Whole-Home Remodeling, Additions, and When to Start Fresh
Host:
This is the Home Remodeling Show, brought to you by Edge Construction. You can find them online at EdgeConstructionCompany.com. That is all one word, Edge Construction Company dot com.
Their telephone number is 608-636-3343. That number is 636-EDGE.
I mentioned the website, and I hope you have had a chance to check it out. If you have not been there recently, or you have never been there before, what the heck is going on? Head over to EdgeConstructionCompany.com.
The website is always being updated with new projects. There are also links to Pinterest, Facebook, and a very cool link to Houzz, all accessible from EdgeConstructionCompany.com.
Joining us in studio this morning is Mr. Mike Twohig of Edge Construction. Mike, how have you been?
Mike:
Great, Sean. Good to see you.
Host:
Spring is almost here.
Mike:
Yeah, I think we had a little pump fake.
Host:
I think, as far as the calendar, meteorological spring and the vernal equinox, we are there. Any day now, it is going to feel like it.
For a lot of folks, this is the time when people really start to get active and start thinking about home remodeling, isn’t it?
Mike:
I think so. You have been trapped in your house for four months, and maybe you get a little more optimistic about doing things when the sun comes out and it warms up a little bit.
Then it gets cold again, but it will get warm.
Host:
Your crews are going year-round, too. For folks who do not know, as we are exiting winter right now, your guys have been working all winter long.
Mike:
Oh yeah. There are projects I do not love to do, or especially start, in the winter. I think we will get into a little of that today.
But our people need work year-round. Construction has figured out ways to keep things going. We power through when the weather gets bad. We live in Wisconsin. It is not great for part of the year, but we know that and accept it.
Host:
Looking forward to spring ties into this week’s topic. We are talking about whole-home remodels. This can include the entire inside, outside, additions, and those types of things.
So we are really in prime season to be thinking about that, aren’t we?
Mike:
We are.
On our schedule, we do three to four of those a year. If two of those are whole-house remodels where we are not adding on or pouring concrete, then we can do four pretty comfortably. I almost said easily, but there is no easy part of that.
For example, we have one that is nearing the finish line right now in downtown Madison. It is a big old house that was a rental and had been divided into two units. Two people bought the house together. They are sisters, and they are combining it and turning it back into what it originally was: one single house with one kitchen and two stairways.
We are not pouring concrete there, so that was something we were able to work on through the rough weather. It was not too intense that way.
Host:
When you talk about going from duplex back to single-family, do you ever do the opposite? Do people ever call you and say they want to convert a house into a duplex, or is that usually a different type of company?
Mike:
I am sure we have, but we are not generally called in for that type of work.
When somebody is in that business and wants to rent something out, they are not usually trying to do our kind of remodel. It is more often, “What is the least I can put into this place to get it turned into a rental?”
Even working on a house that was a rental and turning it back into a home for somebody’s family is a different deal. Nothing good ever seems to happen in the rental sense. Things do not get fixed the way they would if someone lived there and loved the house.
On this one, we had to tear down a lot of things and update a lot of mechanicals. The electrical was a mess, and we knew that going in. We did our due diligence, so we knew what we were getting into, but it is a much different process.
Host:
Is it rewarding to restore a big old home like that, especially in the city? When that house was built, there was probably a substantial amount of craftsmanship and uniqueness. Over the years, being used as a rental may have eliminated some of that.
Being able to revive it and bring it back has to be a lot of fun for you guys.
Mike:
It is. It is going to be really fun.
Now we are at the putting-it-back-together stage. We are at drywall. All the structural fixes have been done, and the mechanicals are updated except for the final finishes.
It will be really fun to see the choices go back in there: the cabinet choices, flooring choices, and all of that. We really feel like we are doing right by a house like that when we invest this amount of time into it.
Host:
I have to be hopeful when I see that. The old joke is that the official bird of Madison is the crane, and it is not the actual bird — it is construction cranes.
As I see more high-rises going up downtown, I hope some of those old multi-unit homes have owners saying, “Maybe we would like to keep this or restore it to its old glory and preserve a piece of beautiful Madison history.”
There are some blocks, especially right near campus, where that may not be what people are thinking. But in some areas, I bet that is a really great thing to aspire to.
Mike:
I think what you are saying is everything cannot be concrete and stucco, six stories high, and some version of a square or rectangle.
I love the old buildings and old houses. I do not know how much more has to be given up down there before you lose too much of the character downtown.
Some of these old buildings seem to be getting lost among their neighbors. They are surrounded by big, tall structures. The residential neighborhoods largely have not been hit quite as hard, but I hope that is not the future.
Host:
Exactly.
We are talking this morning with Mike Twohig, owner of Edge Construction. The website is EdgeConstructionCompany.com. That is all one word, Edge Construction Company dot com.
Their telephone number is 608-636-3343. That number is 636-EDGE.
So, going from the city, let’s head out toward the country. One type of project you often do is farmhouse restorations and whole-home remodels. With those, you are often trying to restore those homes to their glory days.
We talk about the website and the beautiful results people can see there. That is another area where I have to guess you get a fair amount of folks wanting to work with you on those projects.
Mike:
We do, and those are great projects too.
You go from working downtown, where there is no place to park and getting trash out of the site is a challenge, to working out in the country on some of those old country houses.
Generally, when somebody is set to do a whole-home remodel, a lot of those houses have not had much updating over the years.
We had one last year, a farmhouse built in the 1960s with no updating since. It is amazing how out of date it was and how much work needed to be done just to bring it up to code and get it back to zero.
But we usually go much farther than that.
When houses are built, and I will pick on builders a little bit, the words “builder grade” sneak in. That was around in the 1960s, 1950s, and probably the 1970s too.
Those initial choices — flooring, cabinets, plumbing fixtures, lighting, mechanicals — were often done to a minimum on the new-construction side. So when you bring the home up to date with really good products and design, you have an opportunity to use all of these great choices that are available now.
That is really fun because you are making the house into something it has never been.
Host:
Are you still seeing shag carpet? Are you guys still having to take any of that out these days?
Mike:
Yes, we are. And I believe we have one coming up where the shag goes into the bathroom.
Host:
Oh no.
Mike:
I always joke that I do not tell our people when that is the demo. I just tell them to block that day from their memory.
Host:
If that carpet could talk, I do not know if you would want to hear what it was saying.
Mike:
When I walk into a house where the master bath has not been updated since the 1960s, I always think Austin Powers lives there.
Host:
Do you ever come across that old wallpaper too, with coffee pots or tea kettles? I remember seeing a lot of that in houses from the 1970s and 1980s.
Mike:
Yes, the borders.
We tear out a fair amount of wallpaper in our business. But believe it or not, we are starting to put some back in. Wallpaper is coming around again, according to my designers and some people in my family.
I keep thinking, “No, no, no. We tear it out.”
But we just installed one that I actually liked. It had a modern art deco kind of feel. The wallpaper world, like everything else, has grown in choices, and there is some cool stuff.
I have a little PTSD from tearing it out, so maybe that is my own personal thing. I am not super excited about it, but we do what our designers tell us to do.
Host:
Wallpaper is funny. You mentioned builder grade, and it is not necessarily a new term. I think some of those older wallpapers that give us the shivers were very inexpensive and had simple prints or designs. They just did not age well.
But when you talk about some of the newer wallpapers, I have seen older versions with really nice texture and quality. I assume those were a better investment back in the day, which is why they held up so well.
I have to assume some of this new stuff is like that. It is not just a cheap little sticker you put on the wall.
Mike:
I will educate you a little bit.
In the wallpaper world, it is buyer beware. A lot of the product out there is something we have seen. About half the market for wallpaper right now is peel-and-stick. It is almost like tape. You peel the back off and stick it to the wall.
If you get it up there crooked, oops. It is probably wrecked and has to come back off.
We like products where we apply the glue. We can roll the glue onto the wall, and that gives us a little bit of wiggle room to get the wallpaper straight.
Patterns are still somewhat complicated, and you do not have to be a carpenter to notice when something is off a little bit. If the patterns do not match, people will see it.
To do a really good job, you need the right product. We have not installed peel-and-stick wallpaper. I am very resistant to it, even though it has taken over a lot of the market.
It appeals to homeowners because they think they can just peel the back off and put it on the wall. But in my mind, I need it to be straight, and the patterns need to match. That is much tougher when you have no wiggle room.
None of this stuff is cheap, by the way. You can spend quite a bit of money even doing a small room with wallpaper. In my world, less is more.
We have remodeled houses where people clearly loved wallpaper at some point, and almost every available space was wallpapered. It is not fun to take out, and I do not think it is really appealing.
Host:
Have you found an art to removing old wallpaper?
Mike:
In the end, yes.
Most of the time it is not too bad to take off. We use steamers, those prickly rollers to get water through, and then we get it off fairly easily and wash off the wall, depending on the glue.
Other times, there are two or three layers of wallpaper, and it gets really tough. It does not want to give up the ghost.
I will have Gary working on it, thinking it will be done in a few hours, and two days later he is still taking off wallpaper. It is a little unpredictable.
Host:
You mentioned peel-and-stick, and I was at a big-box store the other day and saw peel-and-stick tiles. I thought maybe for a playhouse, but I do not know.
It did not look like real tile work to me, and I thought there was no way it could hold up.
Mike:
It holds up okay. If it falls off, you can put a little construction adhesive behind it and hold the tile.
I think it serves as a stopgap. It was also popular with flippers. Flippers went big with peel-and-stick backsplashes.
If you have a super inexperienced homeowner who comes in and says, “Oh, it has a backsplash,” they might think that is great. But look a little closer. A lot of those are not grouted. It is just stuck up there.
If a homeowner does it, most of the time I do not think they assume it will last 20 years. It is a money saver and takes care of the problem for now.
Like anything, you can mess up the install. Cutting it can be tricky, and getting straight lines around outlets can be difficult.
Host:
If I do it, you can come over and watch.
Mike:
I will get a comfortable chair and laugh.
Host:
It sounds like something people bring up, much like painting cabinets.
Mike:
I was going to bring that up.
That got really big with the flippers. Painting cabinets usually buys you a few years, and then you realize the cabinets are still falling apart. There is not much you can do.
But if you do that, put up a few new light fixtures, paint the walls, and add a peel-and-stick backsplash, someone inexperienced may come in and think, “Wow, the kitchen is done. I do not have to do anything here for a long time.”
Then they live there for a while and figure out what it really looks like.
Host:
Really interesting stuff.
We are talking this morning with Mike Twohig. We are actually talking about whole-home remodeling, but I apologize because I get sidetracked sometimes with these new products and concepts.
We will get back to whole-home remodeling. I think it is one of those things where some folks may buy a little extra time before deciding to do it right. A whole-home remodel can be an amazing option.
We will talk about additions and other things with Mike in just a moment.
In the meantime, head over to EdgeConstructionCompany.com. That is Edge Construction Company dot com.
Their telephone number is 608-636-3343. That is 636-EDGE.
More of the Home Remodeling Show with Edge Construction is next here on 1310 WIBA.
Host:
This is the Home Remodeling Show, brought to you by Edge Construction. You can find them online at EdgeConstructionCompany.com. That is all one word, Edge Construction Company dot com.
It is a great website and resource. Their telephone number is 608-636-3343. That number is 636-EDGE.
I got my coffee during the break, so now I can say 636-3343.
Mike:
It is an easy number to remember.
Host:
You make it as easy as possible. Color-coded and simply laid out.
We started our conversation talking about whole-home remodeling and got a little sidetracked in the first segment, but it was an important conversation.
As we talk about whole-home remodeling, additions can be the perfect thing if you have the space on the lot. If you love the house, love the neighborhood, and want to stay, an addition may be the perfect solution.
You do a few additions each year as well, don’t you?
Mike:
We do.
I group additions in with whole-home remodels because they are bigger jobs. They need more horsepower and a lot more planning. We have architectural issues to think about.
Concrete is the trick right now. Concrete walls are the wild card in construction over the last couple of years. There just are not enough of those companies left.
A lot of the smaller and mid-sized wall companies — meaning companies that pour foundation walls — have either disappeared or retired. There are a few really big ones.
There are plenty of flatwork crews, meaning the concrete you walk on. But we need some of those people to get into the wall business. I think they would do really well.
For additions, that takes planning on our part. We have a great company that does that work for us. I call them mid-sized, but we have to plan several months in advance to fit into their schedule.
That is why I group additions with whole-home remodels. They are bigger jobs.
Host:
Do additions pair well with whole-home remodels? If I am going to do an addition, is it probably a good time to touch most rooms in the house?
Mike:
For sure.
We seem to get one job a year where we tear the roof off and go up. We had one recently where we did that, paired with a small addition.
That project had a one-car garage where the concrete was all broken up and a mess. You could not even fit one car in it. It was an older house. We got them a legitimate two-car garage, and that involved an addition and concrete work. We tore off what was there and rebuilt back on.
Host:
You mentioned a one-car garage where you cannot really fit a car. I think of old-time cars, and I wonder what the plan was because those were big cars.
Mike:
This was a house probably from the 1950s. Maybe you could fit a car in there, but it would have been super tight, and there would not have been room for anything else.
That is not how people live. We need a place to put things.
Host:
People were skinnier then too, right?
We are talking with Mike Twohig, owner of Edge Construction. You can find them online at EdgeConstructionCompany.com. Their telephone number is 608-636-3343. That number is 636-EDGE.
With whole-home remodels, some things are easier and some things are much more complicated.
For example, tying things together is one challenge. If you are touching all the different spaces, the design may not be easier, but you probably get more flexibility because you do not have to worry as much about tying into what is existing. You are updating everything.
Mike:
Right.
If you are just doing a kitchen or kitchen-and-great-room remodel, you can pick your style, and a lot of times it is not what the house was originally built with. If people had the choice, they would generally go in a different direction.
But if you are keeping the rest of the downstairs or first floor, you need to at least complement that.
If you are starting from scratch and removing what was there, you do get to make your choices.
I always think about a whole-home remodel versus building a new house. If you can work with the existing footprint and get 90 percent of the way to where you want to go, it probably makes sense.
Maybe you are updating and reconfiguring rooms so they make more sense. If you built brand new, maybe you would get one more bedroom or another bath. But if you can get 90 percent of the way there, it probably makes sense.
If you can only get 70 percent of the way there, that is a tougher decision because it is expensive.
Tearing down a perfectly good house feels wasteful to me. We spend a lot of time on design in these projects because we want to do what is right and ideally get there within the footprint we have. But sometimes it does not work.
Host:
Do we still see open concept as a big thing? Are people still removing walls? I know there was not a complete reversal, but maybe a little bit of a pullback, with more strategic wall placement.
Mike:
More experienced homeowners who have owned a few homes do not mind a little separation here and there.
The younger crowd and first-time homebuyer crowd still leans open. You can see what is being built. We work a lot for builders on the new-construction side in Dane County, and some houses have so few walls on the main floor that we have no place to run mechanicals.
I am okay with having a little separation here and there. But the trend has definitely not fully moved away from open concept yet.
Host:
That is great perspective as we talk about these projects.
For folks looking for ideas and inspiration, or just wanting to have some fun, head over to EdgeConstructionCompany.com. You can see some projects on the website.
The best thing to do is go to EdgeConstructionCompany.com and click the Houzz link. You will see a little green “H” logo shaped like a house. That takes you to their full portfolio, where you can see some really cool projects and get great ideas.
If you are thinking about remodeling, they would love to talk with you. Call 608-636-3343. That is 636-EDGE.
Edge Construction brings you the Home Remodeling Show right here on 1310 WIBA.
Host:
This is the Home Remodeling Show, brought to you by Edge Construction. You can find them online at EdgeConstructionCompany.com. That is all one word, Edge Construction Company dot com.
I hope you had a chance during the break to head over there. If not, check it out. The website has great resources, plus links to Pinterest, Houzz, and Facebook.
Their telephone number is 608-636-3343. That number is 636-EDGE.
We are talking this week about whole-home remodeling and some of the projects Edge Construction can do.
Whole-home remodeling is popular for folks who love the house but want a good update throughout the home. We talked about open concept, and I do not think the phrase is “closed concept,” but what about old Victorians where there are a number of rooms, beautiful character, and a lot of woodwork?
The restoration work you do at Edge Construction works really well for those types of projects.
Mike:
Does your house have a parlor?
Host:
I wish.
Mike:
What would you put in the parlor?
Host:
A sitting chair or two.
Mike:
As a visitor, you might only make it as far as the parlor if you were not important enough. If you were more important, maybe you made it to the next layer of the house.
Host:
I visited one of our neighbors in a very old house. I think it may have been the old Catholic church rectory. You come in, and there is a nice little entry foyer. Then there is a sliding door, and there is a beautiful parlor with a nice bar.
That type of work — doing right by beautiful old homes — I know you love that kind of project.
Mike:
We do.
The real trick, if you are going to start making modifications, is that those old houses do have some fatal flaws by today’s standards.
The kitchen is probably in a back corner, and it might be an eight-by-nine room that nobody ever saw. It was not the center of the house.
Generally, we are trying to at least make the kitchen bigger and hopefully get it more centralized, because that is how we live now.
We have done that remodel several times. There may be a nice-sized room in the middle of the house. Maybe the old kitchen becomes an office, and maybe another room becomes the kitchen.
But you can make big mistakes by opening those houses up too much. You still want to preserve the feel of the old, beautiful house.
At Edge Construction, we are very careful when we take apart trimwork and woodwork in those houses because we want to preserve as much of it as possible.
You can reproduce it, but it does not have the same feel. Maybe it has 25 coats of paint, but the old stuff just feels different.
If it is stained woodwork, that is really tricky. We have some ways to add age to new wood, but they had different trees back then. They had six-foot-wide Douglas fir and pine trees up north. That wood looked different and performed differently than the quick-growth stuff we generally build with now.
Host:
Let’s ask about trim work. Especially on some older homes, that stuff was often one-off or very specific to the home or region. You work with people who are able to recreate that, don’t you?
Mike:
We do recreate it.
Generally, it was not just one house. It was at least regional. Around Madison, there are a few styles of trim that are famous in our world.
When we remodel and take that stuff out, even if we are not reusing it on that project, we will keep and store it. Sometimes we need one piece of casing from 1920, and we have one in the shop that we can fix up and make work.
Even if it is reproducible, I think we are better off with the old stuff.
Host:
What about 1970s and 1980s homes? I think especially of staircase areas. A lot of us have lived in or know people with homes where you come in the front door, and right away there is an enclosed staircase that goes straight up to the second floor.
In bigger projects and whole-home remodels, people often want to open that up or make it feel more like part of the house and a little more decorative. I know Edge Construction has done a number of those over the years.
Mike:
Yes, we like opening that up and giving it some personality.
Design has moved through phases. You talked about Victorians, where things were fancy, custom, and everything stood out. Then you move through the 1950s to the 1970s, and a lot of those houses became more homogenized and utilitarian.
A three-bedroom 1970s ranch works great, but is it flashy? No. There is not much personality there.
Stairways are a great example. Nobody really wants to go through a tunnel to get to another floor. If we can open that up and maybe do a short rail or give it a different look, it can really change how a house feels.
Host:
Speaking of ranches and significant whole-home remodels, EdgeConstructionCompany.com is featuring a significant remodel you did on a ranch home in the area.
Let’s talk about what goes into those projects.
Mike:
This one was the height of design in about 1958 or 1960. If you look at the before pictures, especially the kitchen, the whole ceiling was a sea of fluorescent lights. It was kind of like a drop ceiling, but all the panels were plastic diffusers with fluorescent lights above them.
Host:
I am laughing, but I am not making fun of anybody with this style of house.
Mike:
Looking at what it became now, it is completely updated. The lighting has changed significantly. The soffits are gone. The house has brightened up like crazy.
All the cabinets in that house were custom-built by a carpenter back in the 1960s.
Host:
I am looking at the kitchen right now. It is a little bit Austin Powers.
Mike:
It is fun to see what the potential is.
I was updating kitchens before we had CAD, computer-aided design, and certainly before renderings where you could get a good idea of what the kitchen would look like in the future.
This homeowner had the benefit of those tools. Sometimes a space is so outdated that you cannot picture what it is going to be. You need to build that picture in your head.
With CAD and renderings, we can now do amazing things. We can literally import products into the CAD software and put actual products, or close versions of them, into the design.
When we create renderings, you can get a really good look at what the space is going to look like.
Host:
I am looking at the bathroom in particular right now, and the transformation is amazing. It is really well done.
For folks who have not been to EdgeConstructionCompany.com, you will see slider pictures on some of the projects. Sometimes you think, “That cannot be the same room.” The nice thing about the slider pictures is that you can actually see the same space before and after.
This was a substantial project. Did you do work on the outside of this one as well?
Mike:
Not much.
It was a unique situation. Two sisters were involved. One is going to live there full-time, and the other will visit but is very handicapped.
We did subtle things inside. We widened hallways and made doorways bigger. The trick is that you do not want someone who did not go through the process to walk in and say, “Oh, they brought it up to ADA standard. They made this a handicap-accessible house.”
We wanted it to be attractive in its own right, while also working well for someone in a chair or someone not in a chair.
We built a deck on the backside of the house. We had zero-entry access issues, meaning there was a step into the house from every direction. We could not overcome that without a ramp or something visible, which the homeowner did not want.
So we built a long deck on the back side of the house. The homeowner wanted that anyway. We did landscaping back there to make it look natural and nice.
This deck had no steps. You could roll up through a patio door, and it became an access point to the house for one of the sisters.
Again, that is hard to envision. You have to get it into CAD, get a top-down view, and start problem-solving to see what works best.
Host:
Is one benefit of a whole-home remodel that homeowners have often lived in the house and know where the problem areas are? They can say, “This just does not work for us.”
Mike:
For sure.
You make better choices after you have lived in a house for a while. You notice the pinch points or the things that do not work.
This house had an enclosed U-shaped kitchen. You end up hating those corner cabinets. You feel tucked away from everything. Even though it was somewhat open, you are still hiding behind a lot of stuff.
In these remodels, especially with the kitchen area, we are trying to get the kitchen to join the rest of the house. We want it to be open and inviting.
This homeowner also brought up the sunken living room floor during design. That was a sign of the times. We framed that in. We just did not see it as useful, and the homeowner did not want it. It also would not work well for a family member in a chair.
Even without that, with an aging population, steps down and steps up through the house can be a hazard. If you are walking through at night and not thinking about every step, there is a chance to get hurt.
So we often frame that floor in and make everything level. When you walk through that house now, you would never know it had been sunken before.
Host:
That is pretty amazing.
Head over to EdgeConstructionCompany.com and look for the Rustic Farmhouse Remodel. Definitely take a look at those pictures.
If you are thinking about doing a project and want some ideas, call Edge Construction at 608-636-3343. That number is 636-EDGE.
Edge Construction brings you the Home Remodeling Show right here on 1310 WIBA.
Host:
This is the Home Remodeling Show, brought to you by Edge Construction. You can find them online at EdgeConstructionCompany.com. That is all one word, Edge Construction Company dot com.
Their telephone number is 608-636-3343. That number is 636-EDGE.
We are talking about whole-home remodeling with Edge Construction.
Mike, you mentioned earlier that with some projects, part of the upfront work is determining whether it is worth putting the money into preserving the home. Obviously, the best outcome is, “Yes, we can save it and remodel it.”
But sometimes the numbers do not work, or the reality does not work. Maybe there are serious structural issues or other problems, and you basically have to crumple up the paper and start over.
By crumple up the paper, we mean bulldozing and starting fresh. Edge Construction does build a few complete homes each year. You have been working on a recent project where you started literally from the ground up, and that can be a great option.
Mike:
It can. We love doing that too.
It is fun to design a house from scratch and follow it through the whole process. Once in a while, we get the tougher jobs, whether it is a country house, something on the lake, or a house that needs to be torn down and built back up.
The last one we did like that was a couple of years ago. The homeowner was pretty handy and had done some things himself over the years. It was a really nice big lot in Monona.
When they first contacted us, they had come to the conclusion that they needed to tear it down. I was skeptical. I usually think there is a way out and that we can save the house, especially when they had already put work into it.
But when I looked at it, the foundation was in trouble. The house had probably been a kit house from around the World War II years, maybe the 1940s or earlier.
Host:
Meaning a catalog house?
Mike:
Yes. You bought it, and some of those catalog houses came as a kit on a truck. They offloaded it, gave you all the parts, and you built it.
This one had some weird-sized lumber, which is not super uncommon. The outside walls had studs that were barely three inches. They were maybe an inch and a half by three inches. The structure was a little iffy. The interior walls were about half of that.
It needed so much mechanically. It needed everything. The roof was bad. The windows were bad. The siding was in trouble. The structure of the house was not great.
It did not take me long to get on board with building a new house.
Host:
People may not realize that Sears used to sell houses in a catalog. You could literally order a house, and they delivered it.
I assume that would not fly by modern code.
Mike:
At the time, it was fine and fulfilled a need. It sounds funny now, but Sears and Montgomery Ward sold houses. All the materials would come, and sometimes even the appliances would come.
There is a big-box store now that sort of packages houses that way. I am not saying it is a bad deal. Everything would be up to code.
When we are building now, I am very specific about things like deflection in floors. We might have to modify a packaged plan. Homeowners are rarely in a position where they say, “This is perfect exactly as it is.” Usually they want to make a room bigger, and that changes the roof, and then we have to redesign things.
But there is nothing wrong with that approach.
Host:
Have you ever worked on a barndominium or those metal homes?
Mike:
I have not, but I am dying to.
Host:
Let’s do it.
If you have one or any type of unique project, Mike would love to talk with you. The stranger the better. If you have something unique, who better to call than Mike and the team at Edge Construction?
Pick up the phone and call 608-636-3343.
You can also visit EdgeConstructionCompany.com.
Edge Construction brings you the Home Remodeling Show right here on 1310 WIBA.