25 Years of Making Your Dreams for Home Come True!
2016 marks our 25th year in business. Wow, time flies when you have great people to work with and great projects to design. When hitting a milestone like this, I can’t help but reflect on the path that has lead us to this point. In 1991, I struck out on my own with a couple projects on the boards and hope for more in the future. I was Mr. Mom to our 6 month old daughter and we were expecting baby number 2 in 8 months. My office was a converted bedroom with teddy bear wall paper and nap time was the key to my early productivity.
25 years later I have 4 children, 3 of them married and our youngest daughter just left for college this fall. My office space has significantly improved and no longer has a teddy bear theme. I do however still have a gallery of each of my kid’s grade school art work on my wall replacing the crayon scribbles from the bedroom I started in.
By God’s grace, we weathered the storm of the bursting tech bubble in 2000, the 9/11 attacks, and the great recession of 2008. The new normal doesn’t look like the roaring 90s but families still want homes to live in and many continue to seek us out to help them create the right home for them; one that responds to the way they want to live and reflects their personal tastes. We are very thankful for the trust we are given in each project we have had the opportunity to design.
Just for fun, I thought you might like to see how it all started and give you a look at my first published project from 1972. No I am not really that old, I was 11 at the time and got together with a bunch of my buddies to build it. That’s collaboration at its best and has remained a hallmark of how I approach each project to this day. The project was a 22 by 20 foot walk in grass hut with 2 levels and was created to be a boy’s hang out. Sorry, no girls were allowed. Even though it was the 70s, we weren’t old enough to appreciate the “free love” movement. It was also a very “green” project and the all-natural materials would never end up in a landfill. Actually a couple of the other boys accidentally burned it down only weeks after it was built as sprinklers were not required by code for grass huts back then.
In case you are wondering, I’m the 3rd from the left wearing the Iowa sweatshirt. Steve, Scott, Jeff, Patrick, Darrin, and Shawn, I hope you are all doing well and if you need help with designing a new home, home addition or renovation give me a call!
-Chris