Are you Current about Convenience?

Todd Hawkins

 

Jan 25 |10:31

Todd Hawkins, Director of Client Happiness

Most company newsletters are awful dreck. (Who knows German?) Most are pre-canned junk, but ours is original junk :>)

Click The Current, review a few and please subscribe. I write and release Friday mornings. I do my best to make them informative and entertaining (each edition includes something useful having absolutely nothing to do with our cause, or even our industry).

I post different things to each of our social media. This blog is tutorial (how to do things around your property), the fan page is for showing/goofing off, and the newsletter more of a thought piece along with some fun stuff.

I realize you’re bombarded with newsletters but I hope you’ll at least take a look and see for yourself that ours is better! Your life at home might just get easier learning how to make your house more convenient and comfortable.

 

Lifetime Home Survey UPDATED

Todd Hawkins

 

Jan 19 |09:04

 

Recycle your house into a Lifetime Home

This is the first revision of the LTHS since I posted the original in October. (Click “What is a Lifetime Home?” if you have no idea what I’m talking about.)

Changes include:

  • new products we’ve discovered and/or are now using
  • replacing any mention of fluorescent with LED lighting
  • multiple embedded hyperlinks to source material, additional information or manufacturers/vendors

There are numerous active links (anything underlined blue, all dot-coms as well as the green title of the document) to make the surveys convenient and save you time Googling. Click the underlined text and you’ll be taken to that web site. If you rest your mouse pointer over blue underlined words, you should see the web address to which you’ll be re-directed when you click those words. Email me and I’ll forward as raw PDF attachments if it’s not working.

Remember, because I’ve added and deleted since the original, the line items have changed. Please reference the version date at the top and specific line item if you have a question so we’re on the same page.

Click the following links to download the respective PDFs:

Questions?

 

Epic Fail at Zero Steps

Todd Hawkins

 

Jan 11 |11:29
Wexford_graded_lot

What a missed opportunity. Do you see it? Notice what might’ve been?

Instead there will be exterior steps to every entrance when, with only a dash of forethought and proactive design, there could’ve been zero steps and a flush threshold entrance at each entry point on the main level. Instead of step-free ease, residents and visitors will climb to a doorway on an essentially flat lot in a new neighborhood of mostly level parcels.

This is how inaccessibility becomes baked in from groundbreaking, due only to lazy design and construction. This sows the seeds of future ramps, which are the worst “cure” for correcting an at best inconvenient and at worst prohibitive entry into any home (i.e. imagine using a walker or wheelchair, and in bad weather).

Alternately, there could’ve been no steps and a wide, roll-in entrance for maximum convenience, safety and ease for anyone of any age or ability, carrying stuff, pushing a baby stroller, pulling luggage or lugging groceries. What would the movers prefer?

 

Protection is Important

Todd Hawkins

 

Jan 7 |09:33
Photo_4
We take extra care to ensure your home, whether new construction or remodel, is spiffy clean at the end of the project. The point of this post isn’t to brag, it’s to inform that you should expect, even demand, extra attention and cleanliness from any contractor working on your house.

The technical term for limiting mess and damaging mishaps is “protection”, essentially covering things until you’re ready to use them. Any home improvement project typically involves some form of DEstruction (demolition or “demo”) before CONstruction improves the house. We believe strongly in taking extra time to protect the entire property inside and outside, including your lawn. For example, we use Ram Board with Spill Guard to cover flooring, thick plastic and paper for steps and other surfaces as well as silt fences, hay and plywood to control mud and prevent splatters on driveways, sidewalks, patios and walls. When we leave, ideally it’ll be as if a new home dropped from the sky.

Why bother? Because every project requires clean-up. Someone must clean. Make a big mess, cleaning takes even longer and often the homeowner inherits the chore after the trades bolt for the next job.

We feel that’s just plain wrong, wouldn’t do that to our mothers, so doesn’t meet our standard doing unto others what we’d do at our own home. Plus who wants to see their brand new stuff dinged, scuffed or scratched?

Photo_5

 

Our Resolution is a Revolution

Todd Hawkins

 

Dec 29 |09:34
As unlikely as it seems, housing is beginning a renaissance because of the Great Recession and blow up of the housing market. Companies are innovating all aspects of design, construction and product manufacture, trying to stand out, thrive or simply survive.

 

BuilderFish’s mission is teaching and helping people improve their houses into Lifetime Homes, that your house should seamlessly adapt to you as life progresses and changes.

 

What we do can be applied to any style of house in any area of the country whether building new or retrofitting, and includes proactive attention to every detail from the door knobs to home automation. There’s a new dawn for all of it, and your home should include if you want to live comfortably and conveniently no matter what happens to you and your family (even pets!).

 

Our residential housing stock is old, nearly obsolete with a median year built of 1974, and there’s a glut of beat up foreclosures (shadow inventory of well over a million units) not yet on the market. While some perceive housing is newer following our recent construction boom, the demographic fact is most of our nation’s houses were built
in the decades immediately following WWII. So the picture below is typical of the vast majority of our homes. Imagine inside the lay-out, user friendliness and efficiency of that house.

The good news, a bulldozer isn’t the cure. What’s required is modernization, improved air sealing/quality, water proofing, energy efficient systems and interior redesign accentuating ease. We describe as “custom new within old walls” emphasizing BOTH energy and personal effort efficiency. “Green” building gets all the attention but accessibility and easiness are just as important and apply to every area of the property including the yard.

 

As we head into 2012, think about your home and what you could do to make it livable for a lifetime, or where you plan to go if you don’t.