Starting from Scratch

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is the Homer Modeling Show, brought to you by
Edge Construction Online. Edge Construction Company dot com. It's all
one word Edge Construction Company dot com. Great website, great
place to start to learn more about edge construction. Not
only has the website got some great pictures and really
really nice portfolio, there's links there to Pinterest, tells Facebook
that as well, hows houzz and you can see some

(00:21):
really cool work that they've done at Edge Construction through
their houselength. It's a really great resource. Again, just head
on over to Edge Construction Company dot com. They're telling
number six so eight six three six three three four
three that number six three six Edge. And joining us
this morning is my two egg owner of Edge Construction, Mike.

Speaker 2 (00:35):
How you doing this week?

Speaker 1 (00:36):
Great, Sean, It's good to see you, and I've got
I've got to ask as we're going to talk this
week about designing and building a custom home.

Speaker 2 (00:43):
It's a good to I know, what's kind of cold.

Speaker 1 (00:45):
It's a good time to be thinking about designing, and
especially that designing part is a really good thing to
be doing this time of season year.

Speaker 3 (00:52):
Isn't it. It's the perfect time to start the conversation
because you know, it's I guess that new construction side
of the business. We're pretty tied into that. In Dane County.
We work on a lot of the a lot of
the new houses in Dane County for for other builders.
I would do the enter trim work so all the
would work on the inside, and then we do we
do stick build houses for other builders to it. And

(01:14):
so we have a horsepower side of our company that
that does that. And then but we're gonna be talking
about a little bit more of a custom situation.

Speaker 1 (01:23):
What when we talk to about a custom and it
kind of a little bit about that term that tends
to have. It's not as crystal clear as as I
think a lot of and I get it. Some of
it's for for you know, if you're like the big builders,
everybody wants a quote unquote custom home. We're what we're
talking about this week is like truly custom. We start
with a with a blank sheet.

Speaker 3 (01:43):
Generally yeah, okay, yeah, because if you if you look
online at all the builders that are are local or anywhere, yes,
they are all going to use that word. They're gonna
use summary version of that work. They're going to say
we're a custom builder. Where we or semi custom believe
it or not, that's another word that's out there. I
would say that there's very few UH builders that are

(02:05):
truly custom builders. I mean, because if you're going to
build for volume, it just doesn't fit in well to
the to the system.

Speaker 2 (02:11):
And these fit in well for what you're doing.

Speaker 1 (02:13):
For the type of work you guys do at edge construction,
starting and doing a truly custom uh Florida, Florida finish
every part of the house. That's really for what you
guys do at edge construction, A really good fit, isn't it.

Speaker 3 (02:24):
It is? And I tend to think of it in
terms of the amount of design you're going to put
into something.

Speaker 2 (02:30):
Right.

Speaker 3 (02:31):
So when I when i'm when I pick on the
builders and we do that a little bit, but they
do fulfill a need. Right. The need is I need
to get a house into action quickly. I need to
get you know, as many upgrades are customers as much
customization as I can can you know, the least amount

(02:52):
that I can stand, I guess and and and you
can only do that with a systems approach. So so
a lot of builders, when you're when you approach them
and say I want to build a house. Okay, builders
that have their own land, which in Dane County that
that's kind of how Land develops it. It tends to
be the bigger builders. They're gonna have five, ten, fifteen,

(03:14):
twenty plans and each plans that are kind of standard
plans that they've built several times, and then they're going
to have versions of those plans. They might have a
craftsmen look version, they might have something else a little
more modern look. Inside you on that on one of
those fifteen or twenty plans you're going to have, each
one will have maybe four different versions of a kitchen

(03:36):
that you can pick from. And now you can pick
your tiles and floorings in your surfaces, you can pick
the countertops, you can pick the what the cabinet is
going to look like. But they're they're gonna want to
sort of stay in that system, especially if you want
to get going quick. The other version of that is

(03:56):
so I guess that's a system that in remodel I
don't think really works because there's times that we're getting
into houses that are fifteen years old, and the reason
they're calling somebody like us is because it was poorly
designed when it was built new, and maybe it wasn't
poorly designed, maybe they just didn't spend enough time on design.
So we talked to customers that sometimes we're finishing basements

(04:23):
a year after they built a new house with somebody
and I'll ask, are you are you happy? Well, yeah,
there's things we would have done different. And I said, well,
how much how much time did you spend picking out
the surfaces all the things that you can see? Well,
we had a selection day one day, right, And I
mean that is very hard to do. I mean you

(04:47):
really sort of have to have things narrowed down. You
can't be picking from the broad spectrum of everything. And
for a whole house, you know which will be minimum
two and a half bass and the kitchen and the
laundry and you know all these things and get through
it in one day. And surprisingly builders are so good
at this, like sometimes it's a few hours and I

(05:10):
don't know how they can do it. But for us
we get this, like our homeowners seem to get fatigued,
like it's and I think that's when you start just
picking things out to pick them out. Maybe I don't
if you know what I.

Speaker 1 (05:22):
Mean, good enough starts to suffice and that Yeah, you
don't ever you know, want that, but that happens.

Speaker 2 (05:27):
But with what about it?

Speaker 1 (05:28):
And for for you guys, I know you guys do
a few with Easy Year. These these truly custom homes.
Kind of the typical and I know there's that's a
that's kind of a loaded word there, but like the
typical person that's looking to do do work with you
guys at it's construction do that custom home? Are there
any similarities between kind of like that typical person. Is
it somebody that's I'm gonna guess it's probably somebody that's

(05:49):
that's lived in some gots a little bit of experience
and some ideas of their own that they're bringing to
the table.

Speaker 3 (05:55):
Typically, Yeah, definitely, there's a there's a couple of key
traits that seem to ring true. One is like you're mentioning, Okay,
they've they've been through this a few times, probably not
quite got what they're what they're looking for. I mean,
the best stuff that we've built, or or even built
four builders has been that that homeowner that's built four

(06:17):
houses or three houses, they're aud number four or five,
they really know what they want and they they've they're
they're eliminating things that didn't work out and making a list,
and they're willing to spend some time and design too.
Like they're not. They're they're maybe a little less of
a rush kind of. One other thing that sort of

(06:38):
stands out for me is where the house is. So
if you've got a cool country lot, it's it's most
of the plans out there are made to fit into
a subdivision with you know, twenty feet to your neighbor
and a smaller lot, and so everything's super compact and
usually going up, not out. They're not really worried about

(07:01):
designing a house that's going to fit the lot, or
fit the surroundings, or fit the topography or geography that
you're in. And so it becomes more important then so
so on. The unusualness of the location sometimes is something
that drives it. It could be a lake house. I mean,
we've we've done things where we've torn down houses and
built them built a new house on it. And a

(07:24):
lake is someplace that is tougher to do, tougher to
build on, usually expanded timelines, and and a lot more
design needs to happen. And you want to design this house,
I think you wanted. You want to start from scratch
a little bit, or at least really do a lot
of design because you want it. You want you want
to maximize views, you want to maximize the sunlight. You

(07:45):
want to there's a lot of things you want to
do there that that don't fit. It's not come out
of that cookie cutter or subdivision home. You know.

Speaker 1 (07:53):
One of the things that when you're talking about getting
you know, the folks when they when they get to
the point of saying, I want to do this custom home,
I I Y, I'm gonna have to call you and
we're gonna a dream of one day having that opportunity
to sit down and design that home.

Speaker 2 (08:05):
Got to work hard to get there.

Speaker 1 (08:07):
Eventually, I think of like what kind of relates to
me is like I still remember, I think all of
us remember like that first car we ever got it,
it's we were excited, it was it was an exciting thing.
And then you think of like as you go through
life and you and you start to go to the
car dealership more and more and you start looking at
you get much more selective about certain things, and you're
and you're willing to, you know, pay a premium sometimes

(08:29):
for things to saying you know what, this is very
important to me. I think a lot of times with
with like first homes and even second homes, sometimes we're
just like, you know what, it's a it's a it's
I'm excited, it's beautiful, it's great. But really it's it's
when you kind of get into that dealership and say,
this is how I want to actually customize exactly what
I want is what we're coming out with.

Speaker 3 (08:48):
I think too, like when when you're younger at using
the car analogy, you probably know you could be pick here,
and you could you could you could want some different things, right,
you're usually being corralled and sold into a this is
what you want and how do I get you in
this car today. I don't want to say new housing

(09:09):
is like that, but it's a little like that. I mean,
you know it's because and it is the system. It's
the system that we have right now. If if everybody
decided that was buying a new house, that decided that, Okay,
i'm gonna we're gonna start from scratch. We're gonna spend
six or nine months or a year in design, and
then we're gonna build this house. And it's and it's
going to be a year and a half process. Well,

(09:32):
we're longer sometimes that would really slow down the world.
And over fifty I think it's fifty five percent of
homes new homes that get built right now are for
first time homebuyers. So you've got to take those people
out of the market because the younger homeowner isn't thinking about, Okay,
what do you mean I don't have here heated dream

(09:52):
I thought every car had a heating STI right, So
you see, you'd become a more discerning buyer and you
and you'd know what you want or what I would
I recommend to a first time home buyer to go
through a custom home building process and maybe be saddled
with too much debt. You know, it's like you need
to own that first house or two until you like,

(10:13):
like you're kind of alluding to before, until you really
know what you want.

Speaker 1 (10:16):
What about you mentioned lake houses, and I think of
like subdivisions, a lot of like the the all that
the Rigamar rule with like permitting and local government. This
has all been kind of handled on the front end.
It's you know, you got this land, we've we've flattened
it all out perfectly, we're going to put house house
house house. I think of things like lake houses, for example,

(10:37):
there's some special and unique rules for building on a
lake for for you know, whether it's you know, run
off or things like that. That's another area that I
think for people that are building that that custom home.
You think about the which is a lot of fun,
the design and the build and the fish front, but
there's also a lot of things that go into like

(10:57):
like that you don't like, I don't want to bring
the room down, but like bureaucratic almost kind of things
like how do we manage what.

Speaker 3 (11:03):
Are you talking about? Yeah, I don't know anything about that. Yeah, yeah,
Like I said, if you're trying to do that system's
approach or you're getting into action fast, that or a
country lot probably not a place that you're gonna build
because it's you do need to be more patient, and
you know, as a builder, you know, I certainly don't

(11:25):
want to make enemies downtown, so we we fit into
their system. They're the ones that have the power to
say yeah, your nay. The perming process has gotten much
much tougher than it used to be. I you know,
sign of the times. I guess but I remember really
going in and getting permits with almost no information twenty

(11:48):
five thirty years ago, and that situation has totally changed.
If we didn't have the CAD capabilities, even for models,
getting permits would be so much tougher. It has to
go through a few state each process where they will
they will call out, I'll embarrass myself a little bit.
We were we just we're contracted to do in between

(12:12):
the Lakes downtown I can't remember, off Wes Street. It's
kind of a Mifflin, big old house that had been
a two flat, right, it was probably a college rental,
and now this family bought it and they want to
combine it and make it nice, right, And we had
to take out one little buring wall. Uh, I looking
at it. I don't remember if our guy has asked

(12:35):
me or not how to size the beam. Anyways, we
had an engineer beam that was was made up and
the the and we're and we were going to use that,
and we we called that out on the plan to
get initial to start the initial process on the on
the on getting a building permit that it got kicked back.
They said, well, you don't think that beam is big enough.
When I did the math. It was too small, and

(12:57):
so like, uh, you know that was a good thing.
That's a good that's how the system is supposed to work.
But all these things just add time and it's morecomer
summon and sometimes they're saying, okay, we need this, can
you redraw this on can Okay, we'll do that. You
don't as a homer, you don't realize you're losing a
week or two every time that happens. It's not like
yours is the only thing on their desks. So they've

(13:18):
got to work through that process too.

Speaker 1 (13:19):
Doc this morning with Mike two Eg, owner of Edge Construction,
we'll talk about the design process too when it comes
to a new home and what goes into that conversation
and the fund that is to design that new home,
and a little bit about the timeline as well. Also
a house that Mike and the team at Edge Construction
has been working on, a beautiful custom home. We'll talk
a little bit about that and so much more in
the meantime. I fambit to the website head on over

(13:41):
Edge Construction Company dot com. That's all one word, Edge
Construction Company dot com. Delphneverer six so eight six three
six three three four three, So easy to remember the
number at Edge Construction, that's six three six Edge. More
if the Homer Modeling Show is next right here on
thirteen ten WIBI. This is the Homer Modeling Show, brought
you by Edge Construction Online, Edge Construction Company dot com.

Speaker 2 (14:01):
That's all one. We're twelve one over.

Speaker 1 (14:02):
Six So eight six three six three three four three
that number six three six.

Speaker 2 (14:06):
Edge talking about truly.

Speaker 1 (14:08):
Custom homes and as we talk about that this week, Mike,
I know in the first segment we talked about kind
of what the actual definitions plural of a custom home
are and what you guys do at Edge Construction is
truly complete custom Do you get typically though, when folks
come in, they have like stuff Pinterest and house they

(14:28):
have like some ideas of like what their their style is.
Or do you get people come in and saying, listen,
here's here's the maybe the lot we have or the
land we have, let's start from scratch here.

Speaker 2 (14:37):
How does that?

Speaker 1 (14:37):
How does that kind of that initial conversation kind of
start things moving?

Speaker 3 (14:43):
Yeah, So for us, it's best if you've done some homework, right,
if you come in and say we want to build
a new house, and this is our lot, but we
have no idea what we like and what we want
about the first time I do is say, well, you
need to figure some things out, okay. And the reason

(15:04):
that we we want you to do a little bit
of that on your own is, for one, it's not
that hard, right there are so many resources right now.
The house we're finishing right now started off as a
plan online, kind of a rough plan online that we

(15:26):
did about one hundred and fifty hours of cadwork too,
and changed and a lot of input from homeowner homeowners
to get it to where it got to now and
and really thought about every single space so that you
can find like, okay, how many different ways can you
build a three reading ranch? I mean, like, we're probably

(15:48):
not going to come up with one hundred new idea.
And so if you get on a house that's h
o u zz dot com and get there from our website,
you see a lot of the stuff we've done. You
mentioned Pinterest, there's there's I'm not an instagrammer, but I
have friends that are and they're like, oh this is
They're always showing me these kind of things on Instagram.

(16:10):
Can you build this? Do you like this. Yeah, I'm
glad I'm not a doctor, because then I'd have to like, uh,
you know, pop some pivows or something. But yeah, there's
there's really a lot of you know, before we even
get to the finishes, like like that's another whole thing. Okay,
what colors do you like? What style do you like?

(16:30):
What that? In a custom house? To me, the inside
finishes should work well with the outside finishes. Like that
takes some thought, That takes some planning. Cat is so
good right now, Like we are just living in this
golden age where it's getting better all the time, and
the software that we're using now is creates such realistic

(16:53):
views and and that that I think it really is
helpful for homeowners to go, Okay, can I see this
in a different color, a different look, different style, And
we can do that pretty easily.

Speaker 1 (17:02):
I brought up while you were talking there, I brought
up Pinterest And because I do I like obviously since
doing the show with you, I love seeing home design.
I don't know how I ended up on this, but
like one of the feeds I get on Pinterest is
like these very bizarre floor plan layouts for design.

Speaker 2 (17:17):
I've got it, wacky stuff and I don't know what that's.

Speaker 1 (17:20):
Yeah, just very bizarre, like like I don't know, like
they look cool and is that sometime like the floor
planet school, But I'm like, I don't know how practical
it is. Do you get people that sometimes find some
things to bring it in and go like, I don't
know that that's I want to live in a castle?

Speaker 3 (17:34):
Well? Sometimes sometimes yeah that'd be fantastic. Yeah. The one
fun thing about what we're doing now, the house that
we're just finishing, is it just has the custom didn't
end with the design. It's like in every part of
the house you can see it. And our people got
to really stretch their capability some It's very fun when

(17:55):
somebody comes in and wants to build something whacking wow,
because I do. We get to test out the skill
sets a little more. Some things are not practical because
we live here right so in Wisconsin. I don't have
to tell anybody how cold it got this week. You know,
the most efficient comfortable house you can build is a

(18:17):
square box. It's not very exciting and most people don't
want to build that. But you know, every angle and
turn and corner in a house, if you're adding a
bunch of those kind of creates some inefficiencies that you
have to overcome during construction. We ran into them in
the house that we're just finishing now. It had had
a lot of custom things in it. And so when

(18:39):
you I remember one of the ceilings that ran into
there's a big, big, tall fireplace and an open ceiling.
And one of my people brought up said, hey, how
do we We're not able to insulate this corner right here.
It's going to be really tough to get it's going
to be a cold spot, it's going to create problems.
We might have ice damming, and so everything needs to
be evaluated because this isn't a house that's going to

(19:02):
get built a hundred times. It's going to get built
one time. Yeah, And so I want our people to
we call it redlining, go through this plan. Like if
you brought us a wacky plan, that's the first thing
we would probably do is run it through our trades,
run it through all of our people, troubleshoot this thing somewhat,
believe it or not. I have friends that are in

(19:22):
the industry that I will I will send when we
do to a really custom new plan, I say, hey,
with this house been in design for six months, would
you mind just looking over my plan? And you know
sometimes I can get I don't want tunnel vision, but
if it happens, I want I want it to get caught.
I don't want to build a house and go, oh,
we should have done we should.

Speaker 2 (19:43):
Have changed this a lot easier to fix on paper.

Speaker 1 (19:47):
You know, we talk about with remodeling, we talk about
the design process, and I know Heather is is and
our team is very much like they'll design it, you'll
build it with with new construction and and doing that
custom home. I've got to guess as your building side
is very much, very much involved in that design process
as well. Like it's obviously because we're building the entire structure,

(20:11):
you guys are very much involved in that, aren't you.

Speaker 3 (20:13):
Yeah, I mean largely. I think design should come first
when you're building a new custom house that hasn't hasn't
been built one hundred times, like it hasn't been redlined.
Every time you build a house for a systematized builder.
Basically the builders in town trades are given feedback on
that going. You know what, you could have made my

(20:35):
life easier if you've done this or this. I think
this can be a problem or or it might be
a homeowner going, you know what, we can't get this
room warm. Why is that? Oh we need to change
things on the next one. This doesn't happen that way.
And so that construction side has to has to really
be given the time to go through these plans. They

(20:55):
have to understand what the homeowner wants and what they're after.
To our designers you mentioned Heather, they do a great
great job obviously, and the pictures online if you go
and look at what we start with sometimes and what
it ends with you there's times I go, geez, I
don't even know how did you get there?

Speaker 2 (21:12):
You know?

Speaker 3 (21:13):
Uh? But uh that they'll we have we have these
like key points that if it's sort of like an
f then statement. So if if our if Heather's gang
is in design and they run into this, they go,
we got to make a note talk to Mike or
or or somebody on the construction side make sure this
is buildable or what are we going to run into?

(21:34):
Is there is there is this going to create another
problem somewhere else.

Speaker 1 (21:37):
I want to ask you in the next time, and
I know the house you're working on one of them,
you're working on right now, you're showing me some of
the some of the photos of the of the fireplace
and some of the custom masonry and beautiful piece of
timber as well. I want to ask you a little
bit about that and how often things like you mentioned that,
I mentioned that piece of timber. How often Homer is like, hey,
I really want this. Look, it's not something that's big box.

(21:59):
Where can we find that kind of sourcing that stuff.
We'll talk with Mike about that and so much more.
Of course, you haven't been to the website yet. We
talked about Edgeconstruction Company dot com. All the great great
projects they have listed up there, always being updated. Also
those links Pinterest, How's Facebook? How's Especially it is a
very valuable tool. Head on over to Edgeconstruction Company dot
com telling number six O eight six three six three

(22:20):
three four three that number six three six edge and
edge Construction brings you the Homer Modeling Show right here
on thirteen ten, Wuiba, This is the Homer Modeling Show
brought to you by Edge Construction online, Edge Construction Company
dot com.

Speaker 2 (22:35):
That's all one word, Edge Construction Company dot com.

Speaker 1 (22:38):
Tell me number six O eight six three six three
three four three that number six three six Edge talking
this week with Mike about custom new home construction, starting
from scratch and building that out. And Mike, before the show,
you're sharing with me some photos of a house you
guys are building here in the area. And the thing
that really many things struck me. It's beautiful from from

(22:58):
the outside. And you show me some of the inside
photos and specifically this fireplace, and I said.

Speaker 2 (23:04):
Who did that?

Speaker 1 (23:05):
Who is who did that fireplace for you? And you
guys are doing it contract. Yeah, totally custom fireplace, beautiful
stone and it's also got the mantle. Is this piece
of what tell me tell me a little bit about
about how this all came this this fireplace came to be.

Speaker 3 (23:22):
Yeah, so this the mantle is kind of an interesting
story what my sun neck works for us and Nick
is sort of some of the things he does. He
keeps all our equipment running and kind of manages that part.
He makes sure a lot of pieces and parts show
up and on the on the chunks of wood side.

(23:44):
Nick has a little passion for that. So this, uh
so we try to have an inventory of some reclaimed things.
And this is a beam that I think is probably
one hundred and fifty years old. What's unique about it
is that it's it's oak. Most of those beams were
fur doug fur still a strong beam, but but oak

(24:06):
made it felt like it was twice as heavy. And
Nick actually helped me set that mantle. So we actually
framed for it some some heavier structure behind the stone.
But we actually drill in three quartern s, threaded rods,
you know, get this thing up there and set it on.
Then we attach it with screws that are hidden by

(24:27):
the stone. But so it's it's quite a job to do it.
That that particular chunk of wood I think Nick had
found maybe three years ago. We didn't really have a
purpose for it. It was sitting in my wood shop
at at our at our location over there by cell Town.
And uh, there's times I've been annoyed with that chunk
of wood because it's just this huge, heavy chunk of wood.

(24:47):
But boys look great in that spot.

Speaker 1 (24:49):
Do you get people that bring things like I think
of like family farms or other other pieces of kind
of personal history, or maybe they went on a vacation
and bring you to say, you know, we have this
neat little uh this bowl, maybe want to have it
converted into something.

Speaker 2 (25:02):
You get that a lot.

Speaker 3 (25:03):
Sure, Yeah, I like that kind of stuff. It's it's
you know, your problem solve how to how to fit
this in here? If it fits the design, great, If
don't be too tied to it, because if it's not
gonna work, you need a raality check. And that's uh.
We mentioned our design team. Sometimes they'll they'll give you
some input on that too and try to help you
through that process.

Speaker 1 (25:23):
No, I was gonna say, how revolutionary is CAT You
mentioned in the earlier segment CAT a couple of times.
I've got to guess, especially with with new custom homes,
CAT has been been a huge game changer.

Speaker 3 (25:34):
Well, yeah, aside from getting the the footprint. So this
this house actually went got designed twice. I like to say, Uh,
the first go around we had, we had with the
homeowner picked out a little bit more modern plan based

(25:56):
on the on the footprint on the floor plan, so
where the veterans were, the London was, where the kitchen was.
I wont to loved that thing went through several months
of design. Uh. You mentioned CAD. We we'd put this
footprint into CAD and then basically we can tell it
to draw roof and it will draw roof. It's really amazing.

(26:19):
Now you can modify and a lot of times we
have to do and massage that, but we can almost
instantly see we can place that that house on a lot.
We can start to add some things that make it
make it look like it's going to look in the future. Yes,
down the road. We can import pictures of the actual

(26:41):
tile you're gonna use in a backsplash. We can import
the actual countertop, the colors the shore Williams colors of
your siding or your rooms, and we can we can show,
we'll we'll put we put the actual windows in and
then place it on the lot. And we picked the
time of and you can see how much sunlight's coming.

(27:01):
There's all kinds of things you can do with CAD.

Speaker 1 (27:04):
Now with that, and you mentioned kind of designed it twice,
all right, Yeah, yeah, I was gonna ask you about
let's talk about the first go around.

Speaker 3 (27:11):
I failed the first Well, okay, we had this house design.
It was a little more contemporary, and the homeowner said,
where's the front porch? And I'm like, oh, this was
something that was important to half of this couple and
most of the modern plans are really not drawn with

(27:33):
consideration for a nice front porch, especially the ranch plans.
And there is a difference. You know, on a two
story we've got a big expanse of wall. We can
just put a shed roof and draw a nice big porch.
On a ranch house, now that roof has to all
tie together, and this plan we we tried and it

(27:53):
just didn't work. So it sort of sent us back
to the drawing board. Luckily so because that I think
what we ended up with was much much better, much nicer,
a lot more custom.

Speaker 1 (28:04):
I look at the picture showed me as well as
that entry way in that and the you know that
front porch, is that like that barrel half barrel up there?

Speaker 2 (28:12):
That is it's the.

Speaker 3 (28:13):
The ceiling the porch. Yes, I'm going to help you out.

Speaker 2 (28:17):
Yeah, where did that concept come from? Or that idea
wasn't something they'd seen or what we've done.

Speaker 3 (28:24):
The barrel ceilings a few times. This is just something
that the homeowner liked, probably had seen pictures of it
and kept in their back pocket, and we were looking
for a way to sort of add personality to that
to that front porch. Front porch has almost a craftsman
style look from one hundred years ago or a little

(28:46):
longer than that, where we've got some big cedar posts
on the corners, shakes on the on the face of
it instead of siding, the roof comes out, and it
just looked a little plane, I think. And and when
we drew that barrel barrel ceiling on that front porch,
I think it just added a ton of personality.

Speaker 1 (29:05):
And I know there was some interesting intricate would work
that that went into that as well. I know you're
telling me it doesn't look at quite as it's always
deceiving it here see like a highway sign or like
a speed limit sign up close, like wow, that is
a lot bigger than exact same thing with some of these,
some of these that's a pediment.

Speaker 2 (29:23):
What is that thing called?

Speaker 3 (29:24):
What's the Oh? So we made some gable and called
gable and brackets, okay, and these ones and we'll get
the pictures up probably in a month or so when
we're done. But gable end brackets. So if you've got
a gable roof, it's that comes to a point in
the front. Okay. This house has a combination of hip
roof and gables. So the front part of the house

(29:46):
kind of has the gables. It looks a little dressy,
especially with the gable end brackets and these are this
is a traditional thing. You don't see it much now,
but coming out of the Victorian age of houses, if
you built a fancy house, it would have some detail
up underneath that roof, it would and and this hash

(30:08):
we made these gable and brackets there. They've got a
little radius to them and it's just enough to give
some personality to that, to that face of that roof.

Speaker 2 (30:17):
I feel like you should have the guys from this
old house house.

Speaker 1 (30:20):
As we're talking about this, and and you would mention
too about about you know, initial design and and kind
of working through it a couple of times. One of
the areas that that I think people don't always appreciate
is the first draft isn't compared to what you end
up with. It's really kind of that starting point is

(30:41):
I think you would use the word initially the current
design little plane so you added some things. Is there's
always and it's a lot easier to do in CAD
than it does after its legal. There's always time to say,
let's maybe explore bringing this this front deck out a
little bit or adding some different design feeatures, really powerful

(31:02):
stuff with that cad that you guys are able to
do and just kind of give homeowners some ideas.

Speaker 3 (31:06):
Right, And so we had this house totally designed. We
thought we were about ninety percent of the wear way there.
So one issue that affected the broad design. I mentioned
before that I have a few friends that I send
plans to and vice versa, and we kind of trouble
shoot and red line each other's stuff, and we're just

(31:27):
looking for that needle in a haystack. This house had
a nice big kitchen, had a walk in pantry with
barn doors on the side of that kitchen, so it's
almost like having two kitchens. But the comment that came
back from one of my friends was, I think that
that walk in pantry is a little narrow. I mean,
are they going to do work in there or is

(31:48):
it just for storage? And I said, oh, they want
to do work. And when I looked at it, we
ended up adding a couple feet to the inside of
that pantry. We had those feet had to come from somewhere.
So we went, Okay, we're going to make the house
two feet wider. And I see smiling, like, oh, just bam,
bam bam, we make it. But with CAD we can.
We added the two feet it, which is really not

(32:13):
a very cumbersome thing to do. We had had our
software just fix and modify the roof, so it did
all those things. It's not like we had to start
from scratch again. And so by moving at those two feet,
it gave us a little more room around the staircase
and we were able to get a little more room
and a powder room and a laundry also, So there

(32:33):
are some side effects to move in that house. The
master closet got a little bigger, and so homeowners want
to see all the effects of this. Okay, if we
make it two feet bigger, as it added costs, but
it's that two feet kind of comes at a bargain.
People are already out there building this house. If it's
two feet bigger, and yeah, it's a little more materials,

(32:53):
but labor's kind of the same. But for a homeowner
to just envision that with out the help of the
renderings on CAT I think would be tough.

Speaker 1 (33:03):
What about with the with the kind of the longevity
of these homes too. As we're kind of working through
some of the process of design and what goes into
the planning before you build it. The ultimate goal is
not just that it's gonna look great. You I know,
something that's super important to you is longevity. Is this
is something that you want when you guys build these

(33:23):
these custom homes. This is not something that in ten
twenty thirty years people are going I regret doing this,
or like it's starting to run into issues like really
really doing the work up front to build something that's
gonna that's gonna last a very long time.

Speaker 3 (33:37):
Right, And uh, if you're okay, good design makes that
house last longer, right, Something the next homewner is not
gonna If you do a better job of design, that's
going to peel the more people, they're less likely to
want to change it when they move in down the
road somebody. But the real longevity in the house is
in the things you can't see. It's the structure, it's

(33:57):
it's behind the siding, it's behind the drywall. It has
a lot to do with framing materials and insulation. And
so we probably should talk at some point about the
science behind how we build houses. And we build houses
quite a bit differently than I think anybody else in

(34:17):
the area. I mean, not only in our house is tight,
but I'm a believer in super insulating. So code says
we've got to be our nineteen or our twenty one
or pick your number. Our wall cavities tend to be
our thirty ish, so we're fifty percent more insulation. But

(34:38):
it's also the right kind of insulation in the right spot,
and so we do a lot to stop air infiltration.
There's just a lot of innovation happening right now with
that in product and theory, and it's really worth looking
at that. When you're going to build a new house.

Speaker 2 (34:53):
You don't hear from people complaining that their energy bills
are too low.

Speaker 3 (34:56):
This house is still comfortable, right exactly, and so, uh,
the better job you do of that. It's it's it's
not just energy bills. If you build for comfort, true comfort,
you're you're probably going to have really low energy bills.

Speaker 2 (35:12):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (35:13):
If so, the focus has changed a little bit. We're
not just talking about energy now like we probably were
a few years ago. It's okay, I want to stand
anywhere in this house and not feel coolness right now,
coldness coming through that wall or window. How do I
get there? And if you do that you're gonna you're
gonna you're going to do better energy usage. And if
you if you build this way, your house is just

(35:35):
going to last a lot longer, if not indefinitely.

Speaker 1 (35:38):
We talked too about, as you mentioned that, the science
of building a new home, and and I compare again
the custom but in the in the lot where they're
kind of one after another, kind of going through in
the homeowner. I've got to guess that when you're doing
a truly one off custom home, because the homeowners are
obviously much more involved because this is this is their

(36:02):
project too. It's not just let's pick these things. So
when you talk about some of that, that's that those
those things like insulation, other things, the homeowner's gotta got
a first hand look at that, those conversations that design.
It's not just something that we're picking out of a
book of blueprints and that type of thing that you
may do with some of the some of the big
builders in town.

Speaker 3 (36:20):
Yeah, and so if I was related to you, if
if if I had one of my kids was in
a different city and they were gonna build a house,
I would want them to find out the builder's philosophy
on insulation. Now, this sounds like we were exciting. It's insulation,
but put that on a T shirt. But but if
you but if you look at how long a house
is going to last, uh, you know, if you wanted

(36:42):
to last indefinitely, it probably has more to do with
insulation than it does with the structure and how you
insulate it. Where you put that insulation And I could
luxture you foreverybody. It's one of my favorite subjects. But yeah,
make sure you dig into it. You know, if you're
gonna do this.

Speaker 2 (36:56):
Does some of that too? Have to do what you mentioned.

Speaker 1 (36:58):
Some of the longevity and having to do with insulation
other things is preserving the structure itself, is doing things
right that that you don't have to worry about, you know,
humidity and other things infiltrating. You know, you think of
of a two by four and exposed to you know
here in Wisconsin, if it's exposed the elements, it's gonna
it's gonna break that. It's a natural material. Eventually, it's

(37:18):
gonna break down. The more you can do to control
that or protect that, the longer it's gonna last.

Speaker 3 (37:24):
It it kind of yes, So I mean you still
need to use good materials you still need to, you know,
really think about the structure and what you're gonna what
you're gonna put in it. But you can you can
put the best materials in and do a terrible job
of insulation, uh and have a bunch of air infiltration
and vapor is coming in with it. That's just air
with moisture in it, which all here is moisture. If

(37:47):
that that moisture gets trapped in your wall, it'll rot
the best materials and you know, it's not always the
top of the line that goes in these structures. So,
like I said, I think it's a it's a builder
philosophy that you need to pay attention to. I think
even if you're inexperienced, if you if you ask a
builder of these questions, Okay, what what are you doing

(38:10):
different on installation? What how long is this house going
to last? They should be able to give you the
lecture that I could give you. I think if if
you're on the right track.

Speaker 1 (38:19):
If you're looking to talk. Mike loved to talk, but
if you the phone ask him about that.

Speaker 2 (38:22):
I got to just go call it edge construction six.

Speaker 1 (38:24):
Eight six three six three three four three that's six
three six Edge. That's one of the great things too,
is is when you work with Mike and the team
at Edge Construction, that communication and that that you know,
it's especially if you're doing a complete home build, there's
going to be UHU. They're gonna get to know each
other quite well, and it's a really good, really good
thing to do and start that conversation.

Speaker 2 (38:42):
I'll get his gimm call six so I eight sixty
six three three four three. That's six three six Edge.
You can learn more online.

Speaker 1 (38:47):
Edge Construction Company dot Com. That's Edge Construction Company dot com.
Take down the home stretch. Next with the Homer Modeling
Show brought you by Edge Construction right here on thirteen
ten wib E. This is the Homer Modeling Show brought
you by Edge Construction. The way site Age Construction Company
dot Com. That's all one word, Edge Construction Company dot Com.
Tell number six so eight six three six three three
four three that number six three six Edge and Mike.

(39:08):
I've been talking this week about about doing some uh
doing some home uh complete complete home build, a custom
custom build.

Speaker 2 (39:16):
How does that process generally start?

Speaker 1 (39:18):
I mean, do do are people just like I'll give
you guys a call, call other like where does that
kind of where's that like inroad begin for for most people?

Speaker 3 (39:26):
Yeah, yeah, it's it's just, uh, it always starts with
a phone call. So I go out on every first
appointment and often often those after that I'm involved in.
So you know, there's just a lot to go through,
a lot to talk about. So if you're going to
call in and you want to start this process, it's
great to have ideas, like we talked about some If

(39:48):
you don't have them, like at least you know where
to get started, but carve out a couple hours because
you know, if you're going to do this, and for
most people, when they build a truly some house, they
they have every intention of it being like the house,
like that's gonna be the hose, and so you want
to you want to put as much time into it
as you can.

Speaker 1 (40:08):
I think people always say they say, I'm going to
leave this house feet first, you know what I'm saying.

Speaker 3 (40:12):
So yeah, that's I mean, you can roll them down
the hill after exactly.

Speaker 1 (40:18):
Do you do by the way, and then just I know,
obviously with with remodels, you do plenty of site visits
with with the new hopes. Is that something early on
that you out and do in like survey the not
maybe not even necessarily with a bunch of equipment things,
but just kind of come out and just kind of
look at the area, look for things like where's power
we're gonna come from? Whereas those type of things as
well as that.

Speaker 3 (40:38):
Oh definitely, yeah, very much. So it's it's all those
mechanicals that we're gonna have to figure out, you know,
if if it's a zoning usually gets involved in a
new house and so that's got to be dealt with,
and so we want to make sure we provide you
with all the information you're going to need to get

(40:58):
through this process and and help you to do so.

Speaker 2 (41:00):
It's a great day to pick up phone, give me
a call.

Speaker 1 (41:02):
If you think about doing a new home, maybe you
think about doing ser remodeling. Michael team at Edge Construction
there there for you. Telph number six so eight six
three six three three four three A number six three
six Edge, the website Edge Construction Company dot com. This
is the Homer Modeling Show here on thirteen ten wiv
A