Eye of the Beholder...5 Tips to a more Beautiful Home!

Our friends, and client Cozy and Mark Palmer informed us the other day that DHome Magazine's editors selected their home as one of the 10 Most Beautiful homes in Dallas! A stunning accomplishment for Mark in particular who has been dreaming of building a Greek Revival Farmhouse for the last 25 years or so.

The old saying goes, '...one man's trash is another man's treasure...' And so it is with homes. What keeps life interesting is producers who continue to make chocolate...and vanilla...and even tutti fruiti - something for everyone who declares their individual taste.




But on the other end of the spectrum from "Most Beautiful" is often "Ugliest!" While 'beauty really is in the eye of the beholder,' here are 5 ways to maximize the beauty of your home construction or remodel project:

1. Go Pro - Just like Doctors are trained in how our bodies function, architects, landscape architects, and interior designers are classically trained in proportion, balance, harmony and variety. Who really studies da Vinci's Vitruvian Man or Le Corbusier's Modulor based on the Golden Mean? Architects do! It's all part of their training. As a result of their training, degreed architects or interior designers are more likely to help you create a thing of beauty. But don't always discount those who haven't studied Le Corbusier - some people just have a knack for designing beautiful things!
2. Show and Tell
   
   Trapped deep within your brain are images and feelings that are satisfying. Experience suggests the easiest way to "untrap" those feeling and images is to research pictures and find things that feel good. Coffee table magazines like Veranda, House Beautiful, and Southern Living to name a few, are brimming with ideas. Recently a website named Houzz began collecting catagorized pictures from architects, builders, interior designers and landscape architects for the sole purpose of displaying professional's best ideas for building or renovating homes. With well over a million photos, surely you can find something that resonates with your soul!
3. Point and Shoot  
   
   Once you have an inventory of ideas for your home project, and a professional(s) to help you with design, it's time to point to a captured picture and challenge the professionals with incorporating the idea into your home. Not surprisingly this will insure most of the ideas which have resonated with your soul will end up in the finished product. Remember, just because an architect or designer draws your idea on a piece of paper doesn't mean your builder will actually build it that way! Hang on to your photos for the next step...
4. "Can You Hear Me Now?"
   
    Think of your builder as a "put'er-togetherer" of gigantic jigsaw puzzles. Just like any computer, you will need to program him/her with the right information so that your building puzzle turns out just the way you wanted. Enter, the communications process! Your ability to end up with what you want in a home is directly related to the quality of the communications between yourself, the design professionals, and your builder. Interview carefully to make sure your builder has a communications system that translates great ideas into beautiful construction.
5. 
   Flies Stick to Honey  The age old expression "...you can catch a lot more flies with honey than you can with vinegar..." reigns supreme in the design/build industry. Exhibiting an "attitude of gratitude" insures everyone associated with your project would rather work on your home instead of someone else's. Through the years I've witnessed extraordinary efforts on the part of professionals, builders, and trade subcontractors, all because the homeowner was being kind and gracious to everyone working on the project.

Highly talented people consistently turn out beautiful projects. Experience has taught them what looks good, and what doesn't. While you may think it expensive to hire talent, you haven't seen "expensive" until you have to tear out something that's either made wrong, or ugly!

Reviving the Greek

For twenty-eight years Cozy and Mark Palmer dreamed of having a Greek Revival Farmhouse - now they live in one! The Palmers entrusted Hoebeke Builders, Inc. with helping design and build their dreamhouse. Last week they moved in.

To say the process went well would be an understatement. Mark and Cozy were dream clients! Always ready with a picture, or a video, their desires were communicated very simply and clearly. Right down to the highly polished black handrail on the front stairs.

Before our book, UnHINGED - A Homebuilder's Secrets for Saving Time & Money was...well, UnHinged, the Palmers followed the premise of the book perfectly by building a project team that included: architect Paul Turney, interior designer Rebecca Low, landscape architect Daniel Houchard and his company From The Ground Up, and Hoebeke Builders. Each different discipline performed their work on time, and in concert with the rest of the team. The results are obvious.




It's always great to finish a project and walk away with a new set of best friends! Special thanks from my end to the best business partner a guy could ever have, Phillip McCloud, who dogged the details and made a wonderful home S U P E R B! 

Diggin' in the Dirt...

(Editors Note: The following is the last in a series of excerpts from my new book Raising the Roof! A Homebuilder's Secrets to Saving Time and Money. So often homeowners take a "Ready, Fire, Aim" approach to the building process. Raising the Roof! attempts to re-orient the process so most of the planning occurs upfront, before leaving the architect's office. This piece is a snippet from the section dealing with the necessary "fourth leg" of the Project Team stool, the landscape architect. 

A courtyard at night shows off a landscape architect’s talent.

EVERY BLOOMIN’ THING! THE LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTS

Our business may have been the only operation in North America which actually started and owned a landscape company and never knew the difference between a bush and a tree! Private Gardens was born in early 2000, staffed with a talented landscape architect, and organized with the thought of offering all of our homebuilding clients “curb to curb” design and construction services. It worked – but then again it didn’t! Our clientele didn’t want all of the in-house attention afforded them with complete construction and landscape services. They wanted the little yellow truck in front of their house known locally as Lambert’s Landscaping. After three years of beating our heads against the flowerbeds, we closed the business.

Those three years were very educational. Every business is unique. We are unique in being able to coordinate and assemble large pieces of a complex puzzle which people eventually live in. Lambert’s, on the other hand, is gifted at coordinating “flora” and some “fauna,” making each property beautiful. Dallas is blessed with a healthy number of fine landscape architects who work magic in the yard.

In terms of a four-legged stool supporting the design and construction of a home, the landscape architect represents the fourth and final leg of the stool (along with the architect, contractor, and interior designer). The landscape architect’s discipline is equally as important to the process as any other.

In a perfect world, a landscape architect would join the design team at the same time as the three other legs of the stool. Early in the design process, the Project Team needs enough “hardscape” input (walks, stone walls and columns, pools, etc.) from the landscape architect, so that preliminary on-site work can be done at the same time as the home building.   If it’s known ahead of time where stone walls, columns, pools, and other hardscape features will be located, it is most cost effective to drill, form, and pour those footings while the house foundation is being constructed. Common sense says if the concrete trucks and pump jacks have to come back a second time, it ain’t going to be cheap. Real savings can be realized if all of the disciplines are properly coordinated.

“Softscape,” or planting materials (trees, grass, and the like), can always be defined later in the building process if the planting beds are master planned into the overall site design. Think of it in terms of trim and paint: It’s always easy to worry about the decorative stuff and colors later, if provisions have been made for those items in the master planning of the house. 

Holy Chihuly!

For literally months now I have been bugging you about the Chihuly Art Exhibit that was coming to the Dallas Arboretum in May. It's here! You will remember that the Arboretum hired us to build "Small Houses of Great Artists" in conjunction with Chihuly. My business partner Phillip McCloud and I thought our stuff was pretty neat until Dale Chihuly showed up... Rather than give you the "play by play", let's let Chihuly's work write this blog as we share some of the photographs that our Arboretum friend Bill Hurst of Bill Hurst Photography shared with us - even Bill's work is truly amazing!

Unlike other Chihuly Exhibits that have shown around the United States the Arboretum has lit many of the works in the garden. Every Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday nights will be Chihuly After Dark. Don't miss it!

Awfully special! Perfect for a great date night with that special person. Of course, you could also run through the Monet "Small House" while you are there....

"Bloomin' Fun!!"

Dallas Blooms, and the Small Houses of Great Artists exhibit took off last weekend like a scalded dog! The Arboretum had over 77,000 people stroll the grounds Saturday and Sunday! My favorite people (my family, and my grandkids!) toured Monday morning to see firsthand Dutch's work. 

Watching our kids, and their kids run, laugh, and play out in the gardens just seems so right. Monday was a beautiful day. Four generations of Hoebeke's were present as my parents made the trip to check out their son's handiwork. The sunshine and fresh air enhanced those beautiful grounds that sit right on White Rock Lake. Needless to say, we are all extremely grateful for the time we can share together - and for our health!

Monday was also "Mommie and Me" at the Arboretum. A weekly event that happens each Monday, throngs of moms and their kids - thick as bugs on a bumper, flock to the gardens. The kids love the petting zoo and face painting. The moms love wearing the kids out so they will take a really good nap!

McCall, Wells, and Jack (well maybe not Jack - he's only 4 months old!) checked out what Dutch and longtime friend and business partner Phillip McCloud put together. The smiles on their faces suggested that they really liked what they saw!

With over 500,000 tulip bulbs, flowering cherry trees, and azaleas getting ready to bloom, this is a wonderful time of the year to tour the Arboretum. Our exhibit will be there for the playin' through the end of the year. Mark your calendar and come see us!

(Editor's Note: The exhibit picked up a wonderful endorsement from the Cooke family at http://www.cookefam.com/2012/03/dallas-blooms-2012.html . It's gratifying to see the Houses "in action" with kids having fun! Rachel Cooke's photography is pretty good too!)

Miles of Smiles!

It's here! Dallas Blooms at the Arboretum in conjunction with "Small Houses of Great Artists!" (which you and I know from other blogs as the Kid's Playhouses!) is finished and ready for Kids! So how did the final result compare with the original Architect's design? You tell me...

"Monet" by Robbie Fusch

Photo courtesy of Bill Hurst Photography

Phillip McCloud and I had a wonderful time putting this project together! The Arboretum people could not have been nicer, or more gracious - they made our job much easier.

"Picasso" by Wilson Fuqua

Photo courtesy of Bill Hurst Photography

Of course the four Architects, Robbie Fusch, Wilson Fuqua, Clint Pearson, and Paul Turney turned each Great Artist's habitat into childhood whimsey!

"O'Keeffe" by Clint Pearson

Photo courtesy of Bill Hurst Photography

And our friend Mona Crider of La Foofaraw and her talented team really dressed the insides of our cottages.

"Seurat" by Paul Turney

Photo courtesy of Bill Hurst Photography

But our deepest gratitude goes to those vendors and subcontractors who wanted to see this project succeed and helped us out of a very tight budget and into all of this kid's splendor!

So how did Hoebeke Builders do at taking a two dimensional rendering, and making it come to life? Meet the Judges!

Cottage "Planting"

The time has come! While some folks are rooting around in their gardens planting tulip bulbs for the Spring, our sights are set on "planting cottages" in the gardens of the Dallas Arboretum. Mona Crider of La Foofaraw has had her crew workin' fast and furious painting the artwork on the Picasso cottage that is being built in a warehouse in Celina. As you will recall from previous posts (10/20, 11/24 & 12/14) all four of the cottages are mostly pre-fabricated construction. While whole sections will be erected at once, trimming and dressing of the framed carcass' will occur on-site.  Later this week we will ship all the parts and pieces to the Arboretum and begin setting them up.

The Picasso Cottage was the last one to be constructed. A model of the overall project was done by J. Wilson Fuqua Architects, and is shown above. Several pieces of the cottage can be seen in progress throughout this posting. Can't you just imagine all the children laughing and running through all of the openings, having a wonderful time?

The "buzz" has already started, and is growing louder by the minute! On Tuesday The Dallas Arboretum issued a press release recognizing our efforts and foreshadowing the greater exhibit to come. We have been truly humbled by the response - undeserved applause for work not yet completed! We are scheduled to be completed, and party pretty by February 19th.

If it looks like a party - it is! My business partner Phillip McCloud and I have accused the artists of having way too much fun! Just like with everything on this project, it truly has been a labor of love!