Make Great Cake!

Architecture school is a rigorous endeavor, and I would venture that most architecture school graduates would agree: the whole intent of architecture school is to thicken your skin and to help you learn to gracefully take random and unhelpful criticism while in a sleep deprived state.  It really is a lot of fun.  Not only do you get to play with crayons and tacky glue, but you also get to make models out of cardboard and pin your creations on a wall to let people walk by and sneer.  I understand the problem; teaching someone how to become a great designer is difficult when design is especially subjective, but there are a very small handful of folks who have tackled the problem of education and have very much succeeded.  I attended the University of Oregon and we had two instructors who were marvelous educators.  They were also very unpopular with the students and had reputations of being “inflexible, demanding, and mean.”  I loved both of them as instructors.  Yes, they were both inflexible and demanding, but I never experienced mean.  I would also say that they were the only two design instructors there at the time who mastered the art of teaching design.  Their teachings had structure, were born out of process, and were underpinned by their own life lessons and beliefs.  I still cherish and teach the things that these two instructors gave me.  Their lessons seem even more fresh and important today. 

One of these instructors was an Italian woman.  When I took her classes she was 73.  She was short, firey, had a wickedly brilliant little smile when an argument interested her, and she taught classical architecture with the passion of a master architect passing on the wisdom of centuries to a largely deaf audience. One of our assigned projects was to design an urban apartment building.  A fellow classmate, who had little interest in learning anything she had to teach, decided to design a building with vertical gardens growing on the façade.  The building was just an armature for the real residents; Plants.  Our Italian Instructor was not happy, and not because of his concept, but his arrogance and pigheadedness.  I remember her climbing onto a chair in the middle of the room so that we could all see her.  She demanded out attention, then began her lecture:

 

“Our communities are like cake,” She barked at everyone in the class.  “Fancy statement buildings are like raisins.  You all dream of designing raisins like museums and stadiums, but we all live in the cake!  Can you imagine if every building was a raisin?  We wouldn’t have wonderful and beautiful places, we’d live in a mishmash of everyone trying to be more inventive than the next.  No! What we need is better cake!  It is only because of the cake that the raisins are even interesting, and I will say that really good cake, is much harder to design than a raisin.  Your purpose as an architect will be to make the cake of your community better.  Make really great cake!”  Then she sat down on the chair and deflated in exasperation.  It was as if she gave us everything she knew in those few moments.  It was her most important lecture.  We were all quiet, then slowly went back to work realizing that this was the entire lecture for the day. 

 

“Make Great Cake!”

 

There are communities, neighborhoods, and towns which are great cake.  Some of these are older established areas with a rich heritage.  Other places are newer and governed by strict design covenants and ordinances.  Some are fortunate to have designers and developers with passion, excitement, and a communal sense of design.  San Diego, Denver, and Charleston stand out to me as places with really good cake.  In some parts of New Mexico, I think we struggle.  Embracing our past to create a future seems difficult for some reason and the result is a mixed bag of standardized corporate Buffalo Wild Wings injections with wanna-be raisins sprinkled over a bed of national home builder houses.  “Where’s the Cake?!”

 

We have two options toward better cake: we can either take down the outmoded, vacant and undesirable buildings and replace them, or we can retrofit, remodel, and bring new life to existing but underutilized buildings.  A large percentage of our project list has been centered in the second option. 

 

There are lots of ways to define good cake.  Usage, life expectancy, and energy efficiency are performance indicators that can be measured and rated.  Design that inspires, encourages and supports mental and physical health, and encourages education, interaction, and social engagement and tolerance are more difficult aspects to rate or define good cake, and yet, these aspects of architecture could be even more important.  As we engage with society digitally and anonymously, architecture which encourages physical interaction and discourse may be more important than ever before.  Renovating, repairing, and modernizing existing communities helps nurture the important social bonds rather than removing or eliminating them.    

 

We have had the pleasure of renovating several existing multi family properties throughout the State.  The renovations have been extensive and have included substantial investments in energy efficiency, building longevity, and sustainability.  More than a handful of these properties achieved LEED-H Platinum certification and many more exceeded the highest requirements of the Enterprise Green Building Criteria.  HERS ratings of the renovated units have predicted more than a 25% reduction in energy usage.  These communities have been improved to serve tenants of many different physical abilities and to include compliance with the American Disabilities Act.  Just as important, these properties have been upgraded to offer more opportunities for social and physical interaction, to encourage neighbors to meet and learn of each other, to support recreation, and to provide centers for education. 

 

What has been really fun is to see our efforts kick start more reinvestment in the neighborhood.  It is more common than not that the adjacent landlords and neighbors get excited and begin to upgrade their properties.  It may start with a coat of paint, then move to structural upgrades like roofs and porches and soon even the hold outs begin to take more pride in their property. 

 

Our multifamily rehab projects are some of the most rewarding projects that we have done.  Watching the transformation of a building and a community and a neighborhood is addictive.  It proves to me that we all just want to live in nice homes, we want to take pride in our community, and we want to be happy with where we live.  But mostly, it has proved that Rosaria Hodgdon was right; Great Cake is Always More Important!

Villa Consuelo

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Rio Vista

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MOAR Better BRAINS!!

There is an architectural practice philosophy called “Design by Democracy.”  Design by Democracy suggests that a community can be strengthened by being included in the design process for its municipal buildings and in the writing and approval of their zoning ordinances.  Participating in discussions regarding the analysis and needs of their neighborhoods helps these participants better understand and articulate this understanding of their community.  The opposite is also true, a new zoning ordinance or the design for a new municipal building would also be better because of the inclusion of different individual perspectives from the community to help inform the design decisions.  We have seen both to be true in our work with Native Communities.  We’ve also seen the dark side of public decision making, especially when working with multi family housing where bigoted and prejudiced people use government access to prevent folks of different race, color, or income class to live near them.  That is not an intended function of Design by Democracy, and certainly not what we advocate.  What we have found in trying to implement the tenants of Design by Democracy is: No single person has enough experience or perspective to develop the optimal solution for multiple users; designing in a vacuum will lead to missed opportunities; and the more experience and perspectives that can be assembled in addressing the problem, the more rich the solution can be.  At Jeebs & Zuzu, we say; “MOAR Better BRAINS!”  Saying it like a zombie helps punctuate the importance of that manifesto.

 

In practice, it means that everyone’s ideas (especially the ones that seem stupid at first glance) deserve to be considered, and while they may not become the solution, they most certainly can help open up the minds to the group as to what is possible and maybe even optimal.  Of course ideas happen inside brains, suggesting that capturing a wide breadth of ideas needs a larger group of brains.  We keep those in a jar in the back room.  KIDDING!  We need people to bring their brains into our discussions, many people, and most importantly, many helpful people with a sincere interest in the outcome of the solution and who can offer different ideas and perspectives.  We need MOAR Better BRAINS  

 

We have had the privilege of working with several Native American communities and we have found a great amount of satisfaction and joy in the relationships which have developed through these projects.  One project in particular was the Multipurpose Wellness Center at Santa Ana.  The resulting facility is gorgeous.  The project was to be three phases.  Two are now complete.  One of the phases included a full size baseball and softball park with a scorer’s tower, sunken dugouts, a concessions stand, a skate park and walking path.  The first phase was the Multipurpose Wellness Center.  This 73,000 sf facility includes indoor swimming pools, indoor basketball courts, a fitness center, a dance studio, a day care room with equipment, a commercial kitchen, a large multipurpose room, a demonstration/teaching kitchen and administrative offices.  The facility is located where the previous defunct community pool was located and because it is in the valley not far from the river, the water table is pretty shallow.  This lead to multiple engineering challenges that were addressed in the design phases of the project. 

 

One approach to creating a design could have been to take the Tribal Council’s list of space requirements and their proposed budget for the project and then present several designs for them to consider.  As we sat with the Tribal Council to discuss the project, it was clear that an alternate path could be more beneficial.  Certainly, budget and uses were still important, but the needs and desires of the entire community could not be represented in just the Council Member’s perspectives, and our values as designers certainly wouldn’t encompass each of the values of the community either.  We were tasked with developing a community outreach planning effort to answer the questions: what did the community want, what would they use, and what should the facility express about their values as a community and as a people.  If you’ve been playing along at home and have read a little bit about our “Polishing the Soul” process, you already know where this story is headed.

 

The best way to know the wants and needs of the community is to ask.  The best way to understand the values and what should be expressed is to ask deeper more directed questions, and this we did.  Over the course of an entire summer we held multiple brainstorming sessions.  We met with folks from individual neighborhoods.  We met with groups of parents.  We met with groups of high school students. We met with groups of grade school students.  We met with groups of seniors.  We met with the Tribal Council and shared the resulting thoughts from these meetings and then we asked for more input.  The Tribal Council established a Design Committee made up of interested individuals from each neighborhood, a few Council members, and some younger folks to act as representatives of the full community until they felt that the designs were complete, comprehensive, and representative of what the community and the Council desired.  We continued to meet and we talked and we visited other facilities and we looked at designs and drawings and then we made changes and met again.  Our meetings were regular and well attended.  One of our weekly meetings fell on my birthday.  To help folks attend, the meetings were held in the evenings and dinner was always provided.  On the evening of my birthday I brought a cake.  I’ll never forget the smirk on Aaron’s face as he declared, “Dave has no friends to celebrate his birthday with, so he’s invented a building and all these meetings just so he has someone to eat cake with!”  We all got a good laugh, ate cake and pizza, and went back to work.

 

By mid autumn we had developed a package that the Design Committee was proud to present to the Tribal Council and later to the Community.  The Committee members were invested in the successful completion of the project, and while the Council approved the design and concept, the funding for the project was still several years out.  The Committee members didn’t give up.  They did fundraisers, wrote grants, and appealed to the Tribal Council until a full budget was in place.  This took over four years, but the Committee was not deterred.  In fact, they eagerly reconvened to help select a General Contractor, then met regularly during the almost two years of construction it took to bring the construction to fruition.  In the end, the first two phases were complete.  I remember a community fair which was attended by the Committee.  I was tasked with giving updates to community members and to share what the inside of the building was going to look like.  The building’s shell was partially complete by that point.  The Tribal members were in awe of what the Committee was able to assemble and how much the new facilities would contribute to their lives. 

 

Opening day was astounding.  Not only did the entire community show up, but there were folks in attendance from the Tribe’ business enterprises, employees of those organizations, folks from the State, folks from the design and engineering teams, construction workers and their families, and neighbors from the surrounding communities.  The excitement, pride, and awe of the new facility was palpable and terribly rewarding to experience first hand.  Throughout the day I looked in on the various Committee members to see their reactions and how affected they were by the public’s first looks at the facility.  Each of them beamed in satisfaction, pride and gratitude.  It was a wonderful day. 

 

I find it true in nearly every project, but this one especially: the completed building is impressive and there are aspects of the design that I quite enjoy, but for me, the true satisfaction lies not in the structure, but in all the human effort and interaction that took place to accomplish the structure.  This was never more true than it was for the Santa Ana Multipurpose Wellness Center.  I have beautiful memories of the Tribal Council presentations, the community meetings, design charettes, Committee meetings, construction team meetings, selecting color boards, the ground prep contractor and the soils engineer, the day the concrete block arrived on site, the block layers, the pool contractors, the folks who erected the steel structure, the special coatings contractor, the folks who built the internal systems, the wood flooring installers, the kitchen equipment installers, the sprinkler systems installers, the flooring contractors, the painters, the site superintendents, the project managers, the operations managers, the landscapers. So many people gave their best efforts to create an amazing and wonderful place, and while I am proud of the completed facility, I find even more satisfaction in having been an integral, and instrumental, part of this distinguished and wonderful team.

 

As communities, as people, as individuals working together in teams, we can accomplish amazing things.  Design by Democracy or more correctly, MOAR Better BRAINS, can change where we live, how we live, and how future generations will live.  It is astounding to me to see major efforts being accomplished elegantly, successfully, and with cohesion. 

The Story of What If?

What if a house was really a religious institution?  What if a kitchen was really a television studio?  What if an architecture office was really a diner?  What if the spaces which best reflect who we are, really aren’t the spaces we have habitually accepted? 

 

This is the point in the lecture where we begin to get all “Matrixy” and discuss alternate realities and how life is just a simulation and how we really only exist as neurons in some gigantic supercomputer.  Well….  Usually that is how this discussion goes, but today is not like the usual day. No. Today, we’re going to pose a different question: “There are thousands of architectural building types, maybe even millions across the world.  So why would we assume that the typical expression of a western world suburban ‘house’ is the best expression of your life?  Or why would we assume that the western world expression of an ‘office’ is the best place for your business?” 

 

If Covid taught us anything about the current world it is that the concept of office and home are more intertwined than ever before.  And if these two types are converging, what does that mean for other architectural types?  And maybe there’s another profound question which is hidden in this conversation.  “What if we chose architectural typology as a basis of personal or brand expression, rather than accept these typologies as givens for their universal application?”  This question has been a starting point for most of my career, and the resulting designs have been deeply satisfying as a result. 

 

John and Cathy: The House as a Performance Space

“I cook, but it’s not my favorite thing to do.” Cathy explained.  “Sometimes, the only way I can get myself excited about cooking is to pretend that I have my own cooking show.  I like to show off to the camera what I’m doing, what the recipe calls for, and what the next steps are.”  She became a little embarrassed. “Sometimes I like to get all dressed up and do my makeup before I go into the kitchen to make the show even more real for me.” 

 

Cathy’s husband, John, looked like someone ate his last doughnut.  “I thought you got all dressed up to be pretty for me…” His face, dejected.

 

The only reason that Cathy was even comfortable sharing her embarrassing secret was because of the many, many, many invasive questions that she and John had already answered.  I’ve written before about our “Sandpaper to the Soul” process and how it is intended to really get to the fundamental aspects of our lives and how our spaces should support those intentions.  John, Cathy and I had talked about their health, their passions, their love lives, their daily routines.  I knew that Cathy wanted to be pampered before sex and John wanted sex to be spontaneous.  They shared how they both wanted their house to be a place of romance, and while John thought that mounted heads of his hunting conquests were romantic, Cathy dreamed of deep bathtubs, massages, and flowing negligees.  These confessions paved the way to Cathy’s confession of her hidden kitchen fantasies.  If we could talk about sex, then maybe we could even talk about…… roll playing.  I encouraged her to help John and I understand how her kitchen fantasies worked and what the space might need to be to help bring them to life.  Cathy talked in detail about how her ideal kitchen/televisions studio should work.  She spoke softly and with a visible blush.  She was embarrassed, but she helped us understand.  This discussion was even more uncomfortable for her than when we talked about mirrored sex doors to the master bedroom closets, but you could also tell that her television studio fantasy really stemmed from her hidden inner self.  It was adorable and funny, but also critical to how the home should function for her.

 

In many ways, the revelations of romance and roll playing created the framework of the home’s full design.  “What if a kitchen was a television studio?” we pondered together.  How would that affect the layout of the kitchen, but more importantly, how would that affect the layout of the rest of the house?  The answer was “considerably!”  The kitchen became the central organizing feature of the home, but like a television studio, you couldn’t just inadvertently walk onto the set.  There had to be spacial controls put into place.  The home’s entry was a long hallway which connected the tall living spaces on one end to the circular staircase in a reaching round turret on the other.  It was almost impossible not to look at the staircase and imagine a broad chested dashing Zoro dressed in all black carrying his long limbed and partially clothed Spanish Donna to their bedroom to be ravished. 

 

To the organization of the home, these romantic spaces; the entry, the hall, the staircase, and the living spaces, were actually the dressing rooms, green room, staging area, and the studio floor to the set of the television studio.  The true center of the home was the kitchen set, and it was designed to function as a set.  The camera locations were established before any cabinetry or appliances were placed.  The primary central display counter was placed optimally for the camera.  The central gas cooktop was included in this area for best exposure to the camera and to allow the beautiful hostess to talk to her audience while she explained each step.  The refrigerator and double wall ovens were placed just inside the frame, so that they could be visible in the shot but not be central to it.  The backdrop of the frame was especially important.  It needed to frame the beautiful host, be neutral in color, and not draw the eye away from the central action.  It needed to hint to the design scheme of the set and hold the eye when the hostess went to check the double ovens, but it should quickly invite back the star to her center spot.  This is where the kitchen sink was placed and above it a pattern of diagonally placed glass block.

 

It is fascinating to me how easily the remainder of the house’s design fell into place once the critical elements were established.  In every way, this house embodied romance, passions, and performance.  To say that it is the perfect home for the role-playing couple would not be a stretch.  I attended a few parties at their home when it was finished.  John and Cathy floated through the sets gracefully attending to each of their guests and looking fabulous while doing so.  It was a giggle to see the live action play having helped create the sets.

John and Cathy have since sold the house and moved away.  I have never met the people who bought it, but I often wonder: “Do they entertain often? Are they into role playing?  Do they dress up like Zoro and carry each other up the stairs?  Have they started a YouTube cooking show?  Has the house inspired these people in the same way?  Do they know they live in a television studio?  How do they feel about mirrored sex doors to the bedroom closets?” 

Ears to Lend. Brains for Hire. Talent to Spare.

 “My lease is ending soon, and I need to figure out what I’m going to do!  I don’t know if I should renew or find a new space, and I don’t even know what to look for in a space if I were looking.  How do I know what my business really needs?  Is that even something a realtor is going to know?”  MaryJo’s doubts and questions were very familiar.  This is how most discussions with new clients start.  People think to engage an architect when they hope to build a new building, but rarely do folks consider engaging a design professional before they start looking for a new lease space.

 

“I think we can help you MaryJo.” I assured her.  “We’ve developed a series of questions and a process to try and figure out what you really need.  Some folks call it “space planning,” but we see it as a more comprehensive analysis of your operations, your branding, your locational needs, and even the emotional and spiritual expressions of your business and yourself,” I explained.

 

“That sounds like some serious hocus pocus,” she responded skeptically, “but I really need help and if you think it will work, I’m happy to play along.” 

 

“We jokingly call our fact-finding process ‘Sandpaper to the Soul,’ but that can sound a little harsh and suggests that it is unpleasant, which in fairness, sometimes hard questions can be uncomfortable, but examining your life and your business can really be healthy too.  We use the same process with our custom home clients, but we’re really picky about who we work with.  The process can uncover a lot about people and some people I just don’t want to know that well.” I explained.  

 

“Well, do you like me enough?” MaryJo snorted.

 

“Of Course!  We’d love to work with you, and I bet we’ll be able to get you to right where you need to be.” I assured her.

 

 

I knew a little bit about MaryJo’s business.  It is a multifaceted and complex animal with lots of parts and many needs.  Her then current location was a beautiful and creative space with both brick-and-mortar retail and on-line retailing too.  It included education and training classes, equipment sales and maintenance, contract work, and it was the hub of an active and enthusiastic community.  Her business was part club house, part warehouse, part art gallery, part school, and part performance space.  Her life and her business were complex and both were increasingly successful.  Success was quickly filling all the corners of her current space.  I explained: “To really know what you need, we really need to know each of the parts and how they should be work together.  I’d like to ask you a bunch of hard questions, weird ones that may seem silly, and then I’d like to walk around and ask a bunch of questions to each of your staff if that’s alright with you.”

 

“My staff?”  She asked with her head tilted sideways and her eyebrows pushed down.  “What are you going to ask the staff about?” 

 

“I’d like to better understand how they work, what they feel are their job duties, and see how they would arrange their spaces to be even more effective and productive.” I explained.  “You may be surprised by some of their recommendations and ideas.  I rarely find places where employees haven’t thought about how they might do their jobs better, but not all of them are comfortable expressing those ideas.”

 

“Well, when it comes to ideas on how to make their lives easier, they’ve never held back before!” She quipped. 

 

“Probably.” I said, “but we’re not looking to make their lives easier.  We want to make their work more productive.”

 

“Well, you are certainly welcome to talk with the staff.” She allowed skeptically.

 

 

Before my sessions with her key staff, MaryJo and I talked at length about the “spirit” or the “essence” of her business, what it really provided to her, how the business was an extension and a growth of her own personality, what aspects of it she was most proud, where she expected it to go in the next ten years, and how the name, branding, and marketing efforts expressed each of these ideas.  One of my most favorite questions is about the ideal situation.  “In the perfect world, what would your shop be like on a Tuesday morning at 11:00 am?”  I ask a similar questions to our custom home clients: “What is the perfect Sunday morning in your new house, and what would a perfect Thursday morning be like before you went to work?”  These types of questions are designed to help people envision the optimal, the ideal, but in a concrete way.  How would we act or live if we weren’t burdened by our current environment?  Humans are infinitely adaptable.  It is in our nature.  So what if we could start with a blank slate?  What if the environment was made to adapt to our ideals first?  What would that look like.

 

MaryJo had been at her current location for ten years.  Naturally, the business and all of its operations had adapted to the space that was available.  Here we were, considering starting over.  Was the current way that things were done the best way to do them?

 

I left MaryJo emotionally scratching her head and thinking deeply about these questions when I went to go talk to her employees.  I started with the online fulfillment manager.  “Hi Pam!  I’m Dave.  I’d like to ask you a few questions about how you work and your workspace.  Would that be okay?”

 

“Well sure.  But you want me to show you around?”  Pam responded.

 

“I’d love that!”  I smiled.  “I’d like to see your space, but I also want to see how you use your space.” 

 

“So like, how I do my job?”  She answered.

 

“Kind of.” I explained. “Like where do you do your job?  Just walk me through how you receive an order, how it gets filled, and then how it gets shipped out.  Then we’ll talk about how you receive product and how you keep inventory.” 

 

“Oh!  Okay!”  She said with more interest than skepticism. 

 

Pam and I walked through several tasks and as she went along, she would explain how each step was critical and how the processes that she and MaryJo had developed were put in place to make things flow better and to be more accurate in the fulfillment.  “We have to be methodical.”  She explained, “Because people get pretty irritated if they get the wrong stuff.”  We walked her entire space, discussed how many steps it took to do a certain task, and as we went, Pam began to offer suggestions.  “A lot of times I have to pull inventory off the retail floor to fill my orders, and that can make tracking inventory more difficult.  It would really make sense if I was close to the retail floor.  Then I wouldn’t have to walk as far, and I could communicate with the floor manager so she wasn’t selling something that I needed. Also, it would make much more sense if all the deliveries and shipping went out the same door.  That would make it more efficient for inventory and the delivery guy wouldn’t have to wheel stuff through the whole store, and packages wouldn’t pile up in the front.  I wonder if I could train the UPS guy to go to the back door all the time.” 

 

As Pam finally ran out of great suggestions, I moved to each of the other department managers.  We talked about the retail space, about security and shoplifting, about the classrooms and education outreach, about the showroom and about the demonstration areas.  We talked about the flows of product through the business and about customers throughout the store.  We spent an entire day talking about how things worked, and how things could work differently and maybe even better.  I met with MaryJo the next morning.

 

“You have some really great people and they have great ideas about how to grow the business, how to make their jobs more efficient, and how to be more profitable.” I explained.

 

“Really!?” She exclaimed.  “My staff have ideas about the business?”

 

“Sure!” I countered, “and most of them sound really helpful.  I’ve made a few diagrams showing some of their recommendations and I made a sketch of what we think the optimal layout might look like.  It’s not a design as much as a way to think about flow and proximities.” I explained.

 

Together we went through the diagrams and discussed the options and recommendations of her staff, then we considered the overall picture, how things could work best for her visions of growth.  We talked about the interface of efficiencies with the aspirational concepts that she had for her business and its role in the community and in her life.  Together we tweaked the diagrams, adjusted some spatial relationships, and solidified the essential concepts.  My next task was to create a room area projection that would support the newly expressed ideal layout.  Developing the needed areas matrix wasn’t especially hard.  I looked at the sizes of their current spaces, compared those with internal efficiencies which could be accomplished based on the employee recommendations, then made some projections on the growth rates that MaryJo had set for targets.  In the end we determined that she needed 1,500 square feet more room than she had now.  The hunt was on for a new space!

 

I am an architect after all, and so I offered that we might also explore what it would cost to construct a ground up building as compared to renovate a different space.  This was quickly ruled out for cost and time.  There would be no way to have a new building constructed before her lease expired.  MaryJo, with the help of a realtor, scoured through lots of different space listings.  The ones that she thought might work, she asked me to visit with her.  We looked at more than 5 spaces together, but none could really support the “ideal layout” as well as we hoped.  “It’s a lot of money to invest in a space.” I suggested.  “Best to be patient rather than to rush into something that doesn’t work well for what you need.”  She kept looking.

 

“Dave! You’re not going to believe this!”  MaryJo spoke excitedly into the phone.  “The space next door opened up!  It’s 1,500 square feet!  I think that we can make the ideal layout work here!  And I won’t shut down or move to make it work!”  She was clearly excited.  “Will you come over and look at with me?”

 

“I think this will work Maryjo.” I suggested.  “If we take this section of wall out, build out the front to make a showroom and a demonstration area, we could get your classrooms too.  How are Pam’s efforts to train the UPS man working out?  I think this could really work well.”  I offered.

 

In the end, MaryJo was able to negotiate a new lease at a lower rate with the renovation of the adjacent suite included.  The landlord started on the renovations a few weeks later.  It was a business fairy tale ending!  A tale of saving money, reducing downtime, expanding productions, improving productivity, and increasing employee morale.  All that and not a whinny prince or slimy frog anywhere to be seen!

 

The End

Love Your House! - Just don't LOVE Your House... (that would be creepy)

Five ways to strengthen your relationship with your house:

1. Pamper.  You ever notice the car guys who spend all their free time cleaning and rubbing their beloved machines.  I am convinced the act of pampering creates a deeper sense of appreciation for the thing we are working on.  This is true for cars, motorcycles, husbands, and houses.  Spend a few more hours one weekend and really give the house a deep clean.  Work on those areas that are easily forgotten.  Clean the underside of the range hood.  Simple Green works great to get out oil and grease build up.  Clean the top of the kitchen cabinets.  Clean the window tracks, sash and sill.  Clean the inside of the light fixture globes.  Clean behind and underneath kitchen appliances.  You can pull out the refrigerator and range, but this goes for the dishwasher too.  Just be careful when moving major appliances not to disrupt the utility connections.
2. Reminisce.  At one point you were ecstatic to move into the new place.  Maybe it was the location.  Perhaps it was the daylight, or the kitchen layout, or the shower in the bathroom.  Maybe it was the sense of freedom, or all the open space.  Think about what it was that you loved about the place and build on those characteristics.  Over time, the excitement may have tarnished, and no doubt you’ve found some things that bother you.  Focusing on what you once loved and accentuate those features.  This will help bring focus and clarity to improvements and repairs as you are able to tackle them.  For example.  Maybe you moved in because you loved the view, but the rest of the living room is dark and the carpet worn, and the new tv doesn’t fit well.  Where do you start first?  Knowing what you loved most can help you decide how to arrange the furniture in that room.  It may help you decide what color to chose for finishes, and it will certainly inform your decision on where to put the tv. 
3. Make long range plans together.  Your house wants to be there for you for years to come.  But it needs attention and it really needs to know what you expect from it.  By making a long range plan, you can get excited about and make preparations for future improvements.  Talk about and study these plans together, and listen to what your house has to say.  You may want to add a new master bedroom suite with a fancy new resort style bathroom.  Or maybe you are thinking that adding a second floor addition would be great.  Your house may be thinking, “But I don’t have enough land to build out, and my foundations aren’t thick enough to carry another story.  What does she want from me?”  If you plan together you might even find a better solution than either of you thought at first.
4. Accessorize.  A new necklace or new pair of shoes can totally change the look of a dress.  The same can work for a room in your home.  Try a new set of pillows, a new comforter, maybe a new slip cover for the couch.  Add splashes of color, or maybe even get really bold and add color to an accent wall.  Wall art and sculptures are a great way to bring life to a space, but my greatest advice here is: don’t just pick something, just because you think it will fit the room.  Pick art that you love, that you will want to be with you for a very long time.  Make it the center of your decoration theme, so that when you see it, it fills your heart and mind with warmth and great memories.  Finding that extra special piece while on vacation is extra cool!  But maybe the perfect piece jumps out at you while you’re walking down the street.  Be open to that possibility.  I fell in love with a painting one day.  It hung in the window of a local gallery.  We looked at each other for what seemed like hours.  I never bought it, and have regretted in ever since.
5. Give it a test.  Sometimes we can learn a lot about each other from a test.  There are some really great ways to learn about your house.  One of these is a post construction HERS type test.  This test is a way of establishing how efficient your house is compared to a standard code compliant new home.  HERS scoring is like golf; the lower the better.  Part of the assessment is a blower door test where a technician forces air into the home and checks for air leaks.  The rater would also review your appliances, heating and cooling systems, establish the overall thermal rating for the home and provide your house with a score.  A good rater can also give you a list of recommended measures to reduce your score.  A great rater will list these measures by SIR (Savings to investment ratio) which will help you understand what your expected energy savings would be based on the cost of the improvement.  You might find that some of the cheapest improvements will give you the highest bang for your buck!  Before you EVER replace windows, you should ALWAYS get a blower door test done!  Maybe your windows are fine, and all you need is a little caulk in the right places!  Your house could be much smarter than you thought, and if not, you have a list of ways that you KNOW will make it smarter.