I'd Rather Be the Fisherman

After 16 years in this business my goals went from getting a good job in the trades to turning Streamline Craftsman into an remodeling enterprise.  Not sure if that is the male ego in me or if having a successful company sounded fun, but nonetheless this is what I have been steering Streamline towards.  And frankly having great success in doing so.  It's amazing how quickly it's grown!

The industry is booming right now and its actually pretty crazy to see.  Most of us in this business have struggled a great deal over the past 5 years.  People calling around begging for work, myself included at times.  And now things are so busy even finding good labor is difficult!  Anyone that can actually do good work is doing just that, but on their own.  My school of thought has always been never say no.  If work comes your way take it!  Ill figure out a way to get it done.  So this year I have been a yes man per usual and before I knew it I had 4 jobs going on at once.  I now am running around all day meeting with clients, managing workers and delivering materials.  Then I come home and handle the admin side of things.  It's tiring but I was focused on getting through this because I wanted to reach my goal of running my "enterprise".  

As I lie awake every night, unable to sleep, thinking about my days and weeks to come, I always felt hollow.  Like something was missing.  It took awhile for me to realize what it was but finally while having a stress filled venting session to my lovely gal I said: "I'm not having fun.  I got into this business because I enjoy it and THIS, I do not enjoy".  I love working on homes and providing quality craftsmanship.  It was then I noticed that I personally hadn't started and finished an actual project with my own two hands in months!  That rant inspired Jess to tell me the story of The Fisherman and the Businessman by Paulo Coelho.  

I was working double time so that I could relax one day.  But does that day ever come?  Am I ever going to be satisfied with the business?  Does it one day just get easier?  Will I live long enough to ever enjoy the "good life"?  Because I feel I have aged 10 years just in these past 3 months!  I had a extremely skilled master craftsman working for me last year.  He was striving to be the businessman and worked night and day to get there.  At 46 years old his heart stopped in his sleep.  The world will no longer get to benefit from his abilities......  Do I run that same risk if I keep this up?  We can't answer questions like these but we can ask ourselves what we really, really want.  Not what we are trained to want, but what we truly want.

I want to provide excellent craftsmanship and customer service.  I want to challenge my abilities and use my creativity to give my clients one of a kind remodels.  I want to continue my new found passion for building furniture.  I want to live, be healthy and be able to appreciate what I have daily, not just in hindsight.  I want, to be the fisherman.  Hell, I was the fisherman!  I just didn't understand what I had and I left his ass at the docks while I pursued "bigger and better" things.   

The quality of work we provide is unmatched and I am lucky that people are willing to wait for our services.  So from now on Streamline will be taking one project on a time at a time and focusing all our energy on making that job AMAZING.  Now those clients will get ALL my attention rather than the dazed looking, mind in 15 other places, needs a drink guy they have been getting.  I still have a busy summer ahead of me but I look forward to getting my hands dirty and creating again!  

I promise my next blog will be less deep!  

Know your enemy

Since I was a kid I always knew I wanted to do something with my hands for a living.  Not really having any family members that were in the trades I didn't really have a direction to travel.  Until one day a bearded man walked into my life via the TV.  That man, was Bob Villa.  Mr. Villa, or Bobby V as I like to call him gave me that direction.  And just like that a contractor was born! 

Thankfully I had the mechanical ability so it was easy to learn the hands on part of being a contractor but as a kid that wasn't of legal age to work, how was I supposed to learn about home remodeling?  So, much like "Chip" Douglas (The Cable Guy) my TV became my teacher.  Back then all there really was to watch was This Old House.  But I learned a ton about construction watching the best of the best apply their expertise to build peoples dream homes.  These homes were typically out of the financial realms of most people so at best you just envied the work.  You only dreamt of doing those things to your home. It did however inspire ideas of design and application.  Smart people picked up on this and started to make home improvement show after home improvement show.

HGTV and the DIY Network are essentially 24hrs of home improvement shows.  They range from actual do it yourself work to the money is no object remodels.  

When they started it was mainly do it yourself type shows that inspired homeowners to, you guessed it, do it themselves.  Which most of the time resulted in catastrophe. Their DIY project would then result in calling an actual contractor to repair what was done, although usually after some time.  Most of us never want to admit defeat so convincing yourself that the sponge paint you just put on your living room walls looks good isn't hard to believe.  But a contractor eventually was called to save the day.  This was good for me but unfortunate for my clients.

The DIY shows bled into the home makeover shows.  Some of these makeovers even got "extreme".  These shows, as cool as they are to watch, are awful in every way for the viewer.  They create a unrealistic expectation of of how home remodeling works.  Regardless of what you knew to be fact before you now think an entire home can be built in less than a week.  AND for little to no money.  This fad was brutal on the contractor.  Every project I personally looked at and during the height of these shows all of sudden needed to be done in about a quarter of the time it actually takes and should be done cheap.  My guys should work night and day but at the cost of a half days work.   I think after Ty Pennington sobered up, so did the television networks because these shows started to fade away.  Now I can get back to doing quality work at a fair price without hearing about how some guy on TV drywalled, painted, tiled and grouted a bathroom in 8 hours right?

Not so much.

Now these channels are full of shows that have a respected "contractor" come to the rescue and save a family that was screwed over by the contractor they originally hired.  This TV contractor then has crews come to repair and finish their project.  During the past year when I meet with potential clients I have noticed I need to work much harder for them to warm up to me.  And I am easily warm up toable! (Its a word, don't look it up, trust me)  Only after my last meeting did I put two and two together.  These shows are creating a bad vibe towards contractors.  If you watch these shows you now feel that every contractor is going to rip you off unless they are on TV.  All non TV contractors are basically scam artists that will take your money and run or destroy your home one 2x4 at a time.  This is just a major bummer for me.  I work very hard at pleasing my clients as any existing one would tell you.  To walk into a potential clients home and feel like I am a scumbag until proven otherwise sucks.

Now don't get me wrong, there are some BAD contractors out there.  Hell, I have worked for some of the worst.  But as a whole we are all mostly good and care about our work.  We typically start off as carpenters and enjoy building.  We see the business as an art form and our clients as our fans and you must keep your fans happy.  This isn't our job, its our passion.  

Oddly enough, as much as I see the negatives these shows can have on my industry I watch them all the time.  I love seeing new applications or products.  Design ideas I may not have seen.  I learn something new every time I watch these shows.  And since people looking to do a remodel often watch these shows for ideas it also allows me to keep my finger on the pulse of new styles and trends.  So as much as I would like to tell you to not watch these shows and they are only poisoning your mind, I can't.  I am guilty of drinking the Kool-Aid too.  Just for different reasons.

Micheal Coreleone said it best: "Keep your friends close and your enemies closer"  So HGTV and the DIY Network are basically my best friends now.

To Ikea kitchen or not........ that's the question

Whether you're a home owner or even a contractor I urge you to think twice before going the Ikea kitchen route.

Remodels are costly and as a contractor it is up to me to come up with ways to save my clients money.  And when it comes to kitchens, cabinets can be a budget killer.  Many of us, whether we choose to admit it or not, have been in an Ikea and even own a thing or two from there.  Why wouldn't we!?  They make easy solutions to home furnishing at a low cost.  Now when there we all see the amazing looking kitchens they have on display. What is even more attractive is the price!  As a contractor this has always intrigued me.  An awesome looking kitchen for under five grand?  Yes please!  But because I have owned several pieces of Ikea cardboard furniture that once its erected should not be moved, looked at or even touched, I was weary to offer this as a cost saving solution to my clients.  So what better way to test their product than on my own home.

My fiance and I love the modern look so after some shopping we decided to go the Ikea route.  Hell, since the labor is free what do we have to lose right?

Let the games begin!
  
The process of getting the cabinets is trying to say the least.  You yourself need to go to Ikea and design your kitchen on a computer they provide for you.  This software is much like floor planning software I use for larger projects.  To put it simply, if you have doubts in your computer skills, stop thinking about Ikea cabinets now.  After that process your order gets sent downstairs to be picked.  This is dope!  No 2 month wait for your cabinets!  They estimate it to take about 1 min per item and most kitchens will be 100 or more items.  So after you order go grab a beer and some Swedish meatballs because its gonna be awhile.  Hopefully you brought a large truck because you'll need it to take everything home.  After this process alone you will be exhausted, so get some rest and start fresh in the morning.

Now the fun begins!  If you have trouble with erecting a bookshelf from Ikea but eventually get it, do NOT, I repeat, do NOT go the Ikea cabinet route.  As a contractor I can put almost anything together.  Hell, I can easier build it from scratch.  But this was not an easy project.  The "directions" are nothing like that of a book case but still understandable.  Building the cabinet boxes is the easy part.  After that you need to go rouge because from here on out there are no instructions to follow.  You WILL make plenty of mistakes so have plenty of beer handy to help ease the pain.  

Now a large kitchen cabinet install, by myself, takes about 1-2 days tops.  A kitchen our size should take me no more than 4 hours.  Using Ikea cabinets my install took 3 ten hour days, 2 cases of beer and A LOT of cursing.  This was no easy feat but with that said, we love our kitchen.  The cabinets themselves are strong, the design is exactly what we wanted and their storage solutions gave our smaller kitchen a larger feel.

After going through the growing pains on my kitchen I know doing another one would be much less painful but I still would not recommend this option to any of my clients.  The added labor costs alone for a kitchen like this null the cost you save on the cabinets themselves.  But if you are a homeowner and fancy your self "handy" and have the time to do this it is a great option. 

Contractors be prepared and homeowners beware.  The low cost of an Ikea kitchen comes at a price.

Suburban life ain't what it seems

Maybe I have been lucky in my life but minus an evil lady when I was in high school, I have always had nice neighbors.  Or at the very least ones that kept to themselves and let me do the same.

Day one in our new home almost went off without a hitch.  We began demo of the flooring and kitchen.  Jess found a love for power tools and new respect of what I do for a living.  Our fencing materials also arrived.  See, we live on a corner lot where our house is set back.  This gives us a large front yard but a smaller backyard that corners up to the backyards of our side neighbors.  Since one of our biggest draws of moving to the burbs was having a fenced in yard for our dogs, I planned to waste no time on building one in our backyard.

While the fencing was being unloaded I got to meet my first neighbor.  Out of the corner of my eye I see a man walking up to me.  Mid 40's with signs of oddness in his eyes.  I turn to look at him with a smile on my face only to hear "Let me see your permit".  Point blank.  I respond by saying "Hi, my name is Mark and I am your new neighbor".  Thinking that he may just assume I am the contractor and not the owner.  He looked shocked at first.  Shook my hand, said nice to meet you and then said "I need to see your permit for this fence."  Against my instincts I calmly state I don't need a permit to have something delivered sir but when I get my permit I would be happy to show it to you if it would help you sleep at night.  This seemed to appease him so we moved on to regular new neighbor small talk/interrogations.  Me being the criminal in this scenario.  

After some discussion I learned that he likes the "country" feel of our backyards.  Country feel?  Oddly enough this is the very feel we want to block with our fence.  We just didn't have a name for it yet.  Apparently "country" means unkept yards, broken down above ground pools, a blue elephant statue laying on its side and moomoo's drying on a cloths line.  For the most part, although odd, our remaining talks were fine all things considered.  But I have a feeling this is the calm before the storm.  And this calm kinda freaked me out.  

This fence would be for our dogs more than us, so after discussions with Tank and Sneaky, majority rules. Its 4-1 and a fence WILL be erected!  Regardless of it being a Beverly Hillbilly's ambiance killer.

Change

After living in Chicago for the past 8 years I never thought I would see the day that I would be moving back to the suburbs.  And not just THE suburbs, but right next door to the very suburb I grew up in!

Moving to the city was one of the biggest and best decisions I have ever made.  Being there truly made me who I am today and that is something I am very proud of.  But its funny how life works out.  One day we (my fiance and I) are looking for condos in Humbolt Park, dreaming of being close to the actual park where we can walk the dogs and avoid crack dealers.  And the next day, quite literally, we find our dream home in Glen Ellyn of all places.  And now I dream of grilling on our deck and having a peaceful meal outside with our dogs in a fenced in yard.  It’s amazing how dreams can change so rapidly.  But these new dreams come with some nightmares.  And not the nightmares you get in the city.  You get used to worrying about being shot or potentially male rapped while walking home.  I wake up in cold sweats now with thoughts of going to Costco followed by lunch at Chilis but then having to rush home because I spilled special sauce on my Dockers.  Does a pastel colored polo shirt and deck shoes come with the purchase of a new home in the suburbs?

Change is something I never feared and always embraced and for my first time I have fear for a change.  But when I sit down and think about this change, I end up with a smile on my face.  After 14 years in the construction business I have never had the opportunity to renovate my own home.  The smile I have put on homeowners faces for years is now on mine.  I finally get to make a home, my home.  And I get to share that home with an amazing women that lets me think I get to remodel things the way I want.  Together we are going to make her design dreams come true, my remodeling dreams come true and ZERO of our nightmares come true.

Change.  It’s not so bad.  When it comes with a yard and a garage.