Posts Tagged ‘home’

The holidays require flexibility.  It is not for everyday living.  It is a compressed time of celebration.  Family, Friends, Food, Fun all of them can be amazing, and sometimes not.  The purpose of this blog post is to offer home & hospitality related ideas that will increase your ability to be guest-focused this holiday.

Reconfigure Furniture – Last year we hosted a holiday birthday celebration at our home for a friend.  [And this year we are doing the same thing for her husband.]  Offering the location and Kristin handling the logistics of the event is our gift to our friends.  To fit 12 people for dinner comfortably we actually turn our living room into a formal dining room for such events.  The couch and chairs move, the table moves, we light a fire, we remove all the kid toys [all things plastic & primary colored] and the room is transformed.  Think outside the box and move some furniture for your holiday gathering.

Rent linens – How many of us have spent $50-150 on table cloths only to have guests arriving in 30 minutes and realize someone [you] needs to iron a ridiculously long table cloth.  Spend $10-30 on cloth rental.  It comes pressed and when you’re done you throw it in a trash bag dirty and return it.  It allows for changing the mood and color scheme for an event with just an Andrew Jackson instead of a Benjamin Franklin investment.

One-In-One-Out – This trick will bring so much peace to your life.  If I buy a new pair of shoes, I throw an old pair out.  If you move a large piece of furniture into a room, move a piece of furniture out (even temporarily).  If you get new oven mitts as a gift then donate the old ones.  This trick works for ALL things holiday other than guests in your home.

Make extra holiday gifts – For the entirety of our marriage each holiday season I run into the room and beg Kristin to let me steal one of the small gifts she has made for our friends, family, house guests for an impromptu holiday event I have to attend.  I have learned to add to her list on the front end and she now makes a few extras because she knows I am going to ask.  There is nothing worse than being short a gift in a group.

Favors – This weekend Reagan (4) and I assisted Kristin in making 600 truffles.  Kristin is on the board of a local women’s center that helps at-risk women in Grand Rapids.  400 of the truffles are for their open house next weekend.  The other 200 will get pretty packaging and become small gifts for people in our lives.  Tis the season, and having something special and small is one of the ways my wife is so classy.

Drinks – Here’s your reminder to stock up on wine, beer, or the makings for a signature non-alcoholic drink.  Why can’t this be the year you make fresh eggnog?  Add a little ritual to drink making and it becomes an event in itself.  Did you buy extra coffee?  Don’t forget the Decaf for those kids like me who can’t have caffeine after 3pm. Man tip: Drink making is a great way to hide from guests if you get overwhelmed from the small talk.  Better to MAKE drinks to get out of an uncomfortable conversation than to DRINK your way through the conversation.

Slippers – if you are ultra-conscious about dirt in the house here is a tip for your kind of crazy.  Look for slippers on sale and buy as many pairs as you need.  As passionate as you are about maintaining a clean floor some of your guests are as passionate about not wanting to take their shoes off.  Slippers may be a great way to get those shoes off, preserve your guests’ dignity, and creates a conversation starter for your event.  Hey, don’t forget a shoe bag or some designated place for people to put their shoes.  Reverse tip – I have easy-on, easy-off shoes because I am in literally hundreds of homes a year.

Shoes & Coats – Clean out the mudroom and make the kids keep their coats in their rooms or the basement so you have room in your entryway for guest coats.  Use a basket to contain hats, mittens, scarves – make it available for guests too.  Add a second and/or third floor mat to facilitate getting multiple people into your house quickly so the door can shut.  It will make the welcome process go smoother.  If you want to protect against wet boots get one of those plastic shoe trays for $7-15.  After the holidays the tide of kids shoes/boots can return…until you hire me to fix that permanently for you.

Last tip:  See my article Guest Room Design Tips for how to make overnight guests comfortable.

Happy Holidays!

Here are my notes from this morning’s interview on Newsradio WOOD 1300′s ‘West Michigan Morning News.”

It’s getting HOT and I have 4 Summer Projects that your HOME will thank you for attending to:

1) Decks – retop w/ a high performance composite decking – some brands don’t get hot, require minimal maintenance, and don’t have visible fasteners (looks sweet). Maintenance – “treated” or cedar decking – remember, every other year to reseal it. If you do so you’ll have a happy, beautiful deck for 15 yrs +.

2) Clean the Air Conditioner Condenser – Looks like R2D2 but approach it like it’s a wild animal, turn the power off at the circuit breaker or at the gray box on the side of the house – brush to get off the white tree fuzz and soak it with the hose to clean off dirt. No power washing please! Protect those metal fins at all cost.

3) College Kids – returning home that you want to put to work – CLEAN the gutters that didn’t get done b/c they were off at school & maybe paint the house.
1 Tip about painting outside – stay ahead of the sun. Paint in the shade…work your way around the house, side by side, IF possible.

4) Look into the 2009 energy tax credit qualifying projects – doors, windows, insulation, and lots more. Go to www.woodradio.com keyword: Thompson for the link

Bonus: Get out and see the Parade of Homes May 22nd, 2009 – June 6th. Visit: www.hbaggr.com for ticket information.

To hear the audio podcast of this interview visit: www.woodradio.com and look in the 5/22/09 podcasts of W. Michigan Morning News…the link will be up later today.

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE BUDGET

Since the late 1980s Thompson Remodeling has been a design/build remodeling firm. It was a cultural shift we made because we believe an integrated approach to remodeling gives a better experience to our clients – saving them time and design costs. Most of the decisions we make in life have a psychological underpinning. To oversimplify, high dollar purchases [like remodeling] cause us all to have psychological struggles. Here are some of the psychological reasons why we chose Design/Build over doing bid work for architects.

Game #1 – The Pleaser
Many folks have heard of an architect designing a project well outside the budget. What good is a project no one can afford? Salespeople, Architects, and Designers have psychological pressure to give the client everything they want irrespective of price.

We use generations of construction experience and accurate & timely historical data to give our in-house designers instant feedback as to whether or not a design is within the budget range for a project.

Game #2 – Emotional “Bond-age”
Have you ever made an impulse buy? Maybe it was an I-pod, a new pair of shoes, a car, or maybe even a house? Kristin and I bought a house in October 2005. Before we had ever seen the upstairs she leaned over to me and said, “I want it.” We closed on it in less than (3) weeks and absolutely love the house. Now that kind of bonding is what I mean by Emotional Bondage!

Remodeling can be the same. Design meetings are fun because you see your vision taking shape, our guided shopping trips to make product selections are convenient and exciting, but then reality sets in…the selections you made have enlarged your budget! But we don’t want the last part to happen. In design-build we walk through that process together saying, “That looks beautiful but it’s going to increase your budget,” and then the choice is yours. We’re accountable to you and help you keep control of your budget so you don’t fall in love with a design that’s beyond the budget.

Game #3 – General Affordability
Mobilizing dozens of people to rip apart and rebuild your home is expensive or is it? Here’s a reminder for budgeting purposes. The monthly payment on a project will be approximately $600 – $700 for every $100,000 leveraged to improve a home (6-7% interest rate). Remodeling is relatively cheap to finance. Plus there are some natural forces in a client’s favor. Generally, real estate appreciates and appreciation recoups the cost of remodeling and generates wealth automatically. All while you enjoy a home customized to your unique specifications. Real estate is great!

On this trip I experienced the ultimate backyard and my kind of Man Cave. This is a fantastic example of how to create the home of your dreams. Isn’t the backyard below absolutely amazing? Do you want to know how this friend of mine created it? 1) He and his wife considered the type of home they truly wanted. 2) They decided to downsize to this 1400 sf home. 3) They waited a few years before remodeling to get to know the home they purchased.The result: Their patience, planning, and hard work was rewarded. Interesting Fact: See those bricks used as pavers? They were salvaged from old town Chicago.

Pictured below is the ultimate Man Cave in my opinion! It functions as a combination home office and pool house complete with custom steam shower and guitar collection. I characterize it as having charming class and personalized comfort. Imagine yourself retreating to this space for time away, working on your next book, or playing music with friends and family out here.