Building Boom

Cottage 33, a presold 960 sq ft mini-cottage. We have started 3 new homes in the last 8 days. Hey, why not, it's just the biggest gosh darn economic depression most of us have ever seen.

I'm convinced that I need to start a support group for small business owners. Maybe I'm genetically pre-inclined to wear a skirt in such matters, but I swear the constant challenges thrown our way are difficult to manage. Whether it be our design team, our development team, our construction team or our organic spray foam team, it's like a day in day out battle against forward-like progress.

Worse, I have found, is to surround yourself with competent, or worse yet, uber-competent people, since then the forward progress becomes accelerated, and the decisions and signatures and directional maneuvers become a daily cascade and bombardment of progress opportunities. When lacking staff, or retaining incompetence, forward making progress is limited by their talents, but all of a sudden putting some real good fits into the right places and the business can zoom ahead, and plans that were on the chalkboard all of a sudden become doable and actionable, and then all of a sudden the rubber hits the pavements and you are wondering whether all the daydreaming is actually a good real life opportunity but it's too late because the deposit check is sent and cashed, the application completed, the contest entered - and then truly in a surprising moment, you wonder if incompetence didn't keep you from moving too quickly in tempting but dubious directions, keeping danger at bay through lack of time and inertia.

Then down the road is our next 723 sq ft micro cottage. We aimed for a 400 sq ft shack but it ran up against the local zoning floor of 720 sq ft, so instead of 'fighting the man' (most who probably live in 500 sq ft trailers), I just stayed above the minimum.

One thing I've learned to accept is to avoid locked and closed doors - find one that's open - there's plenty of them - don't try to pick a lock. Move to the open door. I guess that' the same as saying 'pick your battles carefully.'


And here's an unsold beauty - Cottage 29, just finishing up. It's sweeeeeeeeeet.

Henning and Edwin, two great guys and carpenters, taking a quick lunch before returning to the final details of a perfect sweet cute cuddly little cottage.

And our top-notch cleaning crew. This is a pretty good example of our efforts - we clean our homes not once, not twice, but three times before we hand the home off to the clients. The first clean is just before we start the final push, just to get everything to the next level, the next clean is right before the painter is coming in for his next to last touch-up phase so he doesn't have to deal with dust and stuff, and the final clean happens the day of closing. if nothing else demonstrates our goal of excellence, this does.

Barn III will be closing next Friday - Certificate of Occupancy in hand and the bank said Clear to Close.

Great house - wide open living spaces, lots of elbow room. We started this house back in July or so and Nikki and Gary (Nikki put the kybaush on any new surprise blog pictures) signed up soon after. They are on the way up this morning to do a final walk-thru, and then high-tail it back to the city for Gary's 40th.

And next week this time this baby will be all theirs.