. Paul. When they began looking to buy, though, the Pointe of St. Paul — the high-rise where they now live — was not the first choice.

“We had written it off at first because it is not connected to the skyways,” Berg says.

HIGH-RISE LIVING

The Pointe of St. Paul is one of the taller buildings in the downtown skyline. Located on the corner of 10th and Minnesota streets, the 34-story high-rise was built in 1987 and converted from apartments to condos in 2003, according to the property’s website.

“We decided to give it a second chance,” Berg says, “because a couple of cheaper units went up for sale and the continuation of easy access to so many amenities appealed to us — especially amenities that we could share but didn’t have to take care of, like the indoor pool.”

In March 2016, the Bergs ended up purchasing a two-bedroom, two-bath unit — 989 square feet of space — for $170,000 on one of the upper floors.

Before closing, though, the Bergs checked in with the neighbor below them.

“We are a family living in a condo — noise is an issue,” says Berg. “During the 10-day right of rescission (a kind of grace period), we contacted the neighbor below us and asked for permission to be in her place while the kids ran around upstairs. It wasn’t as soundproof as I had hoped — I thought the cement construction would muffle it more.”

The deal didn’t fall through, though.

“To improve the soundproofing, we installed a half-inch rubber underlayment — like a gym floor — to provide more soundproofing,” says Berg. “It definitely improved it. She can’t hear normal walking around — but if Jeremy does jumping jacks, you can hear it.”

The Bergs did a lot more than soundproofing.

“We gutted the place,” Berg says.

The main renovation took 3½ months and had some unique challenges because of the downtown locale.

“The drywallers had to leave every two hours to plug the meters,” Berg says. “You can’t have a dumpster, so we rented a U-Haul; certain contractors wanted to charge us a ‘high-rise fee’; we had to work with commercial codes versus residential codes.”

Berg ended up serving as the project’s general contractor.

“I did not plan to do the reno on my own, but our general contractor fell through,” she says. “So I became the general contractor and Jeremy ended up doing a lot, too.”

Berg does have experience in real estate: While Jeremy works his day job (software development), Berg serves as manager for the family’s rental properties in the metro and Rochester.

Their own property, once closed off and full of hallways, now has an open layout: A big kitchen opens onto a living room and dining space. The style looks familiar in a Scandinavian sort of way.

“We live in an IKEA showroom, basically,” Berg says. “I’ve probably been to IKEA at least 100 times in the last year.”

Berg picked a non-IKEA luxury vinyl plank floor that is holding up well to life with kids, who have their own “wing” of the apartment.

THE LAYOUT

At the entrance to the apartment is a foyer that is designed to act like a mini mudroom — a wall cabinet that hides shoes, ottomans that hide more shoes, a wall rack for coats or purses. The space opens up onto the great room — the kitchen with a large island (and seating for four), the living room and the dining room.

The bedrooms are on either edge of the apartment: On one side is the master suite (a bedroom, a private bathroom and access to a dedicated office); on the other side of the apartment is the children’s suite — a pair of bedrooms joined by a shared walk-in closet.

“The closet acts like a secret passageway,” Berg says.

The children share the hallway bathroom, which now has a deep bathtub and something even more useful — a long, skinny mirror on the wall just outside the door.

“So someone can still use the mirror if someone else is using the bathroom,” says Berg.

The redesign is clever for a family living in small quarters.

“Bottlenecks are what makes a place feel small,” says Berg. “There’s a second way out of most rooms — it just worked out that way — we don’t have any bottlenecks.”

Berg had to get creative while furnishing the apartment — especially the kids’ rooms.

“When I was trying to find beds that were smaller than the standard twin size, I ended up looking on websites that cater to institutional-like settings such as RVs, camps, hospitals, dorms and even prisons. I bought two from Amazon — one is considered a trucker’s bed, like for the back of a semi, and two were custom made (one of them is a split queen, made by a Minnesota company). The internet was very, very useful because I could get exact measurements, since every inch was important to save.”

A post-renovation appraisal of the unit estimated the value at $290,000 — a small profit on their total investment.

“Somehow, we have everything in this 1,000 square feet that we had in our suburban home,” Berg says.

FYI