Todd Hallett, AIA, President of TK Design & Associates, Inc. (tkhomedesign.com) has been designing award winning homes for over 20 years. He spent 15 of those years working for a $50 million production building company. Todd designed all of their homes but also worked in every other aspect of the company including purchasing, development, land acquisition, product development, and operations, and was President of the company for three years. Equipped with his vast building experience and fueled by his love for architecture he left to form an architecture firm that is second to none in working cohesively with Builders. Todd specializes in Lean Design and works, alongside Scott Sedam of TrueNorth Development, in the trenches with builders, suppliers, and trade contractors. His Lean Design blog appears weekly at Housingzone.com. Todd welcomes your feedback at thallett@tkhomedesign.com or 248.446.1960.
“Is this chicken, what I have, or is this fish? I know it's tuna, but it says 'Chicken by the Sea.'"
We can thank Jessica Simpson for addressing that puzzling situation. A bit trickier, however, is the mystery centered around Lean design. Let me help clear it up.
Lean design is an optimization of materials and processes achieved by high-level...
I had the pleasure of meeting and having dinner with Charlie Scott the other night. Charlie owns a very successful national consulting firm called Woodland, Obrien and Scott. Among other things, his firm focuses on the voice of the customer in the building industry. Within minutes of meeting and talking with him he brought up the subject of one...
With Costco, Sam's Club and all the other "buy in bulk" stores out there today pantries are becoming larger and larger. Builders are finding it tough to compete if they are offering standard cabinet pantries (even in smaller homes). The answer to this is to provide a corner pantry. It takes up relatively little real estate and eliminates a blind...
My Aunt Janice (rest her soul) gave amazing Christmas gifts when I was a kid. One of my favorites was “Hugo the man with a thousand faces.” It was basically a bald plastic head with a case full of disguise equipment. Hugo had mustaches, glasses, eyebrows and wigs galore. Cool gift, wish they still made ‘em.
This week we will look at a Lean-...
I catch myself from time to time spending money on things that I just don’t need to. Whether it’s the cool action video I think I will watch after the (wife selected) romcom, the twenty piece Mcnugget vs. ten, or the third hot dog at Home Depot, it’s all waste – well, usually anyway.
A simple item that builders are wasting money on is...
Why bother naming your houses? It would be a whole lot easier and more efficient to identify your homes by their square footage. It could be argued that the Saddlebrook should be called the 2429 plan. It makes perfect sense, the plan is 2429 square feet, so let's call it what it is. The purchasing manager, field supervisor, estimator and trades...
Everybody loves a little extra Garage space. Custom home clients are requesting anywhere from three to six car Garages on a fairly regular basis. Having this many spaces can create challenges however; the extra spaces must look great, function properly and fit on the site. We took a unique approach to solving those issues on this “tight lot”...
For the second week in a row I am featuring a skinny plan. What gives? Well I suppose as spring is approaching I am thinking of my own skinny plan; to be able to fit into my summer clothes. The fact that my wife just bought one of those torturous infomercial workout things makes matters even more pressing. Shedding a few pounds for the summer is...
Recently while out to dinner my wife Katie talked me into ordering a skinny long island iced tea. It was actually pretty good. Nice taste, low calories, plenty of punch - what's not to like? Well there is one thing: I would never order a skinny anything in front of my buddies - that's just begging for trouble.
Here is a skinny product even tough...
I am of two minds today. I have two entirely unrelated topics to discuss:
A. Show Village at IBS
B. Windows
Show Village at IBS was great. Professional Builder did a phenomenal job of showing homes and product that directly relate to their readers needs. They also had six architects and designers meeting with builders, architects and...
Flawed, unnecessary, and costly regulations burden small home builders by raising expenses and slowing the home building process. These hurdles ultimately rob builders of...
Towns experiment with different approaches to stimulate new-home building during the recovery; Home builder bonds still draw speculative grades; Ontario’s...
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