I have been asked many times where folks can see the Mi-Pad homes? If you check the last comment in this blog, it is from Linda who thinks putting a Mi-Pad or two in the Chicago area would be a good idea. I agree! Linda also  wants to know where she can possibly view one of these homes?

     Linda is in luck! We have  our first two Mi-Pad models open in Mount Pleasant( a town near  Racine Wisconsin) and can be viewed any weekend from 1 to 4, or any time by appointment.  A ranch and two story are built right next door to each other off Hwy 11(which becomes Durand Street once you head about 5 or 6 miles East of I94).  If you Map Quest or GPS locate a major Racine mall called Regency Mall, then go exactly 2 miles further East of the Target store on Durand, you will find Gates Street. Turn right(South) on Gates Street and go only about 1 block. We have very good signage so you should have no issues finding  the homes.

     If you should ever have any  problems, you can usually reach us at 262 628-9091 for help.

     I want to note, that we continue to get more and more calls from around the country from folks who want to see these homes. Just today(Saturday) we had visitors from California who read about the Mi-Pad homes in the major “Bay” area newspaper a week or two ago. If you have not seen these homes, you really should!

     Blessings,

     Tom Hignite

P.S. We even had great attendance at the Mi-Pads during the Packer game last Sunday. What a shock in Wisconsin!

     Linda, coming from

Hello Blog readers,

    I feel a little awkward taking this route , but despite my Zen master web-guy’s best advice, I just can not seem to find a way to “just press reply” and answer all of your recent comments and questions. To make matters a little harder, I will answer them here in the actual blog area, but you will have to check the full question or comment on your own in the comment section. I do hope this won’t put any of you off from commenting in the future. I always love to read your thoughts.

     To  J. Rituci,  Thank you for the thought that Extreme Home Makeover might use the Mi-Pad concepts. I think creating a simpler way of life is a pretty good idea, despite how much money you may or may not have. Smaller is definitely “greener” in so many ways!

     To adele,  Yes, installing radiant heat is very possible in most any design. You are a bit far way in New Hampshire for us today, but I wouldn’t be surprised if we can handle your construction in (as you say) 4 or 5 years.

    To Marcia,   This Mi-Pad phenomenon really hit hard and fast. Our appearance on Good Morning America and on the national Clark Howard radio show has caused attention that we have not been able to fully handle. Even so, if you check our photo gallery in a day or so, you will see our first (interior first) photos of our Mi-Pad homes. As for floor plans, we do have them available for the asking, but not fully online due to copyright and plan protection issues.

     To Patria,  Your response to my blog about a two-story with no stairs is good support for the idea. I usually think of things a few years before I build them. I am a definite believer that a two story home without the need for stairs is doable and will eventually be built by someone. I hope we are the first, s I have never seen such a thing anywhere else.

     To John Nadier,  I am a big believer in Habitat For Humanity and thank you for your efforts. Funny you should say from 1000 to 1,200 hundred square feet. Since many area communities start by accepting 1,200 square feet, I am currently working on a Mi-Pad “plus” version of the homes in sizes of 1,200 square feet. Please look on our website very soon for our photo gallery of Mi-Pad interiors(and eventually-next week-exteriors) photos.

    As for releasing the plans, at present we are keeping a guarded but open stance. I may very well be coming to California soon to meet with a municipality about buildinga street of Mi-Pads. If you wish to contact me direct, please send an inquiry via our website or call my office. I would love to see your current plans and offer you ideas(no charge fro Habitat) on how I think they might be improved and economized. I have walked through a few and definitely see things to do.

     To Karen velasquez,  Where do you live in California? Yes, I am now looking into branching into California(and perhaps other states) in the future.

     To Lynn,  Walworth County is opening into  our building area soon  if you would like to contact our sales department.  As for building onto your existing home, that is a matter of whether the home and location warrant this or whether it may be better to o a tear-sown, or just sell and build on another piece of land. We would need to know more.

     To Sara,  Your question about building a no-stairs basement is definitely possible. remember, the main concept is to try to keep in the code rules of needing 12 inches of run to ever 1 inch of rise. This means you might need a very long ramp to make this code compliant. !2 feet of ramp would only get you 1 foot of height. You would need to take that times 8 feet(or whatever your basement to first floor height is) so the ramp would need to essentially encircle the home inside perimeter, or zig-zag until you had 96 running feet of ramp. If your home was a box of about 25 by 30 feet(quick and approximate only) you might be close to making this work. In my scenario, I would plan to have various resting platforms or mini-rooms along the way.

     To Sheila Kerley,  Snoring bed partners is a real-life issue. I like your idea, but having a master essentially share a bathroom with another bedroom is really the same as having two kid’s bedrooms sharing a Jack And Jill bath. The thing that makes a master a master is usually the independent private bath and bigger closet area. I might suggest you think about having a master bedroom with a small interior den. This den could have a Murphy(pull sown) bed or couch to act as the snore get-away or nursery. As for me, today I started thinking of ways to treat every bedroom like a hotel room, each with a private bath or shared ones. Isn’t that what a vacation is all about? Why not make living at home as nice as a vacation every day?

     Thank you all for your comments. I shall blog again soon!

     Blessings,

     Tom Hignite

     I expected the new Mi-Pad micro-mansion concept to take-off but I never thought it would be so well received nearly from every one of the thousands of folks who have written, called, or stepped inside these homes.

     In life it is usually true that one thing really does lead to another. When I first started designing and building homes some 2,100 homes ago, I tried to design an 1,100 square foot home. I  poured a lot of time and energy into this small design. Then I went on to design many bigger sized and many highly customized medium and larger unusual luxury homes. Each time I designed a home, I would try NOT to just make it another copy of something I had seen or done before. I truly enjoy stretching my horizons and designing better and increasingly more interesting homes.

     I must say that when I hear folks tell me something like” hey, there are only so many ways you can possibly design a ranch of a certain size square footage“, I never believe it. That is like saying there are only so many ways you can paint a picture of a human form. There (fortunately for me) is this finite design idea shared by so many builders that I oddly thrive and  profit on this general belief.

    Case in point is our new 890 to 1,090 square foot Mi-Pad series of 4 homes. My knowledge of having designed so many homes, all pours out onto these plans and every crack and crevase of these homes. I could not have possibly , for example, have designed them to their present designs without having first designed our Grand Bay 6,000 square foot ranch with circular great room and domed ceiling.  I could not have designed the Mi-Pad homes without having learned from designing and building a double-decker basement with full basketball court under our Parade Home years ago. Learning how to place 6 couches and a recliner into a double-sunken great room or designing a jogging track around the interior halls of another home, or a bowling alley or elevator , funny as it seems, all were required steps in designing these homes. I surely could not have gotten to the point of designing these new homes without my last 3 years work on our 1,500 to 1,00 square foot “Little-Big House” ranches.

      I heard a sermon  once that told a story of some important industrial machine that had broken down and the factory manager  called in many so-called experts   to help fix it. Non e could identify the problem, yet alone fix it. Fianlly, the manager, now losing money at every moment the machine was not working, called th World’s top expert.  It only took this  expert a minute to identify and fix the problem.  When the  bill from the expert came it was a very high amount of money.  The company boss called the expert to ask for an explanation as to why the charge was so much when it really did not take too much of his time or effort to fix the problem. The factory manager wanted an itemized breakdown for the invoice. The expert sent his itemized invoice broken into two items. $1 for the actual repair of the problem, and the high balance was all for the many years of experience, trials and errors  it took to gain the knowledge  to identify and fix the problem.

     Not to sound to much more “heady”(just a little more) but I recall how hard it was to design that first 1,100 square foot home so many years and homes ago.  the Mi-Pad projects were way more complicated and much better designed than that home AND they took far less time to design. Each Mi-Pad still took me about a month to get them right, even with this knowledge and experience behind them.  

     If you have not yet heard,in the past few weeks,  the Mi-Pads have been read about in news articles literally around the World. I finally got tired of trying to log all the newspapers and Internet sites that have written about these  new designs. Each day we continue to hear from around the country requests to come to their area and build our new home designs. I appeared on ABC television’s Good Morning America, as well as on the nationally heard radio show of Clark Howard.

     Currently, we are trying to assess what we are going to do about these many  inquiries from way outside our area. I have always wanted to build in warmer climates and maybe this is our chance to take the right opportunity to do so.

     Thank you all who have been so kind to us during this wonderful reception of the Mi-Pads.  If you are amongst the many  first people to sign-up to build one, you will be building something very special indeed. I would suggest if you are interested, please step in line… quickly! 40 years from now, you can say your home was one of the first.

     Blessings,

     Tom Hignite

Much has happened since I last blogged so let’s get right to it.

We have swung 180 degrees in our Summer Parade Of Homes efforts. Presently, we are building several new and , dare I say “exciting” projects for opening during the 2011 Parade OF Homes time frame. Many of you know Miracle used to do our own event which (at times) rivaled the attendance of the longer established Parade Of Homes. We called it our Miracle Tour Of Homes. For the past two years, we had been in the Parade, last year featuring an unprecedented 3 Miracle Homes on display. This year, we are not officially involved in the MBA Parade OF Homes, as the Miracle Tour Of Homes returns! Watch for it running from Saturday September 3rd through Sunday September 18th. Three sites to see and more “Magic” than any other Wisconsin Home show(not to mention the only one with our famous “free cookout”).

We have began one Miracle Tour home in Milwaukee which will again feature a few new thingsand inventions  you will not see anywhere else. You can take an early sneak preview by calling one of our sales staffers or by stopping out at our Milwaukee model off of Good Hope. This luxury mini-mansion will have over 3,200 finished square feet of innovative marvels including a finished basement with theatre and one of our famous kid’s themed bedrooms.

We have just began construction on a large custom lake home in Ashippun and another big luxury ranch in Grafton. The Grafton home will feature one of our more “technovative”creations, the Tri-Screen theatre. This is a triple screen presentation that can wrap the audience in scenery and images. This is as close as you come to having your own in-home I-Max theatre!

We are on the brink of (hopefully) being able to   start our first Mi-Pad series homes near the Franklin area. Everything appears positive but then again, we are waiting for the last community approval, so anything could still happen. This new concept series of homes, safe to say, will be something not offered in the Southeast Wisconsin market for many, many decades. The concept can be read about in earlier blogs, but here’s the short version. These will be incredible small “micro-homes” with very high end amenities and luxurious, mansion-like detailing. If you ever thought about parring your life back to the bare essentials, but still wanted 3 bedrooms and 3 baths, still had a desire to have a party every now and then, make plans to see these homes. Super affordable due to the sizes being around 900 square feet (plus basement areas).

I have been working hard on on getting our next home up at Richfield’s Reflections Village development. This wonder-filled new development was the site of the MBA 2010 Parade Of Homes, and many builders built their “best” to show what they could do. To date, (WARNING-”horn-blowing “ahead) Miracle has been the only builder to have sold one of the Parade homes. Since we had 3 homes, we can now say we are also the only builder to have sold 2 homes! If you still want to see our two-story luxury-laden Parade home, with unique side porch and outdoor television innovation, you had better hurry! We will be removing the furnishings this next week.

We are about to dig a tad smaller version of this home in the subdivision, hopefully in the next week or so. This home will have a new Victorian inspired front. Beautiful!

I have also been putting in many hours working on one of the central ideas of this development. Reflections Village was meant to be a re-creation of the look of an old fashioned town. One key element is a town square of quaint shops. Another is that some of these shops can be what is called “live-work” homes. These are homes with  living levels on the main or top floors and business shops on the ground level. If you have ever been to Disneyland, think Main Street USA, with living quarter above. I now have the first design worked out and we are getting ready to present to the Richfield plan board for approval in the upcoming weeks. I would  love to show the desgins to anyone who is interested.

I hope you will come out to see us this weekend in either West Bend, Hartford, Richfield, Milwaukee, or Ixonia.

Until we blog again…

Blessings,

Tom Hignite

P.S. Sorry for the long times between blog entries. I shall try to overcome!

Hello Everyone,

    I’m sorry I won’t give you a full-fledged blog article today but I wanted to just pass along a brief  note you may want to check-out. You may have noticed on our homepage that we have a section we call our “Designer’s Palette”.

     When this area was(more recently) created, we had envisioned it to be showing a wide variety of artistic and insider creative pieces that I and my staff have  imaginated and is meant to show a little glimpse into our creative process.

     At Miracle, I like to say, we are primarily a “creative” studio, who just so happens to specialize in homes. I hope you will check out our latest  Designer’s Palette items and keep looking at the Designer’s Palette every now and then to see what we have been creating.

     Our homes are officially closed this Easter weekend, but I and Miracle Staffer Dan will be out to open Richfield homes this Saturday from 1 to 4, if anyone would like to come over and say “Hi”.

     See you soon!

     Easter Blessings,

     Tom Hignite

P.S. We just had some very substantial price reductions on our Richfield Homes and Lots? Homes packages out at the”magical”  Reflections Village. Bring your imaginations!

          I have always  enjoyed designing and building home theatres and I have seen quite a few that are so ornate they evoke feelings of the grand opera houses of the 1920’s era. Grand carvings, gilded gold everywhere and statues and busts in back lighted alcoves adorn every wall and ceiling. These grand theatres usually had a very grand center crystal chandelier as big as a house. If you have ever been to the Oriental theatre or the Pabst in Milwaukee, you know what I mean.

     I have a favorite book which shows some of the grandest theatres of this type which have been recently built in new homes. The common page flipper is undoubtedly caught-up in the glitz and detailing and says “WOW, I wish I had a theatre like THAT!” For me, I have a different reaction. While I do enjoy the craftsmanship with each ornate theatre, my eye immediately goes to the movie screen size itself. After all, when you are all done seeing the glamor and the lights turn dim to watch the movie, the only thing that makes or breaks the movie experience is the quality and size of the screen.

     In every beautiful photo page of this in-home theatre book, I see that every screen is about 5 feet tall by about 8 or maybe 9 feet wide. I’m sorry, but if I had the kind of dollars these home builders obviously have, I would think they would begin with creating an in-home theatre that had a screen worthy of being called a “theatre”.  In my view, an 8 or 9 foot wide screen( the same size I have in my home theatre) is not really a theatre. It is a big living room with decorations that remind you of what this puny movie screen is “trying” to be.

     “Puny?”  YES, in this new world of ours where a 55 or 60 inch television in our living rooms is becoming commonplace, a mere 120 inch screen in a home theatre may be big, but let’s be honest, this is not really a home theatre. It is a large living room.

     As a designer, I know that the main reason larger screens are not built into a home theatre is because they CAN NOT be built into a basement ceiling height of just 8 or 9 feet. Commercial theatre screens are 40 feet wide or more. In my view, that means a smaller “home” sized theatre should have a screen of at least 20 feet in width. That makes the all important aspect of 16/9 wide screen aspect ratio demanding the basement height must be about 12 to 14 feet tall in order to geometrically make the 20 foot wide screen fit and to allow viewers to see the screen.

     What is more important is the idea of seating and viewing. The seats must be done in stages or steps, so every one can see the bottom of the screen and not have to lean way back to see the top of the screen. The front row of such a home theatre could be most uncomfortable. The length of the room would need to be at least 25 to 35 feet long.

     When I was a teenager, I fantasied about building a really big screen theatre in my parents home. I was not mature enough in my desgn journey to understand the scope of really what distances and slopes mean to the enjoyment of theatre design. Now that I have designed a good number of large home theatres(more importantly, I have sat and watched movies in many such home theatres) I am ready to design my first truly large screen, 20 footer.  In doing so, my first row must be considerably above the bottom of the screen.

     For the past weeks I have been busy calculating , designing, and refining, the biggest screen home theatre I have ever seen in any home theatre, anywhere. To do this means a 14 foot tall wall, and multi staging levels for seating. I have also noticed that having a tall wall and big screen means little if the seating is not desirable. We have all seen those curved leather seating groups at American or Colders with the drink holders in the arm rests. These recliners sure look comfy but after trying to watch movies in these chairs, I find myself needing to find a pillow to scrunch behind my head in just the right way. I have found what I feel is the best seating for the level of viewing. Chairs that don’t demand pillows to be comfortable.  I also know that simply building conventional seating would not be as nice as having some of the seats become tables and chairs so visitors could enjoy a drink or table game while watching a favorite sporting event.

     Than comes the exercise room. I know that having two tread mill machines or exercise bikes looking at the theatre screen would be another wonderful thing you will not find at a commercialtheatre. I also know these could be distracting so they need to be desgined IN the room but NOT in the room(so to speak). I would also like to see the screen from a bar situation if possible. Then there is the matter of the home itself. If we must build a 4,000 or 10,000 square foot mansion to hold such a “real” home theatre, I would just be doing an exercise in designing for the vast minority. I would rather design for a wider majority of home owners. To take this path, I started with a more “normal” sized ranch of about 2250 square feet in size.

     Then the topper. I find little satisfaction in merley copying what others have done before. Even if this is truly going to be a huge theatre the likes of which have never been seen before. As you may know from previous blogs or visiting my last 2 Parade Of Homes models, I have been developing my own cameras and projection systems for a triple wide-screen format. Our 2011 Parade home had the screens about 6 feet in height and the three screens wrapped around the audience(partially) to form about a 27 foot total width  screen. This was three 9 foot screens attached at angles at the two corners. We have to shoot our own landscape/seascapes scenes to use, but the effect is that you feel as though you are at the scene itself!

    Now, imagine the big 20 foot screen showing a movie, and when the movie is done, the room converts to triple-screen casual background visuals. That is the nice thing about the triple-screen(I call it Tri-Screen), there is no story or music or plot to follow. You are simply relaxed and immersed into the visuals of being at exotic sites. In this MEGA THEATRE the way may be  accomplished (I hope) is by having two 13 foot wide movie screen electronically roll-down from the concealed ceiling areas and the 20 foot screen becomes the middle 13 foot screen for the Tri-Screen.

       What you have just read, is what I have been planning for this years big Miracle Home Spectacular Summer model home. If there are any buyer, give me a call. Right now, this home project is in limbo as we await the subdivision developer to approve the plans, and then  for us to close on our finance package. The plans however are drawn and we eagerly look forward to starting the construction in Pewaukee.

     I did not mention how the upstairs(main level) of this ranch is every bit as exciting and unusual as the lower level. Perhaps we will explore that level in future blogs.

     By the way, Sheila, I am having trouble with my blog responses system. I will respond to your interesting inquiry about Master suites as soon as I get myself technically straightened out.

    I hope you will all come out to see our Richfield homes and if you are looking for our lowest priced Miracle Home we have ever offered, don’t miss seeing our West Bend home! We are now open with 2 new homes in Hartford and opening soon with 4 more homes in Ixonia.

     Until we blog again…

     Blessings,

     Tom Hignite

     As you might gather from my delayed blog entires, I am now hitting one of the busiest times of our home building season. I have several things I am aching to share with you but I can only cover one  due to pressing design needs.

    Some folks are more productive in the mornings. My wife Jacquie would definitely be one of those. By 8 at night, she is usually fast asleep on the couch. I, on the other hand, usually get my second wind at about 8 and am really most productive. Truth be told, most of my best design work is done, not at a designers desk or computer, but flat on my back, laying on my couch. As a kid in art school or doing my personal projects, I worked best laying on my stomach in front of the television. Not much has changed.

     I can design anything, anywhere, any time, but I adore laying and staring at the graph paper, thinking and dreaming of what new fantastic concepts or improvements I can possibly dream-up. Then, once some “off-the-wall” screwy idea hits my brain, I lay and ponder, and ponder, and visualize it, and wonder if the idea has any merritt or if it is just some goofy concept that only I think might be the next big thing in housing.

     This blog subject is about one such screwy idea that I seriously don’t know if it is genius or delusional . I felt this same way when I first asked myself if walls really needed to touch the ceilings? I found that they did not need to touch ceilings. I would later ask, can I bring sunlight through a home by putting windows between the various rooms? I found room-to-room windows really do work(use obscured glass please). I then asked myself  why do we need to use doors on rooms? The last time I went to a movie theatre, the bath rooms had no doors and they seemed to work better than rooms with doors. I found that many  rooms don’t need doors at all.

    A week or so ago, I was laying on my design couch and BAM, the next big idea hit me! One of my sales staffers Dan had actually reminded me of this screwy idea I had contemplated a while back, but I had totally forgotten about or dismissed.  Here it is. Why do we put two sinks into a master bathroom, but we never see two toilets in a master bathroom? I can almost hear your minds thinking(as I originally did) WHAT AN OUTLANDISH AND WASTEFUL NOTION!  Why can’t one spouse just wait a few moments for the toilet to become freed-up? Why would anyone want to have an extra toilet to clean? Is the extra expense really worth it?  Then I put the negative thoughts to the side and said ….

     Why can’t one spouse simply wait until the other is finished using their sink before they brush their teeth? Why would you want to clean two sinks? Why would you spend more money on more counter top, cabinet, faucets, mirrors, and square footage just so you could have your own sink? If the notion of using your spouse’s sink is unappealing, just how much less appealing should the idea of doing your “business” in the same spot your spouse does their “business”.YUCH! I mean….really YUCH when you think about it.

     I can tell you from many such occasions that on the occasions when Jacquie and I go to bed at the same time, I usually have to wait until she uses the toilet before I get may “turn”. (sorry for revealing a little too much here, it’s for the science of design so…). Heaven help us if one of us happens to cause a situation where the smell renders the toilet area off-limits for a while. Taking this smell thing into consideration, I could easily argue that there is nothing I could ever do to a sink which would mean my wife could not use it immediately after my use. I therefore will argue that having a second toilet is AT LEAST as important as having a second sink.

      I am currently preparring to build our 2011 major home we will be showing during the 2011 Parade Of Homes in Pewaukee. I must remind you that this is a whole controversial subject in itself because unlike any other Parade year, this year, I am no longer a member of the organization who sponsors the Parade event, so I will be playing the role of an “outsider” with a home open in and during the Parade, but I will not technically be “in” the Parade event itself.  Let’s leave that to another blog time, for now, ….  back to toilets.

     This (for lack of better/easier reference)Parade home will likely be my first testing grounds for several new concepts including this twin master toilet idea. In this case, I am sweetening the idea with several new embellishments, but we must leave some surprises for Parade days.

      For detail, both toilets are totally separate and each as it,s own privacy door, lights, and fan. I would be most interested in what you think of the idea of having twin toilets in the master. I am now on a binge of asking everyone I know if this is a good idea or what bad things I may be missing in taking this wacky idea into reality. What do you think? I welcome all comments.

     I hope you will all see our two newest Miracle Homes now opening in Hartford. After designing and building nearly 2,500  new homes, I still get excited every time we build a new home. I am definitely in the right business!

     Blessings,

    Tom Hignite

    In my last blog offering, I told how we held one of our “design arms” behind our backs and went forth to design a simpler, more basic series of homes we called “Home Basix”. I also explained how eventually, we decided to try to design our ultimate Home Basix home that had most every buyer’s hot-button, favorite features.

     After we started selling the Home Basix series for a short while, we discovered how no one really wanted to have a basic anything when they were paying as much money as a new home costs. I asked my staff and associates for name ideas to re-mane the Home Basix series. Funny, it seems few people ever really take too much time giving input on names but one close associate Dan put forth the idea of calling the re-named series The “All American”series.  I liked where he was trying to go with saying thes designs were tradtional in nature. That name seemed to just have too many syllables and not really capture the “magical” essence of our product branding image.

     The name Miracle could go better with names such as Wonder, or magic, or fantasy (funny, these are all now names of Disney cruise ships). Then the name “Dream” series hit just the right cord. After all, home ownership is a dream for many and this entry door into the Miracle Homes realm could be just the lower  priced home to make home ownership “dreams” come true!  Besides, the name was one syllable and very easy to say, even in a  rushed conversation.

     Having solved the dilemma of what name to use use, the newest version of Dream series home which would hit all the buyer hot button features was on its way to becoming a reality, and I was about to re-learn another old lesson.

     I designed this home to have 4 bedrooms(which appealed over 3 bedrooms), was over 2000 square feet(a magical number allowing it to meet most subdivision requirements for size), it had all walk-in bedroom closets(most similar sized homes resorted to the kid’s bedrooms being sized with conventional closets), it had an Island Kitchen(a very big 5 footer that sat 4 stools no less), a walk-in kitchen pantry(as big as a small room), and a laundry/mud room( that was a walloping 16 feet long),a big multi-purpose room that could be used for den or dining(over 14 feet long), and a 3 couch great room. This home just had it all. I was so confident of this design, that I thought people would be lining-up around the block to buy this home. The main reason was that the price would be less than anything else being offered in it’s size category.

     The exterior was simple in design. It was a colonial saltbox with simple lines. The exterior could be easily changed to option several different fronts. When the first few homes of this design were built, I was very excited as I was ready to put my theory of designing the “has it all” home to the test. We open our first home of this kind and  it laid an egg! I remember telling each visiting group how this was the home that had every hot button and was substantially less than any competitor in this size. I was so excited in my presentation, yet no one else seemed to share my enthusiasm. Visits to the model were usually quite short and visitors seemed quite unimpressed. What in the World was going on here?  This home had both price and features, but little in the way of buyers.

     I had addressed seemingly everything, yet I must have missed something! I had learned years before this that the exterior of the homes need to be interesting and not be built to the barest of versions. People must first fall in love with the exterior of the home, then their love must flow into the interior experience of the showing.  That was the answer! I had a nice enough exterior but the interior which I thought had most everything did not. What the lacking ingredient was to this mix was the lack of our famous exciting details and architectural interest which we had become known for. After a while, few sales people really wanted to spend their time showing this home. We ended up having to “fire sale” the model just to make it go away.

     The birth of this very blog article came from one clear memory of mine, from one memorable sales meeting where one experienced sales staffer just said it plainly. “If I were you, I would never build another one of these homes again. No one seems to like it”. I was not ready to buy his suggestion. I had thought and thought on the reason why this home failed to be a hit when all indicatiors lead me to beleive it should be a real winner. I had by now come to the conclusion that the answer was not to throw away a home design that really  had all the hot button selling features and what I saw  as a dynamite layout, the answer was to add the Miracle Magic that I had not thought was important to put into a lower cost home. I had cooked a great steak, but it just lacked the “sizzle”.

     There is an old home sales adage that I often say. I also hear model home visitors say much the same when they come into a home for the first time. The salesperson asks the guest/home shopper what type of home they are looking for. The shoppers often will say, “we will know it when we see it.” My words to sales staffers are along the same lines saying “A potential home buyer usually falls in love with a home in the first 30 seconds after entering the door. The rest of the time spent is them justifying their emmotions .” Another way to look at this is that we need to do all we can to create a strong first impression. This home failed to create much of any memorable first impression. After the underwhelmed home shopper failed to instantly fall in love with the interior, I(and sales staffers) then had the task of trying to try to logically explain to the shopper why they SHOULD be in love with the home. That is like trying to tell someone why they SHOULD love a certain person. It just does not work that way.

     I went about re-designing the interior to add a  healthy dose of Miracle Magic to key rooms and key views.  We added plaster and wood crown moldings, iron rail stair railing, ceramic foyers, drywall techniques that made you think you were in a million dollar mansion, fancier lighting fixtures and unique high ceilings to the second floor. Lots of details from unique Miracle-Only window sills, to fun wall built-outs around our patio doors that had hidden lighting. The effect on visitors instantly became apparent.  They fell in love!

     Now, when shoppers entered the re-freshed , and re-imagined design, they fell in love with the home and we began to sell lots and lots of this wonderful Dream Series home. Today, this home design which someone had once  suggested we never build again, is today far and away our best selling home EVER. I guess the lesson re-learned here is that when you feel confident about a design that you know works, don’t abandon the design when it fails to be an instant  hit. Tweak it until it becomes the hit it was meant to be.  Find the missing ingredient and turn those lemons into lemonade. Often in life we put a lot of work into something. A project at work, a relationship, an endeavor, a hobby. When it does not turn out as you anticipated or hoped it would, don’t throw away the whole project or relationship, or work you have done. Instead of abandoning your dreams or desires, re-examine if their is some way to re-approach the subject. It is indeed most satisfying to find the keys or correct ingredients to make your dreams come true.

   I hope you will see our final Spring edition of our channel 24 Home Imaginators television specials tomorrow(Saturday) at 11 am. Then, why not come out and visit me and my staff at our Dream 2000 we have in Richfield and now just open in Hartford. This is the home design that we almost never built again!

     Blessings,

     Tom Hignite

    Designing thousands of  homes over a 20 year span teaches you things about human nature and human decision processes. One of my most memorable design lessons has come to me in the area of re-designing an existing home design.  About 2 years ago, I had an experience that underscored something I had already learned many years prior, but served as a pointed reminder to me.

     It was 2006 and I was busy developing a new series of home designs. We had a top-end custom series, a very solid middle series, and even a lower-sized, more economical series. In each series I and my staff  had created, I conceptualized each home for many months trying to give the public something they had never seen before. I knew that our home buying audience who knew us, knew the name MIRACLE stood for pushing the creative envelope and revealing some things that no one else had to offer. Higher or lower priced designs must all have the same Miracle “magic“, as I call it.

     In later 2005 and early 2006, we had grown to become a very successful home builder catering to those who wanted something unique and different. It had occurred to me that for every MIRACLE FAN of our brand of “magic“, there were also those home shoppers who just did not either see the “magic” as desirable, or were looking for a more tame, less radical home design. I suppose you might say, that segment of shoppers who would say they just wanted a good basic home, without all the bells and whistles.

     I would get “floored” when some model home visitor would show me their floor plan from what they thought was their ideal home and I would be thinking that the simplistic, non-imaginative designs that they liked , we could design in our sleep if we wanted to. That sounds kind of brash and egotistic, but I can not deny my thoughts that our designs were just so much “better” and I could not see why some one would settle for such vanilla when we offered tuity-fruity. I would keep such thoughts to myself, of course.

       Then a light went on in my head. Maybe I should give the public what they are asking for. Not everyone saw my extreme vision of how my homes were perfectly striving for optimal furnishing ability , shortest traffic paths, and easier living positioning. I thought that while I could talk “sense” into those who could not immediately understand my designs, why should I? Is it not enough that someone wants “their” idea of their perfect home? It should  darned well be. After all, they are spending THEIR dollars, not mine.

     I started to design the simplest, least artsy , traditional homes I could. It was difficult to not want to add my MIRACLE “improvements” to each room, but I resisted. Homes that I would have sworn I would never design or build were now the goal. These were homes that would give rectangular boxed rooms to the masses and do so at prices way below anything I had ever built. I wanted them to have the right name, so I settled on the name “Home Basix” which was a play on the phrase BASIC HOME.

     I would later learn, that no matter how truly “basic” any home really is, no one really wants to own a home that calls attention to the fact that it is BASIC in any way. We introduced the series and tried to distance them from MIRACLE  Homes by not advertising them as MIRACLE homes, but rather a new company, owned by Miracle Homes. We built our first Home BASIX models near our fancier Miracle designs so folks who came to see Miracle “magic” would not be disappointed. After all, this was to serve to add marginal sales, not destroy our hard earned creative based  reputation.

     Fast forward a few years to 2008. We had now entered the worst housing market ever(by some accounts) and I am feeling grateful that Home BASIX is attracting the lower priced home shoppers, while our standard fare is not selling like it used too. We have been approached by a few developers to build homes in their developments because it is easier to sell land when there is a house on the land parcel than selling bare land. The Home BASIX series is doing well in this arena of spec-homes.

     With each open house I attend, and every home we sell, I am learning that the client base really wants some key items and they also want a key price point. Again, we go to work to design the newest , simple home but hitting all, I mean EVERY  hot button buyer desire. It would need to have 4 bedrooms, 2.5 baths, a 3-car garage, an island kitchen, a  sizable walk-in pantry, all walk-in closets, two master bath sinks, a flex room which could be used for either den or dining, and so forth. We created just such a home and what it did was and is perhaps our most remarkable success story of them all!

     Next time, I will reveal the rest of this re-design story and why this “perfect” home that had everything almost was tossed out of our company offerings and how it would climb from “basic” to become our best seller ever!

     Until we blog again,

    Blessings,

    Tom Hignite

Read and understand the headline of this blog and you will know what  latest “wild idea”  has been wandering around my brain lately.

     I have told you in the past that I am always trying to look at homes in new ways, trying to really look at rooms and ask, “why” are things always done the same way? Last year, I asked myself, why  do all rooms really need to have doors? Why do all windows have to be placed onto outside walls? A few years behind that brainstorm, I asked myself, why do all walls need to touch the ceiling? I have pondered, why do all rooms need to have floors, and why must all walls be solid? Some ideas are crazier than others but they all are a potential start of perhaps the next new big thing in living.If not, they are at very least, the break of a trend of my personal design boredom.

     I was re-looking at the walls in my studio the other day and wondering what kinds of trim we should order for a certain new model home we had recently  broken ground on. Do I want the narrow, inexpensive trim or the wider, more pricey trim? Then I asked myself, why does it always have to be wood trim? Would a doorway, for instance, look notably better if I chose to surround the frame in thin Corian-type solid surface material, or tile, or maybe even ,…even,…HEY, why does a door need trim surrounding it at all?

      The process of  silent examination began. Well, I think the door may need this wood trim surround  to be more durable from scuffs or abuse. Then I thought, that really is not true because the door jamb(the wood board that goes perpendicular to the wall itself and the door hinges are attached to it)really is its own protection device around the edge of the door.

     Then I asked myself, of course, the reason wood trim is needed is because of the method of how a door is installed and later tweaked to swing properly when the home may settle. But, I then figured, this too was not a valid reason to need to use wood trim. If you were to need to re-shim or tweak a door frame, you usually need to remove the  door surround casings which is in itself a bit of work and re-finishing. If I were to use a method of using no trim,(except the drywall itself), I know a place where I can obtain drywall products  with a neat trim edging  that would/could suffice in giving a very neat and tidy finish look. When the door would have to be tweaked, sure, the drywall would get marred in the process, but that really is easier to fix than re-filling the nail holes of the removed/replaced wood moldings.

     The look would be simple. Pure unadulterated flat, no textured, walls and simple, wood flat doors , that’s all!

     If I were to not use wood trim, the doors and jambs( they are pre-hinged too), would need to be delivered to the job site ahead of normal schedule and may get damaged. This is true, but  I think I could have” cull “doors(that means old/used  temporary doors in our business lingo) delivered and then install the real doors after the carpet is installed.

     The real, most pressing question is this. Would the appearance of a frameless door appeal to anyone? In other words, would having no trim look cheap or just not look “right“. Perhaps it would look really cool and edgy. Perhaps it would look sleek and simple and maybe even organic and practical. Or perhaps…not! 

     Then there is the base board trim moldings. Why do rooms always need to have a wood board running around the bottom of every wall? What if the drywall was to end, say, 6 or even 8 inches from the floor. What if the drywall had a neat tidy edge that cleanly trimmed off the look of the end of the drywall panels and then the 6 or 8 inch gap between the end of the drywall and the floor was just 1/4 inch plywood? Then we could take either the carpet or tile or hardwood of the floors and run that same product up onto the walls for that 6 or 8 inches? Now the result would be a most clean look and be very easy to clean off. Vacuums and mops would never wreak havoc on the varnish of the wood base moldings again.

     Again, the big questions are whether this would look like some cheap hotel hallway? Perhaps this too, would look really cool and make a statement of shunning tradition and being creative. Perhaps, not.

     I have installed the most exotic cherry, teak, and walnut trim in  custom homes. I have also installed the lower priced offerings as well. When I work with a client on their home, they alone are King and Queen. I am but their humble servant charged with delivering “their” dreams and desires, not mine. I must admit however that I do get bored with doing what everyone else has been doing in home construction  for centuries, such as using wood trim for moldings. In many cases, I actually personally prefer the cleaner look of a well installed drywall return window(a window with no wood around it except on the bottom sills). I am however getting a bit bored of that wood as well.

     I brought this latest wild  idea of a virtually woodless trimmed home to one of my lumber suppliers. He shrugged and just could not imagine the look or acceptance one way or the other. I think, I am going to try it. I will probably first try this in one finsihed basement in an upcoming model but, boy, I would sure like to see it done in a whole house! If you  married this to having doors that were high quality solid flush hardwood, the look may be quite pleasing. At least that is what I am currently viewing in my mind’s eye. What do YOU think? Would this look nice or cheap? I would really love to know your thoughts.

     This weekend is the very last weekend we will be having our most special home in decades open to the public. If you wish to know when and where, please give me or my staff a call. I guarantee, we have more tricks and surprises in this one home than you are likely to ever see in any new home today.

     Until we blog again,

     Blessings,

     Tom Hignite