The Bigger, the Better

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is the Homer Modeling Show, brought you by Edge
Construction Online. Edge Construction Company dot com. Great website, you
haven't been there recently?

Speaker 2 (00:07):
What are you doing? Get on over there now.

Speaker 1 (00:09):
You've got some great stuff on the website, some recent projects.
Also some links Pinterest, Facebook and the one that you
really want to check out, how's h o u zz
And of course access that right from Edge Construction Company
dot com. See a little green h looks a little
bit like a house stylized that way, I do believe.
I check out that link right there. Tough enough for
Edge Construction six eight six three six three three four

(00:32):
to three number so eas that remember six three six
Edge enjoined in studio this morning by the owner of
Edge Construction, Mike Twig. Mike, how you doing this morning,
Good to see you. And we're talking talking bigger projects
this week and at Edge Construction obviously we talk a
lot about, you know, kitchen remodels, bathroom models, basement roles,
that stuff. You do those and I don't think there's

(00:52):
anything truly small. I think every every project that is,
especially if you're the.

Speaker 2 (00:56):
Homeowner, that's a big thing.

Speaker 1 (00:58):
But you guys, do occasion only do whether it's a
whole home remodel or a from scratch remodel. Additions. You
guys do that a lot of that stuff as well,
don't you.

Speaker 3 (01:09):
Yeah, I mean it's obviously if you can't, you can't
do as many of those. We do quite a few.
Kitchens and bass and basements. Those are the inside stuff.
Has been our millieu for a while, right, Like that's
our that's our bread and butter. But we have a
lot of horse powers, so like to do two or
three or sometimes four, depending on the types of remodels

(01:29):
we have in a year. Those a lot of times
our additions or or we just are just finished a
really nice, big whole house remodel downtown. It's off Dayton Street,
and it was a very interesting remodel. Two sisters bought
this house, turned it from a two flat rental into

(01:52):
a back into a househouse, and so it's a it
feels really cool in there. It's a big, big old house.
But okay, now we matters. So it's got a couple
of really nice bathrooms, just got a kitchen's updated. We
did as much as we could what the budget allowed,
so we were in there for several months, but very

(02:12):
nice bigger model.

Speaker 1 (02:13):
I knowing you, I've got to guess that that that
project in particular was probably near and dear to your heart.
I think of And I don't know what this place
looked like before, but I do know what some of
the rental properties around Madison look like, and I know
what your standards are. That's got to be a great
feeling going from this this you know, rental property, to
this kind of restoring this house to its glory.

Speaker 3 (02:35):
Yeah, and rentals get they get abused, you know, like
they just everybody knows it. And the college rentals, I
get it. You know. My kids, we we did this
thing too, and we always joke like when they found
a new place, Oh it's great, and I'd be like, can
you tell it color? The carpet is, well, not really,
it's like dirty's probably never been cleaned. Uh. One one

(02:57):
thing that it doesn't really surprise us, but be great
if we didn't run into it. But remember the days
of smoking where anywhere you went, you see smoking, So
like a lot of rentals had for some reasons, seem
to have, you know, and when people years and years
of smoking house, it gets this like film that gets
everywhere you're making a face right now. This would used

(03:18):
to be the dormshy like we wouldn't have thought much
of this thirty years ago. But you know, when you're
going to go in and refurbish, some of this wouldwork.
That's had that if been exposed to that. That was
like the first big job there was cleaning up some
of that stuff, you know, not very fun like carpenter
for carpenters to do. By the way, talking.

Speaker 1 (03:36):
About some of that, you know, the history that is
that these places have seen and you know, you think
of again if it's student housing, gosh, who knows what
all they've gone through. We talked sometimes about remodeling surprises, Mike.

Speaker 2 (03:48):
Are those some of those areas where you might have
find some some little little surprises while you're doing some.

Speaker 3 (03:54):
Demo Very much so, because rentals have never even even
now like we get calls to do maintenance on rentals
and I really don't I kind of I don't want
to get involved because it's just not people that own
those properties just don't seem to want to do like
a real model. It's more of a you know, how
cheaply can we get this done? And they know that

(04:15):
they're not going to get paid in rent necessarily for
I suppose you do. If you if you can make
it really nice on the high end, you're going to
you're gonna get more. But it's kind of sometimes hard
to get that money back out of rentals, and especially
students or parents of students, they should say, but yeah,
so you see a lot of stuff that really shouldn't
happen mechanically. You know, we pulled it apart. We expected

(04:37):
to not find insulation in the walls. We did find
the old horsehair and straw like that was a you know,
height of technology in nineteen twenty or something. Got that
stuff out of there, you know, bread, some foam in there,
got it as tight as we could you could. It's
it's like, Okay, you're not going to take that one
hundred plus year old house that's been kind of abused

(04:59):
or maybe not treated very nicely and and bring it
totally one up to up to new level. But I
can get eighty percent out of the way there. I
feel like it's a real victory, you know.

Speaker 1 (05:11):
And with that too, obviously one hundred year old home
you is definitely one that you know, the work that
you're going to do is is definitely going to be extensive,
but also even new, comparably new. We're homes, you know,
maybe a house built in the seventies or the eighties
or even into the nineties. I know, you guys get
brought in a lot for for folks that want.

Speaker 2 (05:31):
To do a whole home or model.

Speaker 1 (05:33):
Things have just gotten you know, the different types of
different types of materials that the craftsmanship, it's really gotten
so much better over the past thirty years that I know,
you guys get a lot of whole homer models for
folks that houses that are not quote unquote old but older.
They want to update as well, don't they.

Speaker 3 (05:52):
Right, But it's but it's not you're not having to
do whole systems. You know, like if you if your
house has been built in the modern era, let's say
the fifth plus, you know, it's probably gonna have installation, right,
You're gonna have you have some normal there and nominal
size lumber, right, and so that old stuff they they

(06:12):
didn't They just kind of a lot of it was
balloon frame. This house is bloon frame, by the way,
which uh, you know, instead of having a wall and
then you set the next floor on top of that wall,
you sort of just go up on the outside of
the house. You go up as far as the stud
went slapping on the one on the side, go up farther,

(06:32):
go farther, and then those those floors get mounted more
or less on on the side of those walls. And
you know, these these houses are in no danger of
falling over. And actually there's ways to do this now
and still meet code. I wouldn't really recommend it, like
I don't we wouldn't probably do that, but it's a
legit way of doing it. And it's like we had

(06:54):
to upsize beams, we had to upsize the electric system.
We deal with plumbing. On the modern side of things,
I'm embarrassed to say houses we built fifteen years ago,
Uh we did it without putting enough light in there,
you know, so excuse me. So it's so it's pretty
common for us to go back in if we were

(07:16):
doing a house from the nineties and go home owners
are going, well, why aren't there more lights in here?
Why don't I have why why don't I have a
you know, to rely on a lamp here? And there?
Can I get some lights in the ceiling? Can I
can we get some layers in here of of those things,
and it's a little bit easier to do because you're
not you're not really you know, you're not starting from
scratch like you are in an old house.

Speaker 1 (07:37):
With that too, speaking of with older houses, am I
right on this that that, like the you think of
two by four is very standard as far as the
way they are now. Weren't they like hand like locally
milled like a lot of the woodwork and on some
of these older am i am I miss.

Speaker 3 (07:52):
No, you're right, yeah, And uh, some of that wood
was it was much harder that old growth douglas fur
from way up north. I mean that stuff. Some of
that stuff is you feel like you're you're working with oak,
like it's super hard, dense wood. I don't think that
shrinks as much as like a two by four now.
So two by four now starts off theoretically two inches

(08:16):
by four inches, but by the time they they smooth
out the sides around the corners and dry it down,
it ends up to be an inch and a half
by three and a half. So now when we buy
two by fours, they're all an inch and a half
by three hour. Like that's one cool thing makes construction
much easier because if they that old stuff, those those

(08:37):
those studs could be four inches deep, you know, and
one next to it could be three and three quarters
and whatever. But when you're when you're plastering, like the
old houses had plaster, it was kind of goes on
like concrete. You scrowl it on and it makes up
for all that like like you that hides a lot
of those sins, you know, like it's we try very
hard when we build something new because we're gonna put

(08:58):
a sheeta drawl up there that we have a really
flat surface to mount that draw all to so that
when you look down that wall, you're not going, well,
how come, why does it go? Why does it dive in?
For you know a little bit over there and in
a quarter inch is actually visible in that wall?

Speaker 2 (09:13):
Now, what about.

Speaker 1 (09:14):
Is I was going to ask you about tying in
with the two bay fours, but I now I want
to ask you about tying in with the with plaster.
Is that's got to be quite the skill is going
plaster to dry, like having those those tools to.

Speaker 2 (09:27):
To make it seamless.

Speaker 1 (09:29):
I mean, that's got to Maybe I'm off on this,
but I'm guessing whoever does that's got some got some
mad technique.

Speaker 3 (09:35):
You know, it is not easy, But I would say
the guys that do it for me are they make
it look easy. I'm like, oh, I could do this.
It's not really that way. The challenge somewhat is when
you're whenever you're taking two different sort of substrates and
mixing them. Okay, how do you how do you win
through heating seasons and humidity? How do you how do

(09:57):
you keep from having a crack where those two meat
at some point, Because if you go from the heating
season where you're down to twenty five percent humidity in
a house to you know, in this even right now,
we're probably pushing sixty percent or sometimes more depending on
the day. That's a huge swing humidity and the temperature
does the same way, and things will expand and contract

(10:19):
at different rates. They make some great products that help
you out. I don't know if you've seen the kind
of rolls of mesh. It looks like you can kind
of see through it. There's there's we can apply that
and then and then basically dry all mud over it.
Dry A mud is much more flexible than plaster, by

(10:39):
the way, so it gives you some leeway there but
there's a lot of tricks, a lot of tricks to
make that work.

Speaker 2 (10:44):
Is there also a trick to say, let's get rid
of the plaster?

Speaker 1 (10:47):
Are there projects where you go, you know, because I
think of too a lot of these older houses where
you know, just from settling and other things, you can
tell there'ref and cracks and other things over the years
that are repaired at some point. It's just like, let's
let's just go at.

Speaker 3 (10:59):
A you know, it's I would be embarrassed to say.
You know, there's a lot of times we're going, how
we're going to try and keep the plaster in this room,
and just that wall we're taking out, we're gonna draw
all that, We'll make them play together. And to be honest,
there's a lot of times we go halfway through it,
we're going, this is just not worth it. We should
have just torn that plaster off. But you know, every

(11:22):
homeowner has there are constraints, right like you if the
pennies fell from heaven and you could go, well, we're
just gonna tear everything that start all over it, Yes,
that would be the best thing. Because you're gonna update insulation,
you're gonna upstate. There's a lot of things that are
going to come with that. But all remodeling is where
do you stopped. You know, you thought about your own house. Okay,
I want to do my kitchen. Well, okay, that kitchen

(11:42):
might lead you into other areas well, maybe I want
to take this wall out. Okay, now we're affecting that
room on the other side of that. Are you going
to replace flooring in there? Are you going to retrim
that room? Are you gonna You're probably gonna have to
at least repaint everything right, And you're thinking, well, no,
I just want to take the wall out, you know,
but it doesn't really work that way.

Speaker 1 (12:03):
That's what For folks that haven't been over to the
website It's construction company dot com recently, I would urge
you to head over there because I think that's one
of those those areas that's often most impressive to me.
And it's something that I would have never noticed previous
to doing the show with you, which is how these
spaces tie in. And you mentioned, you know, the kitchen,
and you know, if you take out that wall, now
you've got a different area. And how do you tie

(12:25):
this all together? And how do you make it look
all look right, And I'm gonna guess not as much
with a whole Homer model, but you still have those
same you know, you want to you want to be
right by the house, you want it to fit with
the rest of the house. And even if it's a
whole Homer model, there's probably some spaces that aren't going
to get completely renovated that you're gonna want to make

(12:45):
sure that they still fit. Like you don't walk to
the house and go that was the room that they
didn't do right. I mean, there is that kind of
design and conversation that goes into it.

Speaker 3 (12:54):
Yeah, it is because and I think it's totally okay
to to be able to say as a homeowner, well
we're it's obvious we did all this and we have
plans to get to this at some point, you know, hopefully,
but for right now, it's it's working out for us. Oh,
I was gonna ask you a question, So what what
leads tomorrow modeling? Right? You know I mentioned flooring a

(13:16):
lot of times. It's flooring. It could be mechanicals. But
if you were going to paint, if you had to
guess what what the hardest color to match is, like,
what would you what would you think is a tough one.

Speaker 2 (13:27):
A I'm gonna go with red.

Speaker 3 (13:31):
Ah Well, actually, I mean, I mean I had a
feeling would not get this right. But there's in the
studio which has a lot of CDs in it, which
I think you guys should have a gratch that. But no,
it's actually white. You know, if you think about, like
if you're picking out paint colors, take a gander, try
to guess how many versions of white there are, so

(13:53):
I can in every color family, there's a red car family,
they'll have a white that or or ten or two
anyways in that family that have a little bit of
red in them, or they're in the base mix right,
same with blue and all the all the primary colors.

Speaker 2 (14:08):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (14:09):
When we are remodeling a house and we're doing say
we're doing a kitchen and we wide and widen a doorway,
we have to rebuild a drywall corner that's up up
on top and that affects the ceiling. And our first
question to homeowner, like before we even start is do
you have that that white? You have that pink card?
Because we know we actually have these little machines that
can I don't know how it does it, but it's

(14:29):
a little do dead. You put it on the red
wall and it will it'll it'll tell you what color
it was like. Uh we was quite a bit of
Shore Williams. We use the major major manufacturers anyways that
are in town and they have it, and it'll tell
us what color of theirs is they feel it is.
It'll give you a couple other options. It might give
you three total, but one will be the winner. With white.

(14:52):
It just goes, it spins in circles, it says, I
don't know. Uh so, so phone owner has that color
even if it's not usable. We can we can get
the numbers off that lid and have that color remade
and then we can we call patch painting. So it's like, okay,
now in off tight the whole ceiling. Some of these
ceilings lead into stairways which grew upstairs into hallways and

(15:13):
we you know, it just never ends with the ceilings.

Speaker 2 (15:15):
So I don't know if I'm alone in this. I
don't think I am.

Speaker 1 (15:18):
We have like five or six gallons of paint left
over from various I don't know which, like which paint
is for which room could.

Speaker 3 (15:26):
Be good if you if you like your colors. You
should figure them out, if not just get rid of that.

Speaker 2 (15:32):
Just takes up room in the shed. I don't know
what it's what you know.

Speaker 3 (15:36):
There are like we actually have friends that sort of
make friendly friendly movies and they they in that doesn't
believe or not, it's in Fort Atkinson, and we to
give them all of our extra paint because if you
think about, they're constantly changing colors and movie sets and
things like this, and they they use it all up.

(15:57):
So I like it that that or somebody that we
can give that to you and I I uh that
that could be a budding like charity. I guess where
we could where we could all donate paint too, so
it didn't just pardon in our basements and convict us
for the restaurants.

Speaker 2 (16:14):
Off that didn't I didn't realize that. That's super cool.

Speaker 1 (16:18):
They're talking this morning with Mike two Egg, owner of
Edge Construction, talk this week about whole homer modeling, some
of those big, bigger projects that they do at Edge Construction,
And of course it's always a great day to be
talking with Mike and the team and think about doing
some remodeling, whether it's a whole home or whether you're
thinking something like a bathroom, kitchen, those type of things
they'd love to talk to get Edge Construction. Yeah, I'm
been to the website. Check it out edge Construction Company

(16:39):
dot com. Get some great ideas. They're telp number six
O eight six three six three three four three that
number six three six edge. Of course Edge Construction brings
you the Homer Modeling Show right here on thirteen ten
wib A. This is the Homer Modeling Show brought to
you by Edge Construction Online. Edge Construction Company dot com one.

(17:00):
We're a great website and resource to learn more about
Edge Construction. If you haven't been there recently, always want
to check back often because they're always updating recent projects.
Also check out those links Pinterest, Facebook, and howse all
available to you at Edge Construction Company dot com. Talking
this week about some of the bigger projects whole Homer
modeling that they do at edge Construction, Mike, as far
as I obviously we talk about you know, kitchens and bathrooms.

(17:23):
You guys are doing those day in and day out,
and as you mentioned earlier, you do a few big
projects a year. You've got the manpower, you've got the skills,
and a great opportunity for folks. What's kind of the timeline.
I'm gonna guess bigger project means kind of a bigger
lead up that you're you're gonna need a little more
time just because there's a lot more details and of
course making sure that everything flows smoothly. What is kind

(17:45):
of that timeline for even just kind of getting started
with some of these whole homer models.

Speaker 3 (17:49):
Yeah, I always think our design period is similar to
our construction period. So like if it's if it's a
whole home model, it might take five months plus or
minus a month, Like depending on the level you're going to.
That's generally about how long those take. So that's about
how much time they spend in uh design. We have

(18:11):
one kind of one slot open for this fall ish
for a for a whole arm model, and we have
we have a couple of candidates. But it's not a
bad time to call us actually for that if you
are decisive and motivated, because there's a lot of work
that has to happen before you get to you know,
digging and opening things up. And so if we if

(18:32):
we if a kitchen is going to take us two
and a half three months, that's about how long it
seems to take to figure out what to do and
pick things out and write a contract and all those things.
So people ask about the timeline a lot. I think
it's one of the first questions usually that gets asked, Okay,
when can you start, Like, well, okay, we're we jumped
the gun here a little bit if we don't know
what level you want to go to and what where

(18:55):
we're going. So, I mean, we have a we have
a basement ram model that I went to two weeks ago.
Homeowner really excited about getting going. It's not it's an
office and a little great room. It's maybe five six
hundred feet. You know. We did design for that. We
can cad that in a day. We really got motivated

(19:16):
fast because of the homeowner and knowing we didn't have
to order cabinets, okay, match the finishes and the rest
of the house. It was a pretty new house, very
very uh. That simplified a lot of things out of
the design side. And I think that's actually starting fairly quickly.
So that would be like from walking in the door
to to finish, you know, a few months. So like

(19:38):
that's that's pretty quick in our world. Probably in anybody's world.
But you know, you, like I said, you start complicating
things with breaking up concrete for plumbing or doing ordering
cabinets or you know, there's there's a lot, a lot
of different versions of this that can stretch things out
a little bit. And it does you want to take
your time on design if if it if you have

(19:58):
those other other play coming in, you know, because it's
you think about the numbers of finishes that have to
be decided in a whole Homer model. Well, in a kitchen,
it's seven or eight, right, and that's just one room.
So you've got flooring, you've got your trim, You've got
at least one cabinet color, you've got countertops, you've got

(20:20):
paint colors, you've got hardware, you've got plumbing. Right, you
got fausus. So I think that gets me to seven
or eight. But now you go, okay, master bath, same
thing you got, and then just you want a really
good general plan, right, so that things flow and and
don't look like you're coming out of the flipper errs. Right,

(20:43):
flippers destroyed houses. In my mind, like we're going to
be dealing with the repercussions of people flipping houses for
a long time. If you did it, naughty, naughty man
to you right now, because there weren't a lot of
real fixes. It was kind of just facelift type things.
And you know, it's it's still pretty common for us

(21:04):
to walk into a house and see four or five
different kinds of flooring on the first floor. Well, if
you're going to design this and have be thoughtful about it,
that's just not how you're going to do it.

Speaker 1 (21:14):
What is what is the general kind of trigger for
folks to do a whole Homer model?

Speaker 2 (21:18):
Is that something.

Speaker 1 (21:18):
Like like, you know, we love the neighbors and we
want to stay here, but we or you look at
the housing market looking at some of the prices saying,
you know what, we really like it here, or is
it I'm just tired of this place, or we've got
the in laws moving in with us, so i want
to redesign this, and I also want you to build
me a shack out in the woods.

Speaker 2 (21:37):
I can hye, what do we see a some have
a shack.

Speaker 1 (21:42):
That's why I'm a happy guy, always kind of a
place to retreat. But what are like those kind of
those Is it a variety of different reasons or others.

Speaker 3 (21:52):
It is. So if you if you split off the one,
what was the one you said about the values going up,
prices going up, Let's split that away from everything else,
because I think all those life changes, even maybe it's
not a life change, but maybe you hate your kitchen
and like you've hated you've been there ten years and
it's bugged you the whole time, Like has some I

(22:13):
call them fatal flaws, maybe pitch points, or it's just
like why did they do this? This looks stupid. We're
gonna put those off to one side. But the good
thing I think for housing is that the values have
come up, so now it's it's worth investing in some
of these houses. I'll use the downtown Madison neighborhoods as

(22:35):
an example. When we first started working down there, depending
on how far out you know, the rings out from
the capitol, how far you were out, you can buy
those houses for one hundred and fifty thousand bucks, like
now fixer uppers are three times that sometimes, and you know,
oh boy, I'm sure I wouldn't want to have to
be the first one to buy that and invest in

(22:57):
those houses. But there's a lot of people them been
down there for a long time, and now you've got
a bunch more value in the house. It makes it
worth it to invest in it, and so now you can.
It's been a good driver for this business. But it's
also a good driver for doing right by the house. Okay,
if your value is low and you want to temporarily
solve a problem, I get it. It's harder to do

(23:20):
a really real, legitimate model with good products. If the
values are up. Now you have options, right.

Speaker 2 (23:28):
I know, I know. I don't say good for business.

Speaker 1 (23:31):
I don't know if they're right, but you guys do
a lot of work on the smiss and with those
values of those homes and people really wanting quality remodels,
that's been good for you guys that I know. You
guys spend a lot of time at edge construction on
those houses because people have said, you know what, we
want these projects done right, we want them done well.

Speaker 3 (23:48):
Yeah, And I want to say we enjoy working down there.
If that's the only spot we could work, I would
be in an insane asylum because it's not the houses,
not the people, it's just there's there's no room to
maneuver down there. Right, you're parking we've got to get
vic vans and sometimes trailers and dumpsters and the whole thing.

(24:10):
And we the neighbors have been very largely understanding and
and will we work with you. I'm sure they get
at an night after a while. But yeah, that's uh,
that's been a really good thing. And I personally I
love old houses. So I like when people are willing
to invest in those old houses because now we're pretty
much anything you do in the old house is gonna
is gonna help save it. But I like thinking, Okay,

(24:34):
let's let's let's make sure this house is around for
another one hundred years, Like that's really the goal.

Speaker 1 (24:39):
And it's it's some amazing stuff. We talk about some
of the projects they've done at Edge Construction. One of
the cool things is if you head on over to
Edge Construction Company dot com, you can check out the
portfolio right there. But also they've got a link on
there to house h o u zz and you can
see their work there a bunch of projects online. You
can see some of that great work that they've done
at Edge Construction. But think about doing summer modeling, maybe
a whole homer model, maybe just think kitchen, bath, those

(25:01):
type of areas they'd love to talk to the Edge Construction. Oh,
I got to just pick up pone give a call
six oh eight six three six three three four three
that number six three six Edge.

Speaker 2 (25:08):
Of course, Edge.

Speaker 1 (25:08):
Construction brings you the Homer Modeling Show right here on
thirteen ten woibi. This is the Homer Modeling Show brought
you by Edge Construction online, Edge Construction Company dot com.
On one word Edge Construction Company dot Com tel for
a number six oh eight six three six three three
four to three that number. So we th remember six
three six Edge talking this week about whole home remodel

(25:30):
projects with Mike and left off talking about certain areas
if we were talking about the isthmus as one. But
I know even in like the surrounding communities there's a
lot of really really beautiful homes or homes with a
lot of potential as well. And I know one of
the cool things about what you guys do at Edge
Construction is you do the small ones on the isthmus.

(25:51):
You'll do the big if you can find like a
nice Victorian, you love to get in on those type
of things as well. And a big part of that
too is is making sure that the remodel fits this
type of like you don't want to get like a
big Victorian.

Speaker 2 (26:07):
Do a big open concept with like.

Speaker 1 (26:10):
Very yeah yeah, yeah yeah.

Speaker 3 (26:14):
Do you remember I don't know if you ever have
seen they might still make it this old house magazine.

Speaker 2 (26:21):
Have you ever I remember the magazine?

Speaker 3 (26:23):
The last page it would be called remuddle.

Speaker 2 (26:25):
Oh no, I don't know.

Speaker 3 (26:26):
It'd always be like a beautiful old house that had
a terrible addition on it, or you know, something that
didn't fit. And so I think I give our designers
a lot of credit, but it's sometimes it is a
challenge to get to do that edition or expand that house.
We had one where we went up. We seemed to

(26:47):
do at least one of these a year where you
tear the roof off and go up. And one of
the best compliments was from the neighborhood basically when we
were finishing up. So now it's it's hard for homeowners
that don't do this every day, even especially the neighbors
who don't get see the plans and they don't have
the endgame in mind. You know, they're thinking, like I
hope they don't build something stupid next to me. Right,

(27:10):
let's not paint it purple or pink or something. But
we did have several homeowners come up, and this is
pretty common, I think when you have good design, Oh,
it's such a relief to see that it still fits
the neighborhood. It's not like too big. I have a
friend that built a lake house and dwarfed the houses

(27:32):
around him, and I was like, yeah, pretty cringey. I
don't like that. That's you don't want you neighbors to
be like just in your shadow, right, that's not right.
And so we talk a lot about internally about just
right sizing things right we went. I was in construction
in the early two thousands where it was like it

(27:52):
was like turn and burn, Like it was always about
the move up house, like must sell this house. And
there's this inflationary thing happening where you know, I'm into
a house one year it increased value fifty grand. I
can now that allows me to buy another, bigger, better
And we did some like twelve hundred square foot master
bedrooms back then, you know, built brand new, and I'm thinking,

(28:12):
this is the dumbest thing. We're just going to sleep
in here. You don't know what he really needs that
I guess but it's not always about need. But I
think you know what I'm talking about. Like you can
make you can make a great room too big, you
can make a kitchen sometimes too big. I like when
things are right sized and they feel it feels right
for especially for the house.

Speaker 2 (28:31):
Is there something too with as we talk about.

Speaker 1 (28:32):
I don't know poor proportionality is the right term, but
like I know, one of the things you guys are
able to do is get with some of these bigger
projects be more square footage. But because of the design,
it may not. I don't know if it's like A
called it an illusion or what, but there is thought
that goes into how is this this addition or this

(28:53):
this you know, this second story, how's it going to
fit in? And really making it blend with it is
obviously more space, but it doesn't look out of place.
I don't know if that's the right way to right.

Speaker 3 (29:04):
You want to modernize, but you don't and you want
to You want good design to be a parent, Like
it's got to be a I think that just you know,
it's attractive to the most amount the most the most
number of people. But yeah, there's there's ways that it
can go wrong. I CAD has helped. I mean are
on the footprint, which is just a top down view

(29:24):
of that house. So for we peel a roof off,
we can look now down in there, and on CAD
we can sort of rearrange things sometimes, try different things out,
and then we can get a the the rendering, which
is the sort of cartoon level. It's not like seventies cartoons.
It's more like you know now cartoons. It's it's it's

(29:45):
very good. We can actually import pictures in there that
will show up. So we can put backsplash tile, and
we can put countertops in there, we can put paint
colors in, we can show the effects of light coming in.
We can we can show the effects of light just
in the room and shadows and things like that. And

(30:06):
then we can do the same thing on the outside.
We get we can we can do a rendering that
shows the outside of that house at three o'clock on
a Saturday. And it's like, okay, now we're now we're
doing I suppose of you really wild you could You
could you could import the neighborhood in there, and that's
probably the future, right, It's gonna it's gonna show up
that way.

Speaker 1 (30:25):
There's gonna be something you do, like a fly by
of your house that would be nipped with. You were
talked to earlier too about adding a second story. Could
could any Obviously design is one thing, but structurally, can
any house handle a second story out?

Speaker 2 (30:40):
Is that absolute? Yes?

Speaker 3 (30:42):
And no? I mean you know what, I'm sure every
time we've done it, we've added structure to that house
because you know, obviously we don't want to have a
problem structurally. But so if you if you build a
wall right and you don't have a roof or you
don't have a second story on it, that really isn't
that sturdy? Right? There's there's as soon as you put

(31:04):
that second floor on it. Now you're tying the wall
on one side of the house to the wall on
the other side of the house. Nobody, nobody can move.
All those injury walls now have structure that they can
tie to in a ranch house, that's happening with your
roof system, Like they're engineered not just to carry snow
load and shed rain, but they're engineered to hold that

(31:24):
house together. So it ties it together. So so when
you add that second floor, okay, we're gonna have key
points where weight's coming down, and we can figure that
out with cat we can we can we can engineer
that roof now and go, Okay, probably not going to
support everything we want it to right here, but if

(31:44):
we add a little bit of structure underneath it, maybe
we mean we put a couple of posts in. We
we might have to knock out a little concrete in
the basement because we're gonna have to deal with point
loads in different spots. It's it's not it's not as
difficult as you think when you you know how to
do it. I don't know if that's a dumb way
of saying it.

Speaker 1 (32:03):
I mean, no, it makes perfect sense. But I always
wondered about that. I'm like, could any house be a
candidate for I mean, with with folks that are doing
like second story editions. Is that oftentimes like master bedrooms
and things like that, or what are people kind of
putting up in those in those second story well editions.

Speaker 3 (32:18):
I mean, if you think about it, so the times
we've done it, I would say there's there ranch houses
in uh An area where the values have really come up,
you know, like like we've done a bunch of Middleton.
To be honest, that's that's that's where the where the
money is. So those houses had bedrooms on the first floor,
like they had probably a master quotation mark bedroom might

(32:39):
have been a smaller bedroom, and then another at least
one other bedroom that was small. So a really popular
thing to do is go, Okay, if we're going up,
we can get three bedrooms upstairs, three normal bedrooms upstairs,
maybe two more baths, uh, and then we can combine
some of those things on that first floor and get
a master down there. So that actually is a is
not a bad way to go, but it depends on

(33:00):
the house, right, Like sometimes you've got to eat up
some of that space with expanding the kitchen or or
getting a great room or something like that.

Speaker 1 (33:08):
For people that are thinking about getting that whole Homer
model started obviously giving you guys a call and starting
that do you get a lot of folks that like,
this is what I want? Or do you get other
folks that I probably a variety as I'm asking this
question of saying they know exactly what they want, and
then other people saying.

Speaker 2 (33:24):
Here's what we know.

Speaker 1 (33:24):
We love the neighborhood, we love the house, but it's
just not working right.

Speaker 3 (33:29):
I would say it's rare to get somebody that says,
we know exactly what we okay, because you about half
of those projects that show up at our door have
been sort of started by somebody else, Like it might
have been homeowner or that new a designer or an architect,
and maybe they roughed out some things like show the possibilities,
and then we take it from there. Once in a

(33:50):
while we'll work all the way through with a designer
or another designer or an architect, And that is perfectly fine.
We're you know, it's it's sort of from our standpoint. Yeah,
you want to you want to you want to love
your designer, you want to be really comfortable with them.
But there's just a lot of nuts and bolts work
that has to happen. So we've got to do some
of that. They might do some of that, and so

(34:13):
I'd say it's really helpful if if you at least
put a lot of thought into it, you know, I, uh,
maybe we've got a couple of kids, and we got
maybe something on the way or whatever. We want to get.
Our end goal is four bedrooms, you know, three baths,
YadA yadas. So that's uh, and and most of the
time you're update, it's not just that driving it. It's okay,

(34:36):
we might have a bad roof, we need to do
sing when windows we got, it's it's like a combination
of things that are really driving it. And then you know,
if you're in the right neighborhood, that's it's really that
that will that will drive you to We.

Speaker 1 (34:48):
Get also updated mechanicals and other things. It's just as
we're adding more space, bigger, better furnace, those type of things.

Speaker 3 (34:54):
Yeah. Actually, I think the last one, or maybe the
one or two before that we did when we put
the second story on, there was just no way to
the existing furnace was not going to do it. And
when I was really looking at how to design that
heating system, I thought and by the time we get
from down here and we had to snake around a
little bit to get upstairs, and I really felt like

(35:17):
we weren't going to be able to do that great
of a job having everything come from two floors beneath.
We added a furnace in the upstairs and so we
had a totally separate system. There's some advantages to that.
One of them is you got a separate thronost up there,
so you can treat that area differently. Maybe you like
to sleep when it's a little cooler in your upstairs

(35:38):
or maybe maybe warm. I don't know what it is,
but now you can do it, and you've got this
brand new system that should be good for a long time.
And really you're not giving up anything, right, You're not going, well,
we're not gonna be able to do a good job
of heating this out of the house because we're coming
from way over there. Now, we've we've got no excuses.

(35:59):
Really worked, really well.

Speaker 2 (36:01):
It's the perfect place.

Speaker 1 (36:02):
And that's one of the great things about working with
Mike and the team at Edge Construction getting that perfect
remodel done.

Speaker 2 (36:06):
They'd love to talk to you.

Speaker 1 (36:07):
I got to do this morning pick up phone game
A call six so eight six three six three three
four three that number six three six Edge of course,
you can check them out online Edgeconstruction Company dot com.
That's Edgeconstruction Company dot com. More of the Homer Modeling
Show is next here on thirteen ten.

Speaker 2 (36:21):
Wi