In the midst of the hectic building of our 3 fantastic(if I do say do say so myself) new homes for the MBA Parade homes in Richfield, I discovered something.   I could really use some more video footage of some exotic setting for our big triple-screen production we are staging at our grandest MBA Parade home model.

    We pioneered the main concept of using three big 10 foot movie screens and placing them edge-to-edge for one big 30 foot long video mural. At last years MBA Parade of Homes, we created our first version which received rave reviews from visitors. We really want to expand on the concept so we have taken the concept the next level.  I won’t bore you with the nitty-gritty details….yet!

     Suffice to say, if last years version made you “feel” as though you were in whatever location we were video shooting, this years version will make you really feel as though you are there. We are using lighting effects, music, and even smell (if we can figure it all out, that is)to create feelings unlike anything we have ever experienced in a theatre setting. In fact, this IS NOT at all like watching a movie, it is more like experiencing real life scenery. I am going to see a few California sights and I am bringing my triple-camera rig along. While I am in the Disneyland area, Disney has an all new major water fountain show called “World Of Color” and I hope to shoot that as well IF they let me.

     If you want to hear about my California experiences, why not stop by and see me at Richfield’s Reflections Village this Sunday.  I  know it is the 4th of July, but  I can still have these 3 homes open AND enjoy my festivities later.  I will be having our 3 wonderful homes open from 1 to 4 this Sunday.  All other locations are closed this weekend for the holiday.

     Blessings,

    Tom Hignite 

As a final added thought to this thread, I just heard of a new ruling which the MBA (Metropolitan builder’s association) has just adopted for their (this) Parade Of  Homes event. They will not be allowing any builder (that would mean Miracle Homes or any other builder  who is in the Parade) to show Parade homes before the event officially opens to the public.  It seems, they will allow private showings however at any time.     I have been given a grace period of this Sunday , July 4 to end my weekend open public showings.  We, of course are abiding by their rules on this matter and I invite you to keep reading my blog for further notice of next weekend at Reflections Village(site of the MBA Parade Of Homes 2010…there are also sites  in Franklin and Pewaukee.) check the MBA website at mbaonline.org for more details.

     If you have ever been in one of my homes, you may see a touch of Disney in some of them. Over the years, I have been asked why I seem to try to use Disney as a theme thread in my homes and advertising. A few years ago, one local magazine even went so far as to try to write a 60 Minute-style expos’e article about me as being sort of a man who is trying to BE Walt Disney. They mentioned that when I was a kid, that going on a trip to a Disney theme park was the “Holy grail” of vacations. Boy, did they get it wrong!

     As a kid, I never actually went to a Disney theme park nor can I really remember even asking to go to one. We were the kind of family who was happier taking a trip to the mountains of Kentucky and Tennessee to take in the sights. We even liked  going to the East coast to see the big International Sailboat Show on several occasions, but for some reason, Disney was never much on our radar scope.

    The first time I went to Disney, I was a college aged kid on a trip to Florida, selling (of all things) small boats at a boat show. I thought I would take a bus ride to Disney World and see what it was all about.  My interests were in advertising and art and I loved the way that all the Disney theme park people were so freindly and what a great impression all that cheerfulness made on the visitors.   I also marveled at the great architecture and the wonderful , fanciful art all around the theme park. But, how does this relate to homes?  We’re coming to that.

     Many years later, past this event, after I had gotten into the home designing and building business, I wanted to try to bring that same friendliness and cleanliness(did I mention just how immaculate that Disney theme park was?) to my business. I put on my advertising/promotions thinking cap and tried to find a large business entity that I could strive to emulate as a model for my own business.

    Many business do this. It is part of creating a business model. As I was considering which major successful business was closely aligned with my own desire and motives, I considered what my business was trying to be. First and foremost, I wanted my business to be a creative and innovative place to be. I wanted our products to also reflect this air of creativity . I wanted our place and people to be as friendly and cheerful as possible. It became obvious that the one company who rises to the top of folks minds when you are thinking about creative company’s would be Disney. What Walt Disney  was to cartoons and theme parks was an inventor and innovator. We should strive to be the same to the world of homes.  

     It seemed logical to me that if we were to mentally connect the public’s eye  with the best aspects of Disney’s ability to make folks happy, we would more easily be able to “brand’ ourselves(that is a fancy term for aligning ourselves with something our proposed customers may want to have, or find attractive) and identify ourselves to the public.   Few knew what Miracle Homes was but many knew who or what Disney was.  For this reason, I chose to make a mental connection with the Disney brand, but I did not want to become another Disney by any means. I did not attempt to grow a mustache or wear suits or take up smoking, or move to California, to try to be like Walt.   I wanted to use Disney as a starting point but then wanted to make sure we grew our own distinct identity.

     Then came Miracle Mouse. To be more exact, Miracle Mouse, our little creative mascot character, came before I ever decided to attempt to try to adopt Disney as a brand image. This character is seen by some as a close-copy of Disney’s Mickey Mouse character. I certainly do see the resemblance but here’s the real scoop on why I chose a mouse mascot, and how he came to be.

     I had grown up in a family that enjoyed sailing on Lake Michigan. One favorite sailing magazine was called Cruising World. In that magazine, there was a page that was artfully decorated to show how to build a certain boat project.  In those cartoon-type drawings, there was usually a small mouse somewhere in each drawing page. I thought this was a cute thing and also thought how any other character, other than a mouse, would be too big and not be able to be put into all the various drawings I would do for my homes. This first mouse I saw in that magazine was rather realistic so my first Miracle mouse experience was really me just going to my main home illustration artist and simply telling him to draw-in a small mouse who maybe was wearing a hard hat and suspenders.  He was to be a subtle add-on to each home illustration. I gave little more direction than that. Todd Dakins, an illustrator drew this first Miracle Mouse. I thought, when I have any illustration done for me, I would try to include this little guy somewhere for folks to discover.

     Years later, I  decided we were going to do our first television commercials. I decided to do something clever by trying to have our little creative mascot make a small appearance at the end of every commercial by doing something different as he walks onto the final shot. One time he would walk- on carrying our logo. The next time he would walk-on then trip with the logo. The next time he would parachute onto the scene and his parachute would unfold to become the logo. Each time, he would do something different.

     To get this little guy animated, I went to an animation studio in Racine. When I met with this studio, I gave them my idea of what Miracle Mouse should look like. They gave me a stack of drawings of what the character could look like intead. I had gone to art and advertising school for 7 years (I had the no -degree plan) and I was a pretty good political cartoonist in my high school years.  Suddenly, it came to me. This mouse could further my public suggestion (branding)that we had the Disney-flair for creativity  in home designing/building.  I could design my mouse character to have some distinct items on him that might bring back a mental relationship to Mickey Mouse. I had to be careful as I did not want to copy the character using his round ears or white gloves. I gave him black hands. Micky had a snout, so my mouse could not. Mickey never wore a hat or blue jean suspenders but Miracle Mouse would wear this and have brown work shoes instead of Mickey’s big yellow shoes. I tried to envision  him as perhaps a beaver, or cricket, or muskrat, or badger instead. But none of those animals seemed to roll-off the tongue as easily as Miracle Mouse did.

     Disney never ended his commercials with a tag line about being Christian based, or having his family in the picture, but I wanted our own identity merged with that established Disney identity, not just a carbon copy.  I decided to try to make my place of employment worthy of being a place folks would want to live and work. I (and my wife Jacquie of course) decided to take the whole company on vacations together. We decided to take everyone out to eat once a week. We even decided to give little merit awards and public recoginition for doing nice things. We took managers to Disney University to learn how to please people.  We gave  surprise big checks to workers at our Christmas party .  Some of these checks were thousands of dollars and no one was expecting a dime before we gave those checks.

     I  went the extra measure of creating an office environment where we all were wearing the same Miracle Team attire, and created a large swimming pond in our back yard for the staff to use on weekends or on lunch with their families.  We decided that if we were to be good citizens, we would be generous in giving to our community as well. Everything was working so well and our staff named us one of the top 25 workplaces in Wisconsin!

     We became the fastest growing home builder ever to hit Wisconsin. Our staff grew fast and we soon were building a new facility as we had to move to a larger facility to keep up with our growth to a staff of 70. By this time, I decided to try to produce our own television commercials that were fully animated. The bids to do this were over $110,000 for a 30 second commercial. I thought this was ridiculous and that I could do them myself if I had an experienced person or two to show me how. I decided to try to hire a few ex-Disney artists to be on our advertising and marketing staff. They brought with them an air of creativity and bought us to another level of creativity.

     When the housing market crashed, the new building project was put on “hold” and we layed off most all of our advertising department including all the Disney artists, except one. Today as we get ready for our home for entry into the MBA Parade Of Homes opening of our Hybrid Wonderhome in less than two months, we are working on premiering our read-along Miracle Mouse children’s book in our kid’s bedroom suite. I hope you will come over THIS WEEKEND to meet me and take a sneak-preview of this exciting new home we are building(and two others right next door) from 1 to 4, in Richfield’s Reflections Village development. The feeling might not be exactly Disney , but it is as close as you may come this side of Orlando.

     Blessings,

     Tom Hignite      

    Than

   Last night was typical of several of my “last nights”, I was up until 3:30 am working on creating new brochures ,and art , and plan revisions for our big current project , for building 3 elaborate Miracle Homes all at the same time. If you have read any of my recent series of Richfield Reports, then you know how this is both an exciting time as well as a time of some intense moments.  This past week, the intense has overshadowed the exciting moments.  Things seem to be coming faster and faster.  I have, unfortunately, not been very current in my blog postings lately, so I wanted to bring you all up to speed.

     The toughest project of the 3 is our all new design called the “Hybrid Wonderhome” (spell-check will alert this  fictional name for sure), which is surely to be one of our most amazing homes we have ever built. This is a home which I have come to self-categorize as being one of our “spectaculars“ (another fictional use of a questionable word), is a home we have tried to take a notable Disneyesque( Help, I am trapped in fictional words and can’t get out!)  slant to it’s presentation. If you want to see the basic “wild ideas” that went into this home, go all the way back to my very first blog ramblings to get the picture on why I wanted to create this unique home.

     Beyond the essential reasoning for the design, this home has something new in every area from the front landscaping to the final exit. As homes go, this one is a theme park attraction “E” ticket ride of a home with an open front porch which allows you to air condition it(and keep out the bugs)  even though the sides have no screens or windows.  Even as we are gathering all the items to make this happen for the first time in any home, we are working on a basement night club where we can mentally transport guests into exotic and fun differing environments via multiple projection screens. This little item alone involves us having to make one part of the basement(I won’t be pretentious by calling this a lower level, …which it is) 12 feet tall!

     Today, I spent most of my morning with an appointment for selecting the 3 home’s doors, patiently waiting me to drive back to my office, which is only 2 minutes away. I was nearly an hour late! The delay was in trying to explain to our rough carpentry crews just how and why they needed to build many unorthodox and unusual things that not blue print could ever adequatly show. One such item was a  bar counter top that could change to fifferent colors on cue to match the rest of the room’s color changes. There we were,as we were sweating a half inch here, and a quarter inch there, so that our guests would all be able to see the unified images on the three 10 foot wide movie screens. When finished, we will have a 30 foot long continuous image which will transport you visually into the exotic or peaceful, or exciting locations.

     Yesterday, I was in active conversations with a music composer I have worked with , who now lives in Nashville , to have him compose the musical score for Club Wonder .  That is the name we are calling this special place. Today, I was on the phone talking to a local Piano shop owner to find out how I can reproduce the piano section of Club Wonder’s musical score , so it can be played live (on a baby grand piano)while the rest of the music plays over speakers to pre-recorded music. Boy, the price is a bit more than I expected but…we will see.

     Last night, I was up, as I said, to early in the morning working on the last details for a full color preliminary “sneak-peek” for this weekend’s opening for Reflection’s Village(The Richfield location for this Miracle-only event) so everyone can get the layouts and concept art in short form at the Saturday/Sunday 1 to 4 event.   As an aside, I will be there along with my electric blue golf cart to take folks on a quick tour of Reflections Village grounds.  This week, I had the cart brought into Milwaukee to get tuned/cleaned so it was ready. Tomorrow morning, I have to get the cart over to our “INFO- DECK”. This is a temporary cedar deck which is at the development with three huge photo-mural signs as a backdrop. Tonight, I was installing the signs and getting some patio furniture so folks can sit on the deck.   I wonder, serving some lemonade or bottled water might be a nice touch…if I can find the time to make it happen tomorrow morning.

     Two nights ago, I was up, again, very late-early , to get at least some form of a web page set up to support Reflection’s Village and this weekend’s kick-off event. The page just went live a few hours ago. Not bad but we can improve it for next week. Please feel free to check out that site.  Yesterday morning, I was out of bed early to the audio studio in Brookfield to cut our radio commercial for this event. This  radio commercial can be heard on our Miracle Reflections Village web page and is running all weekend on WKLH, WISN, and the Polka station WTKM(?). Next week, it will add WTMJ to the mix.

     So much has happened on the 3 homes as far as construction and while I am surely there every day, I am most grateful for our crack staff including office support and our special construction manager Mark Scheel, who has been an absolute God-send. Plumbing , electric, and heating-cooling , as well as audio-video, were all completed on 2 of the projects(Our Little-Big House 2.0 and our Rent-Buster Elite. not the HYBRID Wonderhome ) so we can now insulate on Monday and Tuesday of this coming week. With any blessing at all, we will be dry walling by the middle or end of the week on at least one of the 3 homes.

     This week, we also found the siders and had our ups and downs with this process. If you do not know, the siding on a home is usually done more on the rough or , let’s say, casual side. I don’t care if you are the highest-end or lowest starting builder, the job of siding a home (including all the trim wood around windows and the various posts and vent details) is not usually a job of finishing quality. that is why siding has usually a rougher wood-grained look of rough-sawn cedar. Commonly, large headed galvanized nails are used and simply painted over later. Rarely do you see finishing nails anywhere near a sider’s tool belt. Another thing  is that no sider I have met seems to measure the spacing of those nails since the nail heads can’t be seen from a short distance away.

     I approached this project by drawing an object lesson for out siding crews so they might not forget. I drew a quick sketch of a grand piano and next to it I drew the wooden crate that the piano is shipped in.  The rough constructed crate represents the way most siding today is done. On this home, I went on to say, we are NOT building piano crates, we ARE building the piano.  I went and I did the unusual thing of hiring , not siders, but a more pricey finish carpentry crew.   After a few hours I checked back to see their results. I was amazed to see they were doing a good job of a good sider but not a good job of a finish carpenter. I again explained, we are building pianos but so far, all I am seeing are crates. They said they would make changes and get it right. You see, we are using smooth sanded woods not the common heavy grained woods. We had a tough time special ordering smooth Hardie Plank cement board siding. Lumber  suppliers  don’t seem to stock it.   The look I am going for is the smooth furniture look you might see on an old Victorian home. Believe me, you need to pay a much higher cost to get the look we are trying to achieve. I hope someone besides myself notices. I fully expect many home shopers may just not understand why these homes may cost a little more than the common discount builder offerings.  I have always wanted to build a home with a  highly polished exterior look , hopefully, I will get it.

    It is now about1:30am Saturday  morning and I could write many more paragraphs but I will close with the biggest smile this week for me. Most homes that compare to  the HYBRID WONDERHOME square footage, would take about 10 days to 2 weeks to do the rough carpentry phase. Nothing much else can happen until this phase is done. The builder cost to do this phase is usually between $7,000 to $10,000. The Hybrid’s rough carpentry is still not completed and it is now a a 5 week job at about $30,000(or…yikes..more!). The roughing phase took a dramatic turn for the better in the last 2 days.  

     I saw that since the excellent (I sincerely mean that) crew I had on the job were not yet even started on the basement, and I need this whole phase done by next Wednesday(3 business days from now).  I was sure i would not make schedule. So, I convinced the present crew, and negotiated to have a second larger crew come in and tackle the entire basement. I am blown away by the fast and highly detailed work that is now gracing our basement. No, it is not done yet , but I suspect, they will be done in another day and a half, by mid-Tuesday!  Unfortunately, the basement is a disaster zone as far as being a mess . The crew worked late and did not clean-up.  Since I need this home to show for appointments and our opening Sneak-Peak event tomorrow by 1pm, crews will be coming early tomorrow to stack lumber and sweep up.

     I am so looking forward to letting folks see just what we are up to,  so I hope you will join me this weekend to get your sneak preview special brochure. If you want to see the homes, as I hope you will, You may have to make a “quik-appointment” on our INFO-DECK so you sign a waiver agreeing that this is,  after all , a construction site and you need to be careful in the homes at his point.  If it is not too crowded, I would love to give you a personal tour and golf cart ride through this magical development.

    There I go, getting all excited, all over again!

     Blessings,

     Tom Hignite

Hello all,

    It is nearly 3 am and I still am up doing creative work on the Richfield Projects, a tri-fecto of new Miracle Homes. Tonight, the main goal was to get the first landscaping plan done so I could show it tomorrow to our concrete flat work(that is the patios, sidewalks, driveway items) person, Dan.

     I have designed many such plans and I have found that each time I have finished such a plan, I believe it to be a fantastic plan that is better than anything I have ever done before. I am now experienced enough to know that what I designed tonight was  a plan I am quite happy with but I know it may not win any awards for the “best” anything.  In fact, I think, while it is a great ,solid plan, I doubt any visitor to the home will say”hey that front yard landscaping was my favorite part! Who did the landscape plan?”

     The thing is , that this home is already an expensive home and I simply can not afford to design an all brick driveway or fancy brick walls or ornate iron work gates or even an in ground sprinkler system for that matter. You see, designing a home must always be keenly focused on not only wanting the most creative items but also it must focus on overall costs and where I am going to really spend the big bucks. Most importantly, each item must have it’s place in creating a pleasurable experience to our guests.

    On this home, my big money is being spent on an over-the-top basement bar area and huge backyard entertaining area.I call it “Club Wonder”.  Since I ned this home to be as low of a price as possible, I decided to have the audience(that is my term, at times, for the home’s visitors)take their journey through this home in a logical and dramatic progression.   Let’s take a quick look at how we can build the drama of this or any  home.  If I was to show a brick paver driveway, wrought iron fence detail and huge fountains with ornate stone work, then I may disappoint the guests when they see all this super high end stuff and then see an interior that is less of a “wow” factor than the front yard. The same goes for the back yard or basement. I need to always be giving the visiting guests a bigger, then even bigger “wow” as they see each new area. The effect, if done right, is that the exiting guests feel entirely overwhelmed and are smiling from ear to ear.

    That means my outside front lawn area must match and fit in the whole picture but  the next area they see, which is the front porch, must beat the “wow” factor of the front yard. The first rooms must be better than the front porch, then so on and so forth as we proceed to always be trying to create a better impression that the room or area which preceded it. If this was a play, it is kind of like staging the grand finale to have the best impact. The last room or area must therefore always be the grand finale which must beat the  “wow” s found in  the rest of the home.

     SO….back to my front yard plan and method. If someone comes into the home or leaves the home telling me the front yard was the best part of the home, then I have failed. If I had unlimited budgets, I can always find ways to top anything I have done in the early parts of the home. On this home, I began by planning the home knowing my basement bar area and backyard will have the biggest “wows”.  I will have a lot of pavers in my back yard and wrought iron as well. This means, I might put a small, very small, suggestion of some pavers and a dash of wrought iron in the front yard. I have a big fountain in the back yard so I want a little fountain in the front yard.

     As I plan the landscape, I must also plan the path which I hope the visitors will take to enhance their visit. I hope they will come into an area where I or my staff can first give a brief presentation before they enter. This helps visitors know what to look for and builds excitement.  This gives them a chance to put on their shoe covers and get a brochure and find out the little details like how big the home is and what the price is to build the home.

     In years past, I have thought of holding this mini-seminar on the front porch area. This year, I am going to try to have visitors enter the garage area and then proceed to a garage door that happens to exit onto the front porch. The rest of the journey is intuitive and logical as they can only get to the basement after they have seen the rest of the home upstairs and then the back yard is only reachable by going through the basement. The exiting is then through the garage again so my greeters can also say good-bye to exiting guests or the guests  may chose to watch more of our video presentation now that they have seen the whole home.

     My office/home foyer today is full of flower boxes. One of these homes has flower boxes under about every front window. This should be quite a site of nostalgia. I do hope you will consider stopping by and seeing these homes now under construction in Richfield’s Reflection’s Village.

    Leave a comment if  you have something to say. Until next blog…

    Blessings,

    Tom Hignite