"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!)

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!

Hooray Monet!

A curved dormer for the Monet roof.

The front door wall of the Monet Cottage

A Seurat Cottage window

If you've been keeping up with this blog you will know that we have been working hard on producing four cottages for the children's area of the Dallas Arboretum gardens (See the October 2o, and November 24th posts) . Well, three down now and one to go! You see, we have a secret weapon. Turns out my operating partner, Phillip McCloud is a whiz bang at all of this stuff! Of course it doesn't hurt that he was a framing contractor for twenty-two years. Anyway, he's moving nearly twice as fast as the door/window/oeil de beouf production guy (that would be your's truly!). Could it have something to do with actual knowledge of the trade? Oh well, I'm in there giving it the old college try!

Monet rafter tails

It would be a big stretch to tell you I am an asset to Phillip in the warehouse! Matter of fact it would be an all out lie. But he is tolerant beyond belief as he gives me tasks to perform and laughs when I screw them up. With the amount of effort he is putting into each one of the cottages, our garden exhibit that will last from March through December, will really be special for the kids! I can almost hear my grandkids whooping and hollering as they race through the playhouses! 

An elegant Chihuly bowl - how does he think of this stuff?

And then comes the Chihuly Glass exhibit in May! This will be spectacular! But it's not lost on me that they want us in before Chihuly, and out after Chihuly - heck the Arboretum doesn't want us breaking his stuff! I mean this Chihuly bowl is only $25,000 (I'll take a setting of six please!).

Funny how it works out that we have a wonderful home for the Palmers that is getting ready to start just two blocks away. I guess after the Arboretum cottages we will just have to move our cottage operation over a few streets to work on the Palmer's "mega-cottage!"

A Labor of Love!

We've started! What previously was only a pipe dream is beginning to take three dimensional shape. The Dallas Arboretum "cottages" for the kids are off and running!

Foxworth - Galbreath kicked in some chips and provided us with the materials for both the O'Keffe House, and Seurat's Parisian Townhouse. O'Keffe is currently in production. Once the shell (part of which is seen below) is built on-site we plan to have it gunite'd with pool crete so that we can form a smooth, adobe like finish similar to what Georgia O'Keffe must have experienced as a child. And then we hide the O'Keffe picture inside for the kids to find....

My extraordinarily talented business partner Phillip McCloud really knows his way around a circular saw! Me? - well I'm good on the stupid end of the tape measure or the dumb end of a chalk box. Anyway, with his strong direction we will do some of the work ourselves and rely on a "little help from our friends" to get the component parts built in a warehouse, ahead of the on-site erection in February. We should be finished ahead of our completion date of February 19th.

It makes our heart sing when we think about all those kids crawling through these cottages! Who knows, maybe the next great Monet, or the next great world class architect may shortly be running and laughing in our Arboretum "Small Homes!" Sounds like a plan to me!

Is It Dinnertime Yet?

One of the incidental benefits of working with Velma Mitchell is sampling the food that she cooks! Ohhhhhhh man, can she cook! I gain weight every time I'm around her! Recently I posted about the upcoming Velma's Kitchen (That "Locked On" Focus! - July 21st) that is going in the BonTon area of downtown Dallas. It's happening! Slowly, it's becoming a reality!

For years Mike Fechner and Velma have faithfully worked the BonTon neighborhood, loving on the people and sharing the love of Jesus with everyone who would listen - and some who wouldn't! Mike quickly figured out that Velma possesses a gift for cooking. Velma dreamed big of one day having a restaurant where she could not only cook, but entertain the neighborhood. What better way to share Christ than to serve them a great meal and tell them about the bread of Life?!! Mike picked up on that dream and is making it come true. A place where Velma can cook, care, and teach - it just may not get any better than that!

The support has been AWESOME!! Everyone is chipping in: Jim Bell acquired the land; Jeff Williams of Graham and Associates surveyed the property, and promises further help with the engineering; Jim Hillhouse of Alpha Testing did our soils testing; Steve Waddill of Waddill Group, and Stephen Pickard of Good, Fulton, and Farrell kicked  in the architectural work; Richard Chamberlain of Chamberlain's Steakhouse, and Paul Vineyard and family of the Bubba's and Babe's restaurant fame have overseen the menu and kitchen design; Bob Bowen of Manhattan Construction not only is lending his construction expertise, but cost estimating the project as well! ALL PRO BONO!! Countless hours have been spent in the planning and design of Velma's Kitchen. We all want to see it happen. The City Fathers wants to see it happen. It's happening!

Our prediction is that people will come from near and far to sample Velma's cooking. Don't count on them leaving with just a belly full of great food - something tells me that they may also have Jesus Christ in their hip pocket!

For The Kids!!

In the end it's all about the kids! Our next generation looks to us for care and nurture, but also for fun, entertainment, and sometimes even education! So when our friend Mona Crider approached me about a project for the Dallas Arboretum I was all about it!

The Arboretum has asked Mona to come up with four children's playhouses that represent the lives of four artists, all of whom were active in the Progressive movement, and created outdoor works of art. All four were influenced from their childhood surroundings: Monet lived near a water lily pond; Seurat came from wealth in Paris; Piccaso grew up in Spain near the sea; and Georgia O'Keefe lived out West, eventually settling in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Now, I'm no dummy, so when Mona enlisted my services to build the playhouses, I convinced her that we should go to the real talent here in town to get the playhouses designed - my Architect friends!

Robbie Fusch blessed us with Monet; Paul Turney found Seurat's influence from Parisian architecture; Wilson Fuqua went way out of his very conservative nature in producing Piccaso; and Clint Pearson discovered Georgia O'Keefe's style in Santa Fe adobe. All of the designs are wonderfully unique! All will compliment the gorgeous gardens at the Arboretum!

We plan to have the playhouses finished by mid-February, just ahead of "Dallas Blooms!" Each cottage will have a reproduction of one of the artist's works of art hidden so that the kids can find the painting. Hopefully they will make the connection to the style of architecture that may have influenced the artist's work. All of it will be just plain fun!

It turns out that the Dallas Arboretum wants the children's cottages to function in concert with The Chihuly Glass Exhibit that will be placed in the gardens in May. They are expecting 1 million visitors to see the collection which will be featured throughout the day, and lit at night as well. Here are a few examples of his work.

All of this will be wonderful, but it's time to go to work! You know, the kids are waiting...

Ain't No Double Wide!

Courtesy of Connor Homes / Jim Westphalen Photography

"MANUFACTURED HOUSING!" Conjures up the worst of images in your mind doesn't it? Two halves of a mobile home driving down the highway, backing up traffic. Cheap, vinyl paneling lining all of the walls. Tornado magnets. Hound dogs sleeping under the porch. But the home above 'ain't no double wide' and it is by definition...manufactured housing!

Seeing is believing so last week my business partner and I went to Middlebury, Vermont to kick the tires at Connor Homes. This was not completely unprompted - our new clients, Cozy and Mark Palmer have dreamed of a New England clapboard home for years. We are thrilled that they not only selected us to help fulfill that dream, but also wanted to help us understand the Connor Homes building process by taking us to the factory. It was a truly spectacular and amazing tutorial!

You really can't believe what we saw!  Imagine 110,000 feet of warehouse, roughly three football fields, where entire homes - and I mean big homes, were being assembled. The efficiency was staggering! How about only 1.6% waste from all of their manufacturing processes! Heck, we will haul off fifteen or twenty 40' dumpsters full of waste from any one of our jobsites! Connor is "green" REALLY GREEN! What they don't cut up for blocking goes into bins for the local compost company to turn into chips for the compost pile.

Maybe the best adjective to hang around Connor's Homes neck would be "semi-automated." We watched in amazement as a 10' tall by 14' long, 2 x 6 wall section was completed in about five minutes! But then when you have automated tables that pre-determine where the studs go; when those same tables roll the nailed wall section on to the next station where the wall is squared up and plywood sheathing is tacked on; where doors and windows are cut out of the wall section sheathing with two man routers; and finally where that sheathing is face nailed with a power nailer that has twenty nail guns firing simultaneously, you can produce wall sections that fast.

Connor's manufacturing software is so good that each wall section is numbered, and stacked according to when in sequence we will need that part to assemble on-site. The Palmer's 3,800 square foot house frame will be completely produced in about seven to ten days!  Could this be the changing face of the home building business?

We will supply the foundation, roofing material (metal standing seam), systems (mechanical, electrical, and plumbing), as well as necessary labor. But even all of the interior cabinets and trim will be supplied by Connor - by flatbed, later in the building process. In a world where really fine homes are usually built in 18 - 24 months, is it possible that the Palmer's will be living in their home five months after Connor Homes shows up on our jobsite? Those timelines used to be reserved for small tract houses, and - you guessed it - DOUBLE WIDES!

You Said You Wanted Air Conditioning...

Molly and I were contacted recently about taking on a new line of scented air fresheners for her store, Heart's Desire. Although HD already carries a line of scented air fresheners, this was being touted for it's patented platinum wick which has a smaller carbon footprint, and no open flame - significantly more "green" than the brand she already carries. Molly really knows retail, and experience tells her that the container and the fragrance trumps the "green" qualities of the platinum wick. Unless you are a granola eating hippie who is into saving the whales, "green" doesn't stir you. It's the container for beauty, and the fragrance for your senses.


Apparently I have never learned these lessons. We understand the container and fragrance thing (Architects speak reverently about this being "form"), but it's what's under the hood that really excites us! (That same creative group respectfully calls this "function") Case in point... I was called in the other day on a remodel that requires almost no interior cosmetic work. That's really unusual! My client's new home is seventeen years old and needs all new heat and air conditioning equipment. It also needs replacement of all of the wood windows, as well as repair of the exterior wood rot around the windows. It seems that the original builder didn't flash around the cast stone which surrounds several of the windows, and moisture has leaked back behind the simulated stucco. WHAT A MESS! 

Evidently the builder was focused a whole lot more on "form" (or the pretty stuff), than on "function" (what's under the hood). But who can blame him? We all live amongst the pretty stuff, not in some air conditioning duct! I guess I didn't learn that well because it has always seemed to me that homes not only ought to be beautiful, but also really well built and durable... Perhaps I have been delusional!

The "dreaded" Flexduct!

Without getting too technical I learned years ago that air moves through an air conditioning duct in a circular manner. Just like the blood that is coarsing through our veins, it works better with a smooth, solid wall that is not kinked or obstructed. (Have I lost you yet?) It makes sense that rigid tube duct would carry air more efficiently than a kinked slinky, with corrugated inner walls, covered with insulation (a/k/a "flexduct"). Pass the granola, but that just may be why we need a whole new air conditioning system after just seventeen years! You guessed it, the air conditioning units were trying to force air through rough walled, badly kinked flexduct and it caused enough back pressure to wear the unit out! Boy oh boy, am I sounding "green"...

Here's my point: you can buy scented air fresheners with fantastic scents, in beautiful reservoir containers, without noticing the platinum wick that has the "smaller carbon footprint." But you better not buy a Mercedes without checking to make sure that it doesn't have a four cylinder, sewing machine engine under the hood! If you don't check, you may be surprised - an engine is not just an engine!


Similarly, you can buy a beautiful home, finely appointed, that is cool and comfortable at the very moment you fall in love with it. But what's going on in the attic? Does it have properly sized equipment that has been well maintained, and distributes cool air efficiently through galvanized tube duct? Or do you open the attic door and see something that looks like spaghetti attached to a crouton? After all, to some people air conditioning is air conditioning, and "you said you wanted air conditioning..." Ouch!

Gadgets...

Probably no one else in North America has returned both a Wi Playstation, and a TIVO. I have! I hate gadgets! How can something that is supposed to improve the quality of your life be so complicated that it takes endless hours to assemble and learn, and then either malfunctions or falls apart in your hands? WHAT AN ENORMOUS WASTE OF TIME!

My family and friends have learned the hard way that I have this character deficiency. Take the receipt scanner. On the surface it appears to be an amazing device for keeping track of your receipts. Some friends of ours got me one for Christmas. After endless hours of getting it set up and learning how to use it, I was finally ready to get organized. About a quarter of the way into a pile of invoices, it quite working! Horrified with the initial result my friends sent it back to the manufacturer. The manufacturers response? The operator (me) must have set it down too hard on the desk and jarred the scanner! They would be happy to sell us a new one! Who wants to spend more the time to potentially have the same result? I organized my receipts the old fashioned way - BY HAND!

There is a Steammatic BBQ Grill cleaner on the shelves of my garage if anyone wants it. My wife gave it to me. The theory is that you fill it with water and the heat of the grill provides steam to help you clean the surface. A friend of mine had one and he said it leaked like a sieve! My Steammatic most probably won't make it off the shelf!

When it became apparent that I needed to expose the hypocrisy of gadgets I hate, I asked my friends for some of their favorites. The one on my right may be the best I have come across - an electric bug zapper that you swing at the bug, hoping to fry it on the face of the racket! How many windows, lampshades and priceless heirlooms has this thing taken out? Did someone outlaw the old plastic bug swatter that was stuck on the end of something that looks like a coat hanger? Is capitalism so pervasive that we need to invent new way to kill a bug so we can make a buck?

What about a Roomba Robotic Vacuum Cleaner? Theoretically you turn this on before you go to the movies. When you come back the Roomba has completely vacuumed your home and parked itself back in it's charger station. My friend has had his dry docked in his office for the last two years - it constantly gets stuck under furniture with the brushes full of dust and lint, AND BURNS ITSELF OUT! Remember the blog on "Planned Obsolesence?"

How can you possibly dry your clothes without "dryer balls?" Forget the fact that not too many years ago even the dryer was considered a "gadget." You remember of course that our forefathers used to wash and scrub down by the river using rocks to help with the really tough stains. But a clothes line with clothes pins was all the dryer they used to have! How did we survive?

What's a "Slap Chop?" Was my life so incredibly difficult that chopping vegetables with a knife and cutting board absolutely beckoned someone to make a Slap Chop? If I order it on TV, for a limited time only they will send me not one, but two Slap Chops for the low, low price of $19.95!! Heart be still!

With two Slap Chops imagine the humongous amount of vegetables and fruits I can get chopped before that thing breaks! Most probably I will need to have a place to put all of the production of the Slap Chops so surely that will require the "EZ Sealer." Problem is, it's rumored to melt the plastic as opposed to sealing it, and it sometimes will catch the plastic on fire! Please sign me up for that wonderful convenience!

Those that have both the EZ Sealer  and the Wiz Toaster Bags just have a death wish! Let me make sure I understand - we are going to take the cheese and veggies we chopped in the Slap Chop (leaving the remainder to be sealed in the EZ Sealer), stick it between two pieces of bread, ease the whole ensemble into one of those Wiz Toaster Bags, and toast it all? Provided we don't burn the entire house down, that actually sounds good! Is life really this complicated or does it just seem that way?

What a mess! Never fear though - when you have cut your fingers on the Slap Chop; burned yourself on the EZ Seal; and charred your Kitchen with Wiz Toaster Bags, throw it all away in the motion activated trash receptical! That's right, now you don't have to physically lift the lid, or fool around trying to find the foot pedal - just wave your bloody, burned fingers over the top of this baby, and voila - trash is immediately dispensed! WOW - imagine what can break with this new toy!

And for me that is "kinda" the issue. That great, wise old proponent of the family, Insight for Living founder James Dobson said it this way, "...the more stuff you have, the more stuff you have to fix!" I've never forgotten that! So when one of our clients who could have anything he wanted, listened politely to a dazzling presentation about low voltage lighting that was being suggested for his home, he opted for a regular old panel switch with dimmers. His reasoning? "...more reliable, breaks less!" AMEN! I get that...