Latest / Building the Best You / Sustainable Building

Transcript

Sustainable Building · Building the Best You

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: So my purpose for doing this podcast is really talking about wellness within, and I find, as an interior designer, because I care about wellness, I tend to attract to me clients that also care about wellness.
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: We believe in the same type of living and the importance of things with living.
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: Do you find that's true for you as well?
• 0:18
  Speaker 2: Yes, 100%, and I think one of the best things that we do as a company.
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: And again, like you know, you could go to a big, massive home builder around the country and they're like hey, come see a show home and it's stage, whatever.
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: It's like, this is the show home.
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: Right, you get to see where my daughter sleeps.
• 0:37
  Speaker 2: You get to see where I sleep.
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: You can find me if you need to.
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: You know what I mean.
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: But no.
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: I've seen your bathroom, We've talked about your shower.
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: I've been in that closet that you talk about yes but no, so I mean.
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: So part of it is like come and experience the wellness within this home for yourself.
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the House of Jermar podcast where wellness starts within.
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: The House of Jermar is a lifestyle brand, empowering women to live all in through interior design and personal wellness.
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: We are a destination for women ready to reimagine what is possible in their homes and lives and then create it.
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: We are honored to have you join us on our mission to empower one million women to live all in.
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: I am your host, jean Collins, and I invite you to become inspired by this week's guest.
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the House of Germar podcast, where wellness starts within.
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: I'm your host, jean Collins, and today, as you can tell, we're doing something a little bit different.
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: We've decided to take the podcast on the road and on location, and we are talking to Sam Furtick from Carbon Custom Builders.
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: Thank you for having us in your home.
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: Thank you for coming.
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: And we are going to talk about his career journey, which is amazing and inspiring.
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: We're also going to talk a lot about sustainable building and a little interior design, which is my passion, as you all know.
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: So let's get started.
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: This house it is so stunning.
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: I am so excited for us to talk about your house.
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: But before we talk about your house, let's talk about your journey, because you did not start out as a builder.
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: That's right.
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: I started out with a passion for food, funny enough, and went to the CIA, the Culinary Institute of America.
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: I worked in some of the top restaurants in New York City.
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: I had a catering company, a tasting restaurant of my own, and it was a Experience based company, right.
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: We were catering for events and weddings, and when we would do a tasting restaurant or tasting menu at the restaurant, it was all about creating a moment for someone, this little experience, a bite, a flavor, whatever it was, and throughout time and history it always been doing construction projects, just never for other people.
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: And when you build something, you can create an experience over and over again.
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: It could be experienced differently, it could be experienced the same, it doesn't really matter, but it exists.
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: And with food gone, gone, done One and done, and so it's.
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: They translate kind of well, depending, obviously, but for me it was the ability to translate it for a longer period of time in more spaces with your family, my family, your friends, and I mean you can tell when you're around here, we like to entertain, we love food.
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: We still love to cook, I love to cook.
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: We have a great outdoor kitchen, great indoor kitchen, so it's not that it's lost on me, but it's what a difference it makes now being on this side of it, right?
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: So Did you grow up in a home like this?
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: I did not.
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: I grew up in a very middle class, you know kind of standard American home, central Jersey.
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: You know we certainly did not have any issues, but we certainly didn't have what we have today, because this home folks is amazing.
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: Thanks.
• 3:50
  Speaker 2: Truly.
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: Thanks, unbelievable.
• 3:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's got a few things, it's fun.
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: So the path to build this home.
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: Did you make the career shift and start Carbon Custom Builders and then build the home?
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: Yes, the that's at the path yeah.
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: So this was the culmination of when I started the business.
• 4:09
  Speaker 2: I was like we're not going to do this the same way that every other builder has done it.
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: No offense to anybody, it's just I.
• 4:16
  Speaker 2: It's not how I look at anything, and you know when you, when you say, okay, I'm going to be a builder, you're probably like, all right, I can go out to a big box store, buy a bunch of lumber and go build a house.
• 4:27
  Speaker 2: But we've been doing it the same way since, like George Washington's been around, we've made some incremental changes.
• 4:31
  Speaker 2: We have plywood now, you know, but it hasn't really evolved as much as everything else has in our world.
• 4:40
  Speaker 2: We all walk around with a phone that's got more power than what they landed a man on the moon with right, but we're still building homes kind of in the same ethos as how it's been done for the last couple hundred years Doesn't mean that it's wrong or it doesn't work.
• 4:54
  Speaker 2: To me, it hasn't taken a real gargantuan step forward yet, and so that was one of the first things that I identified when I was doing this.
• 5:02
  Speaker 2: It's like we're going to be different.
• 5:04
  Speaker 2: How of the first things that I identified when I was doing this is like are we're going to be different?
• 5:12
  Speaker 2: How are we going to be different?
• 5:12
  Speaker 2: And we did a bunch of different projects that led up to including building homes in different styles and uh, you know materials and construction methods.
• 5:16
  Speaker 2: That then kind of culminated with me saying, okay, we knew we were going to build our home and it was going to become it's not a test subject but it was going to become the show home and it was going to become the first time that I got to put all of the pieces together and make the home the way I envision it.
• 5:34
  Speaker 2: We had an architect, we had help with design, but it truly was my wife and myself saying, like we know some of the things we want, and some of it was dimensionality, because we had spent so much time in other people's homes of this caliber, of higher calibers, of lower calibers how much space is there between the sink and the cooktop?
• 5:53
  Speaker 2: How much space is there, you know, between the sink and the dishwasher, things that like there's sure there's standard practice on, but like some of that is what actually drove the entire home's design.
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: So what made you decide the style of this home?
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: So I think there's two things with style here.
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: One is the style in which it's built.
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: Yep.
• 6:17
  Speaker 2: And we change that from the footings, from the ground all the way up to the roof.
• 6:22
  Speaker 2: So there's that style right, which is maybe what I think of as style, and maybe you think more of like style right, like what it looks like.
• 6:30
  Speaker 2: Vernacular is very important to me and my wife and I really love this area.
• 6:36
  Speaker 2: We're in beautiful Pound Ridge.
• 6:37
  Speaker 2: It's a good mix of rural and not rural.
• 6:40
  Speaker 2: You know we're only an hour to the city, you're only 10 minutes to New Canaan, but I mean we have the doors open.
• 6:46
  Speaker 2: You don't hear a thing here besides some, you know, bugs and birds and bees and whatever, and that, to me, was really important.
• 6:55
  Speaker 2: And so it's designed to be a barn.
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: Is it a barn?
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: No, of course not.
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: It has some of the shape and some of the characteristic of a barn.
• 7:00
  Speaker 2: It's got this beautiful weathered siding.
• 7:02
  Speaker 2: It's meant to be that modern barn in its own way.
• 7:06
  Speaker 2: You know it wasn't meant to be like some of these homes are very on the nose with like, oh, it was a barn and now it's a home.
• 7:13
  Speaker 2: We wanted it to just evoke a little bit of the landscape here, which is farm, horse, equestrian, you know, whatever kind of nature you want to say, and truthfully, if it was my house and it was only my house, it'd probably be a flat roof, very modern glass box.
• 7:29
  Speaker 2: So Julie gets a lot of credit for bringing that in and making it look the way that it looks.
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: Well, I think the other thing, since I've had the pleasure of being here and walking around this home, and on your website you have amazing video of this house, so anyone can go on a virtual tour.
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: Link below Right exactly Anyone can go on a virtual tour of your home, which is so fabulous, but I think, as someone who entered your home for the first time, your home is unique.
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: It is like something I've never experienced before, and I think it's hard to translate that feeling and the emotion that you get when you enter your home on a video like this.
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: It's not easy to do.
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: However, I think what you've managed to build is something that is very unique and one of a kind, not just from a stylistic perspective, but from a material perspective.
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: When I first walked into this home, this house has these massive windows and massive doors, so you have all this glass, you can see the outside, but yet it feels very warm and very tranquil and very quiet.
• 8:35
  Speaker 2: So there's two elements of that I think that are important.
• 8:38
  Speaker 2: The first is the quiet comes from the style in which we built the home Triple pane windows, concrete walls and ICF and I'm sure we're going to get to all of that.
• 8:49
  Speaker 2: And one of the things we like to say is that the feeling that you get when you step into one of our homes is different.
• 8:55
  Speaker 2: We've had folks come in you know they were in a home in Beverly Hills and it's a $60 million home and then they come here and they go huh, a $60 million home.
• 9:09
  Speaker 2: And then they come here and they go huh and they're like it feels like a home, but it looks like what you see in a magazine and so I call it functional beauty.
• 9:14
  Speaker 2: You know one of my wife's major things when we were designing this, because she knows I want it to be as pristine and perfect and it's a museum, right.
• 9:21
  Speaker 2: Right, we have a four and a half year old daughter and she has friends and there's other kids and like it's gotta be able to be lived in.
• 9:28
  Speaker 2: I mean her artwork's hanging on this window, right, you wanna talk about giving me like a little bit of a panic attack is seeing her tape, her artwork to the window, right, love the artwork Don't necessarily love it on the's constructed and how it operates, but also how it looks and feels.
• 9:48
  Speaker 2: And I think the best compliment that we've gotten here is exactly that.
• 9:53
  Speaker 2: Someone comes in and just goes.
• 9:54
  Speaker 2: Oh, it feels different and, truthfully, the memory I'll remember the most out of this is the home was framed up and we hadn't had sheetrock on the walls yet but the windows were in and down the guest hallway over there, these deep window pockets, the tall window, but it's good 10, 12 inches deep and my daughter at the time was maybe three give or take.
• 10:15
  Speaker 2: And she starts walking into each window and just taking a moment by herself and is looking out the window at the world and she's stopping and I'm like that's the entire point of the way those windows were placed and designed was for you to be able to take a minute and just experience and enjoy that particular slice of the view.
• 10:33
  Speaker 2: And here she is, at three doing it.
• 10:35
  Speaker 2: She doesn't know what architecture is.
• 10:37
  Speaker 2: Right and I'm just watching as she does each one and I'm like, if that's not like that human design worked.
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah, right.
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: It was like proven right then and there, and so I'll never forget that that was pretty cool Well because you're bringing nature in with what you do and how it's designed so you get to really capture that.
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: Let's take a step back.
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: What does carbon mean?
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: Why carbon?
• 10:58
  Speaker 2: It's a great question.
• 10:59
  Speaker 2: Carbon is the building block of everything, and so for us, it was a little little bit of like, if we're going back to basics here, like what does it mean to be a builder?
• 11:08
  Speaker 2: Well, you got to start with something.
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: So let's start with carbon, and that was a really um, I'm gonna say, a lucky kind of bit of engineering there.
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: And the second bit is that we're really focused on building energy efficient, sustainable, modern homes that go beyond what's required, that go beyond just the basics.
• 11:31
  Speaker 2: And yeah, there's a little bit on the nose there, right, everyone's worried about carbon output, or carbon in concrete or carbon in this or whatever it is.
• 11:38
  Speaker 2: So why not put it right there a little bit?
• 11:41
  Speaker 2: And truthfully, you know, this isn't about me I get a lot of attention that it's like about me, but it's about us and our team and our subcontractors and the whole village that it takes to build a home like this.
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: And there's a reason I didn't want it to be like, you know, sam's building company, right, nothing against that.
• 12:01
  Speaker 2: But again, we're going for it.
• 12:02
  Speaker 2: There's a message here.
• 12:03
  Speaker 2: There's a whole story here.
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: It's not just another guy or another girl making a construction company.
• 12:10
  Speaker 2: We're doing things differently.
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: Differently Right, so let's talk about ICF.
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: Insulated concrete forms I did not know at all, but now-.
• 12:20
  Speaker 2: But if you know, you know Now I know and I've seen and I want one.
• 12:24
  Speaker 2: Yes, I think that's actually the best way to talk about it.
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: When someone sees it and feels it and can do it, they want it.
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: And I'm not going to equate it to certain luxury car brands, but it's kind of like the same thing.
• 12:40
  Speaker 2: It's not a status symbol the way a car is, but it's kind of like a mental status symbol.
• 12:46
  Speaker 2: You're like oh, I live in an ICF home, you don't, and not that that's necessarily the best way to look at it, but these homes are super, super resilient.
• 12:58
  Speaker 2: What's amazing with this is the technology is not actually that crazy, it's just it takes a lot of planning and thought and detailing to make it work and to have it happen.
• 13:07
  Speaker 2: But you could use this to build a warehouse, you could use it to build a school or a hospital or a multifamily apartment building or a luxury home.
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: And some of those benefits translate from you know, maybe it's the multifamily.
• 13:23
  Speaker 2: It translates to the luxury market and it's in a way that maybe you don't normally put it together.
• 13:28
  Speaker 2: Multifamily you want it to be really quiet between apartments or between units.
• 13:33
  Speaker 2: Luxury home you want it to be really quiet, but maybe to the outside world, and so it's interesting how it can bridge on all of these different things.
• 13:43
  Speaker 2: For us, it's resiliency, it's a lot of the other benefits I'll talk about in a second, but it's energy efficiency, it's the feeling that's created and it's mental Knowing that you live in a home, that the walls are essentially bulletproof and there's videos to prove it.
• 14:03
  Speaker 2: You can go search online.
• 14:04
  Speaker 2: But knowing that, knowing that you know there's a great example.
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: It's terrible, but in Mexico Beach in Florida there was a hurricane I think it was eight years ago or something and the one home that's left standing is an ICF home built in the same manufacturer's product, but it's the ICF home and everything else is flattened.
• 14:24
  Speaker 2: They had some siding come off, they had a window break, okay, but like their home was fine.
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: It's still there.
• 14:29
  Speaker 2: And that we don't need that in the Northeast, right.
• 14:32
  Speaker 2: But like when we have a torrential rainstorm here and I'm like, do you hear that a little bit?
• 14:36
  Speaker 2: I'm like I only imagine what it sounds like in our neighbor's home, right, right, because it's just that much different.
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: What does ICF mean for people?
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: who don't know what it is.
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: What actually is it?
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: Let's go back to basics.
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: What is that?
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: Because I think it's important for people to understand what it is.
• 15:41
  Speaker 2: So there's two ways to build a home.
• 15:42
  Speaker 2: If we're going to kind of bucket it simply.
• 15:44
  Speaker 2: There's the traditional way stick-framed lumber, plywood, your sheetrock Some of these things don't change from home to home.
• 15:51
  Speaker 2: And then there's the carbon way, which the bulk of it is based on ICF insulated concrete forms.
• 15:57
  Speaker 2: The easiest way to think about this is a LEGO.
• 16:00
  Speaker 2: I don't know if we can say Lego, you're not sponsored by Lego.
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: But I'm going to say Lego four more times.
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: Now it works.
• 16:04
  Speaker 2: So a Lego that stacks on top of itself, but the center of the Lego is left open for the concrete.
• 16:11
  Speaker 2: Ok, so behind you and here we have a wall that is 16 inches thick.
• 16:15
  Speaker 2: Ok, when we build the wall, we stack up these forms of EPS styrofoam that are embedded with plastic studs and plastic webs that hold the rebar and kind of hold the two walls together, prevent the concrete from just pushing everything apart, and they literally stack like Legos.
• 16:32
  Speaker 2: They've got nubs, they've got little locks, they stack up.
• 16:35
  Speaker 2: You cut out your openings, you put in all the anchor bolts and all the different pieces and then we pump concrete into the wall in situ, right here, and so what you end up with is a sandwich of four inches of foam, in this case eight inches of concrete and four inches of foam.
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: It's not like spray foam.
• 16:51
  Speaker 2: Spray foam is not my favorite item in the builder's world.
• 16:54
  Speaker 2: This is recycled EPS.
• 16:57
  Speaker 2: It's not off gassing, it's not going to have any of the similar issues that can happen with spray foam, of the similar issues that can happen with spray foam.
• 17:09
  Speaker 2: So now you've got this really dense mass of concrete and you've got insulation on both sides.
• 17:11
  Speaker 2: What happens is the energy has to get through the insulation, change all the concrete and then get through the insulation again.
• 17:19
  Speaker 2: That's a lot of work for the energy and what it ends up doing is really just slowing everything down.
• 17:24
  Speaker 2: It doesn't for the energy and what it ends up doing is really just slowing everything down.
• 17:28
  Speaker 2: It doesn't.
• 17:28
  Speaker 2: It's not like it doesn't change.
• 17:31
  Speaker 2: It does throughout the seasons, but it changes so slowly that your air conditioning, your heating or maybe your passive solar gain it's all working in conjunction.
• 17:37
  Speaker 2: A traditional wall you're changing air inside the wall, right?
• 17:41
  Speaker 2: Everyone thinks the insulation is like the whole thing.
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: Well, the insulation can be, you know, if it's foam, but if it's kind of like a traditional insulation, it's full of air and the fiber and it all works together, but it doesn't have any mass.
• 17:55
  Speaker 2: Really, there's nothing there, it's just resisting the change.
• 17:58
  Speaker 2: So that's really the biggest difference.
• 18:00
  Speaker 2: You know, we also tag in with a lot of structural steel light gauge steel to try to elevate all the components, because obviously not every floor or roof is going to be made of concrete or made of ICF.
• 18:12
  Speaker 2: So we tried to look for better ways to do some of the traditional components that you still need.
• 18:19
  Speaker 2: Some of our homes are solid concrete floors on steel beams, and the roofs are concrete too.
• 18:24
  Speaker 2: It just depends on design and architecture.
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: So one of the things that you told me when I first came to your house was that an ICF home it doesn't settle, because in New England everything settles, so we always have cracks.
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: So one thing I noticed about your home is you don't have any molding.
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: And one of the reasons why we have molding in New England everywhere on the base and on the ceiling, is because it hides the cracks as houses settle, because that is what happens, you know they expand in the summer and they shrink in the winter, and so you have cracks.
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: So we have molding to hide that.
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: So you don't one of the first things I noticed in your home you don't have any molding anywhere.
• 19:06
  Speaker 2: No, I think the first part of this is everyone always thinks it's cheaper to not have molding.
• 19:08
  Speaker 2: Right, they're like oh, no molding, no carpenter.
• 19:10
  Speaker 2: Do you know how much time it takes to laser every window and set everything and try to get it as perfect as possible?
• 19:17
  Speaker 2: The home as a whole does have a humidity consideration.
• 19:23
  Speaker 2: Why we're super tight.
• 19:25
  Speaker 2: The building is sealed up and the way I normally describe it is you put a five gallon bucket of water in the back of your pickup truck and you drive down the highway.
• 19:32
  Speaker 2: You'll have some water left, but you can't control it.
• 19:35
  Speaker 2: Put the same bucket in your truck, you put a lid on it and you put a little spout on the bottom.
• 19:39
  Speaker 2: You can control how much water comes out of the bucket.
• 19:42
  Speaker 2: That's the way we look at building these homes.
• 19:44
  Speaker 2: Let's get it all sealed up, control the humidity, control the settling and control all of that in all the different ways.
• 19:53
  Speaker 2: The concrete's not going to move.
• 19:54
  Speaker 2: Where we do see is if we don't manage humidity in the home in general, you can have some cracking.
• 20:02
  Speaker 2: It's never perfect, but it definitely doesn't settle.
• 20:04
  Speaker 2: That's a big win.
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: Right, you don't have mold.
• 20:08
  Speaker 2: So let's talk about health, right.
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: I mean, this is a big one.
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: Yes, mold is a big one.
• 20:13
  Speaker 2: When you have a concrete wall with EPS foam like ICF, there's nothing for organic matter to feed on.
• 20:22
  Speaker 2: Okay, right, sure Mold's got to grow on something.
• 20:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah, your berries, wood, wood, yes, sticks, sure, plywood, right, yes, we don't have that problem.
• 20:34
  Speaker 2: So your indoor air quality is immensely improved, just like right off the bat.
• 20:39
  Speaker 2: Why?
• 20:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, well, a traditional home is wet during construction, especially in the Northeast right.
• 20:44
  Speaker 2: Obviously, Arizona is a different story.
• 20:46
  Speaker 2: It's wet, that moisture has to slowly get drawn out through the HVAC system, through the drying process, et cetera.
• 20:54
  Speaker 2: But it's there, it's still there and if it ever comes back it can grow.
• 20:59
  Speaker 2: Sure, with this we don't have that problem.
• 21:01
  Speaker 2: And what we've done is again with the bucket, we've sealed it up.
• 21:06
  Speaker 2: So the wildfires everyone remembers it was orange outside Our indoor air quality was, I think, 10 parts per million, where everyone else is at 1,000.
• 21:15
  Speaker 2: Because the home is so sealed, we've got good filtration on all the air conditioners and all the air handlers.
• 21:20
  Speaker 2: We also have ERVs they were bringing fresh air in even during that wildfire but they've got HEPA filters and we're controlling what's coming in and what's going out.
• 21:29
  Speaker 2: And so these homes don't have mildew, they don't have mold, they don't have bugs.
• 21:34
  Speaker 2: The same way, obviously, you're still going to have.
• 21:37
  Speaker 2: You know, we're leaving the door open right Like the bugs are coming in, but they're not going to be living in the wall.
• 21:43
  Speaker 2: You're not going to have termites, you're not going to have ants.
• 21:45
  Speaker 2: The same way.
• 21:45
  Speaker 2: They're going to come in through a door, garage door, whatever, but they're not coming and living in the walls.
• 21:50
  Speaker 2: We don't have rodents.
• 21:51
  Speaker 2: There's no space in the wall for the rodent.
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: Which is amazing, because you live out in the country, and so do I, and I always say to people it's impossible to not have mice, it is impossible to seal up a traditional home so that you don't have mice.
• 22:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah Well, they'll just eat through it.
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: I mean they can't eat through this, right, they can't eat through this.
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, see that alone.
• 22:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's an amazing difference, like we walk around and we feel and we breathe just in a different.
• 22:19
  Speaker 2: It's just different, like you're not and you know some of my family will stay at their homes or you know it's kind of dusty in here.
• 22:27
  Speaker 2: It's not your house, sam, you know you got to let it go or whatever.
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: I'm like, well, maybe we should knock it down and start over I don't always love that, but it is very clean here and it feels very clean.
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: Can we talk about the windows for a minute?
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: Sure, these windows and doors are unbelievable.
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: First of all, they're enormous.
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: So nature is coming in and we have the doors open right now, which is incredible.
• 22:47
  Speaker 2: One of the three most beautiful days of the year.
• 22:49
  Speaker 2: I think so.
• 22:50
  Speaker 2: Otherwise they're closed.
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: It's gorgeous, right, but so talk to us about what's so special about these doors and how that helps with keeping your environment closed in.
• 22:59
  Speaker 2: I think one of the other things is and we kind of touched on this, but we don't turn the lights on here right, like the windows and the way that we've situated the home and just the sheer amount of natural daylight that comes in is like until it's eight o'clock at night and it's like actually dark outside the lights aren't on.
• 23:16
  Speaker 2: You know, between just the amount of light that comes in, kind of ambiently, or you know you've got a TV on or something.
• 23:23
  Speaker 2: It just it doesn't ever feel kind of that dark, cavey, traditional bit.
• 23:27
  Speaker 2: Now, obviously that's also.
• 23:29
  Speaker 2: Some of these spaces are very large or whatever, but the windows help a lot with that.
• 23:33
  Speaker 2: All of these windows are imported from Europe.
• 23:35
  Speaker 2: We tend to import windows for windows and doors, obviously for all of our projects directly from the multitude of factories that we work with, from Canada, belgium, poland, czechoslovakia, germany and Italy and some in Spain too, and it really just depends on the client and the architectural style and the budget and all that.
• 23:54
  Speaker 2: So the first thing is that they're just not American windows, right?
• 23:58
  Speaker 2: The glass that's in this home is tempered, it's laminated for safety.
• 24:02
  Speaker 2: It makes it.
• 24:03
  Speaker 2: It's not hurricane rated per se like you would do kind of in Florida, but it can be so right off the bat.
• 24:09
  Speaker 2: It's more resilient glass.
• 24:11
  Speaker 2: It's big glass, it needs to be.
• 24:12
  Speaker 2: The other thing that we do is we put a cool light coating on all of these, which is a solar coating that lets it reflect more of the energy of the sun, and so in blaring summer's daylight on the southern face, you hold your hand up to the window.
• 24:27
  Speaker 2: You don't feel anything Pretty cool.
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: There's also the fact that they're triple pane, so there's three pieces.
• 24:32
  Speaker 2: Of glass helps with sound.
• 24:33
  Speaker 2: It helps with the thermal resistance.
• 24:38
  Speaker 2: The thing about a window is it's not a thermal resistive thing.
• 24:41
  Speaker 2: Even the best windows like these are.
• 24:42
  Speaker 2: They're reducing the load by maybe 100% from a regular window, but it's still kind of like not a great thing.
• 24:50
  Speaker 2: So we're doing the best we can with it.
• 24:53
  Speaker 2: They've all got multiple weather seals.
• 24:55
  Speaker 2: These doors are lift and slide, so they actually lift up, move and then when they sit back down to close, they're sitting into the weather seals better.
• 25:04
  Speaker 2: So that was kind of a driver for me.
• 25:06
  Speaker 2: We do these sometimes with thinner frames and they might not seal as well because of the design, but it's a design consideration To me.
• 25:13
  Speaker 2: I wanted them to be as kind of sealed up as possible.
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: I thought they were amazing because these are humongous doors and when you went to go, show me how you opened them and you're like here you try it yourself.
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: It is so light, it's so easy and you can feel the door like kind of raise up and then it glides so smoothly.
• 25:31
  Speaker 2: I think each of these is like.
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: I was blown away by how easy it is to open these massive doors.
• 25:35
  Speaker 2: I think they're like 400 pounds each, and I mean, you could?
• 25:38
  Speaker 2: You know, most people can do it with a finger, so it's pretty remarkable.
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: They just slide so beautifully it's perfect, all right, so let's talk about what did you learn by building your own house.
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: What have you learned from this process that you then can transfer to building for somebody else?
• 25:53
  Speaker 2: I mean the list is endless, right.
• 25:55
  Speaker 2: Obviously there's not many things I would do differently here, which is pretty, I think, great, and the things that I would do differently are fairly minor, you know, kind of cosmetic level decisions.
• 26:09
  Speaker 2: The biggest thing that I think I learned is that the traditional way of building is you have plans, it gets bid out by a builder, you choose your builder, they follow the plans and you find out after living in the house for six months that you didn't love something.
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 26:29
  Speaker 2: And what we did, for a multitude of reasons, was not rush some of those decisions.
• 26:34
  Speaker 2: We finished what we needed to finish, we moved in and we took some time on some of the spaces, on some of the millwork especially.
• 26:42
  Speaker 2: You're just not sure how.
• 26:43
  Speaker 2: You know, the original master closet design and what we have today are two different designs Because, as we were in the space, literally with, like you know, home Depot shelves and a rolling rack and like, do we like it here?
• 26:55
  Speaker 2: Do we like it here?
• 26:56
  Speaker 2: Like it didn't need to be, and we lived with it for a couple of months and, like you know, let's get there's so much to get used to.
• 27:03
  Speaker 2: How do you make all these decisions ahead of time and make sure that they're perfect, especially when it's kind of in that traditional path, right?
• 27:19
  Speaker 2: So this really helped me come up with our strategy on how to work with clients, and I know there's a whole lot to go through.
• 27:22
  Speaker 2: But one of those things is that we like to be involved very, very early.
• 27:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, I think some of our most successful current projects are where we're involved before the architect.
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 27:33
  Speaker 2: Where we're looking at it, like if this was where you know, like if we come in as kind of the blank slate, right, we can build anything, doesn't?
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: matter right.
• 27:49
  Speaker 2: But an architect's going to have a style, a designer's going to have a style, and you may love it.
• 27:53
  Speaker 2: You may not love it, that's fine.
• 27:54
  Speaker 2: That's an easier decision to make.
• 27:56
  Speaker 2: The question is can the people who are going to actually put it into action do it, and do it at the quality level and obsess about it the way we're going to?
• 28:04
  Speaker 2: And if you have that as the backbone, now we can work as a team and say, okay, who's the right architect, who's the right designer?
• 28:12
  Speaker 2: Are they fitting what you're talking about?
• 28:15
  Speaker 2: And then also, does it fit the budget?
• 28:18
  Speaker 2: The whole thing can come together and it's a little bit less of a traditional strategy.
• 28:22
  Speaker 2: It's not on every project that we do this, but half of our projects are like that.
• 28:29
  Speaker 2: And that's one of the bigger things I learned is us coming in early can be super beneficial.
• 28:34
  Speaker 2: It can keep the budget better, it can make the planning process go smoother because we're not going backwards on drawings per se, where something was designed and then it turns out that it, you know, may or may not work the way it was intended, or homeowner isn't thrilled with the millwork layout or whatever Like.
• 28:51
  Speaker 2: So that can be kind of the benefit of that, doesn't?
• 28:56
  Speaker 2: You know, doesn't always happen, but it's preferred for sure.
• 28:58
  Speaker 2: The ideal yeah.
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: Well, I always say to people you know, people always ask when should I reach out to a builder, when should I reach out to a designer, when should I reach out to the architect?
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: What's the process?
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: And I'm like, honestly, you need to do it as soon as possible, because you're.
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: I also always say life experience is the most powerful educator, and you have the life experience of how to build an incredible carbon home right, and so you understand the materials, you understand the benefits of it, you understand this concept of energy and flow within a home that is also very unique.
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: Not every builder has that, by the way, and not every designer has that, but I see it as something that's really important Understanding not just how the house is gonna function, because that's important too, but what's the flow and how's the energy gonna move.
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: And so bringing that into the very beginning and understanding the land and how do people want to be situated on the land?
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: How do you want to use the land?
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: How does the land feel?
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: What are the views that we're going to get from these different rooms?
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: Where do you put the primary suite?
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: What are you looking at and understanding then?
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: Okay, how do you then translate that down to the building of it then okay, how do you then translate that down to the building of it?
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: Your primary suite, for example.
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: You have these enormous ceilings and normally that would make a primary suite feel very cold because your ceilings are so high.
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: But it's incredible because it's so high and the view is amazing.
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: So it clearly, like the view that you have from your primary suite, is purposeful.
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: That is there for a purpose.
• 30:25
  Speaker 2: And I like Eastern views in the morning is my feeling.
• 30:27
  Speaker 2: You wake up.
• 30:30
  Speaker 2: We have a young daughter.
• 30:31
  Speaker 2: She doesn't sleep till nine o'clock.
• 30:33
  Speaker 2: I'll be, up with the chickens.
• 30:35
  Speaker 2: I'll be up with the sunrise.
• 30:37
  Speaker 2: I'm never going to enjoy the sunset because sunset's going to be at dinner time.
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: You're going to be working.
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: Let's be honest.
• 30:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah, or we're having dinner or whatever.
• 30:51
  Speaker 2: So I'm not going to ever be able to enjoy that view, and so to me here, it was very important that we faced East and South.
• 30:54
  Speaker 2: I'm not going to take credit for the way we situate every home and all of that kind of stuff, but I think it's important to have everyone work on it.
• 31:01
  Speaker 2: Architect comes in and says I really like this vantage point, great, but is there rock?
• 31:07
  Speaker 2: Is there an issue with, maybe, how it'll be constructed or something that'll drive cost that maybe they're not looking at because they're looking at the art, which is wonderful and needed.
• 31:15
  Speaker 2: But at the same token, if we're involved, we can bring those things up as it's happening, so that it's not being drawn and then redrawn and change ordered and all of the rest of it.
• 31:26
  Speaker 2: It's so much better as a team right, of course, than it is in kind of the traditional Right.
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: So that's our, you know that's our goal.
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: I totally agree.
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: All right, your attention to detail.
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: I have been in your mechanical room.
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: Let's call it that the mechanical room, the steamship.
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: I'm going to include a photo of that within this video.
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: I'm going to send Andrea down to take a picture of it, because the way this house works and your attention to detail in this home is like something I've never seen before.
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: So I think that is something that also makes you unique and I want to make sure we point that out.
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: But I think your attention to detail translates even farther when you get to things like the things that I thought were so interesting, and I want you to talk about some of the other things and how you think of these.
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: So I would like to know, sure, your attention to detail, things such as you don't see the hinges on the doors to the bathrooms you don't we don't have hinges anywhere.
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah, there are no hinges.
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: I'm like this whole thing is crazy.
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: You don't see the hinges.
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: There is music that feels like it's coming out of the walls because it is coming out of the walls.
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: And so there's this attention to some of these finer details which, as an interior designer, I can completely appreciate.
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: How in the world do you think of all of these things?
• 32:45
  Speaker 2: So credit where, know, credit where credit's due, right, we have a great team of subcontractors and designers and architects that you know, aren't that don't just work for me.
• 32:56
  Speaker 2: That are, you know, some of the best architects in the country and some local really great and skilled architects too, and so I pick up knowledge from everyone.
• 33:05
  Speaker 2: Right, it's just, I'm a sponge like that.
• 33:08
  Speaker 2: I don't read, right, I don't read stories and books and whatever it is.
• 33:11
  Speaker 2: I read architecture books and I, you know just, I'm reading product specifications and whatever.
• 33:17
  Speaker 2: That's where I spend my brain power.
• 33:20
  Speaker 2: And so, you know, you hear something from one architect and you go, oh, that's cool, I'm going to save that in the back of the mind for the next, you know.
• 33:26
  Speaker 2: And so that's what led to a lot of this.
• 33:29
  Speaker 2: I don't want to see speaker grills, especially not in the public spaces.
• 33:32
  Speaker 2: You know, you want to save some money upstairs, that's fine, go for it, and that's what we did.
• 33:35
  Speaker 2: But, like down here, it's like we have this beautiful flat ceiling with these tall windows.
• 33:39
  Speaker 2: Else, eh, not for me.
• 33:42
  Speaker 2: So that led to that decision.
• 33:44
  Speaker 2: I have a great client right now who I'll keep this forever.
• 33:49
  Speaker 2: She said you know, is the light switch going to change my enjoyment of the home that much, and I said that's a good question, right, like?
• 33:57
  Speaker 2: I don't know if you remember, but, kim Kardashian, when they did their house they had those, like it was like a button in the wall.
• 34:02
  Speaker 2: How the heck are you going to find that button in the middle of the night, like you, like it was like a button in the wall.
• 34:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, how the heck are you going to find that button in the middle of the night, like you got to, like you know, feel down the whole wall.
• 34:11
  Speaker 2: No, the light switch should work.
• 34:12
  Speaker 2: It should look nice, it should function.
• 34:12
  Speaker 2: Should it be three times the price because it's brushed nickel?
• 34:14
  Speaker 2: I don't know.
• 34:15
  Speaker 2: Maybe not Right, maybe that won't change your enjoyment and that is how I look at some of it.
• 34:19
  Speaker 2: What are the things that are going to change my enjoyment of the home versus the perception or the design or whatever?
• 34:26
  Speaker 2: There's been this big trend, you know, for a while now, of like flushing every outlet right and flushing every light.
• 34:32
  Speaker 2: I'm so glad you brought that up because I wanted to talk about that and I think it's really great in a few situations and we did do some of them in my office, where it was just like a very small outlet and we knew it was just for a speaker and keep it more minimal.
• 34:47
  Speaker 2: In the sides of the kitchen there's regular outlets, because they're going to get dirty, they're going to have to be replaced, they're going to be a disaster if they're all flushed into something, and so that's number one.
• 34:57
  Speaker 2: Number two is how many outlets and switches do you have in a house?
• 35:00
  Speaker 2: 200, 300, 400?
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 35:02
  Speaker 2: You want to spend $300,000 putting every outlet flush.
• 35:05
  Speaker 2: Is that going to change your enjoyment of the home?
• 35:08
  Speaker 2: And I'm going to really credit her with giving me that concept, because I had it, I just didn't have the term for it.
• 35:15
  Speaker 2: Changing the enjoyment and the door hinge.
• 35:18
  Speaker 2: One one of our strategic partners loves this, but he'll call me.
• 35:23
  Speaker 2: He'll be on a yacht or a boat or something that's really highly crafted and he'll go they've got door hinges, it's like how do they have door?
• 35:30
  Speaker 2: hinges.
• 35:31
  Speaker 2: It's like you don't have door hinges.
• 35:33
  Speaker 2: Why All I see everywhere door hinges.
• 35:35
  Speaker 2: Now, literally, I've probably gotten 15 or 20, you know different videos of whether it's on.
• 35:40
  Speaker 2: You know like on, like the NBC TV open house show, or he's like thirty seven million dollars and they got door hinges everywhere.
• 35:48
  Speaker 2: You know it's funny how like that kind of a thing and you're probably now going to like start seeing door hinges everywhere, everywhere.
• 35:56
  Speaker 2: I hate door hinges, especially on doors and hallways that have an outswing, where you would see the hinge, and you've got these long hallways and everything's pretty sleek.
• 36:07
  Speaker 2: And then you got like three or four black hinges on a door and you're like, well, you could get rid of those right.
• 36:11
  Speaker 2: So we did.
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: Which is just a testament.
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: I'm going to stop you for one second.
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: It's a testament to your whole philosophy, which is let's look at it differently, let's think about it differently.
• 36:23
  Speaker 2: Back to the roots.
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: It's the whole root of everything and you're just.
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: You look at a door and you think about it differently and that's what you bring to the table.
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: As a builder that is so unique and for me as a designer, I think, is really exciting and interesting, because it's about looking at it differently and looking at life differently.
• 36:42
  Speaker 2: And I want to say that we don't always get it right.
• 36:46
  Speaker 2: Right Like, I'm not perfect, we're going to have issues.
• 36:49
  Speaker 2: That's part of the process and it should be known, because if you go into the home building process thinking that you're going to have that like HGTV, like reveal moment, where everything's just perfect, it doesn't actually happen and people should know that, because I think the market has kind of said like no, no, no, in seven days we can build you a whole new home and it's going to be fantastic.
• 37:13
  Speaker 2: No, you know, there's a process to these things.
• 37:15
  Speaker 2: And back to what I said about living in.
• 37:17
  Speaker 2: It is like some of that you need to live in and figure out.
• 37:21
  Speaker 2: Maybe you didn't like a detail or you didn't, so we'll change it, we'll make it right, you know, and the attention to detail is going to span on all sorts of different things how you interact, what the actual detail is on something, how you're going to feel in a space.
• 37:39
  Speaker 2: You know, maybe the maintenance or the lack of maintenance.
• 37:42
  Speaker 2: I mean, these homes do truly need less maintenance, which is a great thing.
• 37:46
  Speaker 2: You don't have to worry about the guts of the home.
• 37:50
  Speaker 2: The same way, we do a ton of geothermal work where you know, ultimately the maintenance on these systems is more like just make sure they're still running, not like does it need to be replaced every five years or whatever it is.
• 38:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you got to change your air filters.
• 38:04
  Speaker 2: There's things that you still have to do.
• 38:06
  Speaker 2: But you know, we just finished a home where the client said look, you know, we're going to age in place in this home.
• 38:12
  Speaker 2: I like to change the air filters.
• 38:14
  Speaker 2: It feels silly to me to have someone come and change the air filters.
• 38:17
  Speaker 2: Please make sure all of the units are in the basement.
• 38:19
  Speaker 2: So we did extra large ducting and all this thing to get to the third floor, but all of those air filters are where.
• 38:31
  Speaker 2: He doesn't need a ladder.
• 38:32
  Speaker 2: He can walk into his basement down their elevator and he can go change his air filters.
• 38:34
  Speaker 2: Okay, if that's what makes you happy, then we're happy to try to make it happen.
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: Right, but that's thinking about the details and thinking forward into how someone is going to live and use this space and how do you optimize the sustainability that you put in it so that they can do it long term.
• 38:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think you know this is part of the building process and this is what gets overlooked a little bit.
• 38:56
  Speaker 2: The value of these homes is not what it costs to build them.
• 39:01
  Speaker 2: It's how you experience the home for the next 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60 years.
• 39:06
  Speaker 2: I say to a lot of our new clients all the time if you got the quality you wanted and the experience you wanted long-term, but it cost you 10 or 15% more, and you knew that upfront, wouldn't you just say, yeah, of course, but if you knew that you weren't going to be happy 10 years from now and it costs you 10% less, you would say, well, I'm never going to do that Right, and it's never really put in that context, I feel like and that's what we try to bake in but also explain and work through.
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: Right, which I love, all right.
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: So what's on the future bucket list for you?
• 39:42
  Speaker 2: Can I give you the fake answer and the real answer?
• 39:44
  Speaker 2: Absolutely the fake answer is I like to joke and say that everything starts with private and ends with driver, chef and plane.
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: Okay, but that's not really realistic.
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: That would be lovely.
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: You can sign me up.
• 39:59
  Speaker 2: You can take me along.
• 40:00
  Speaker 2: I can just be, you know I to do in this world and in this industry.
• 40:04
  Speaker 2: You know we the housing market's odd, especially right now.
• 40:09
  Speaker 2: I think we can all agree.
• 40:11
  Speaker 2: You know there's there's a lack of supply, there's a lot of demand but rates are high.
• 40:16
  Speaker 2: You know, like it's kind of a weird thing where, like you know, if we listen to some of these economists a year ago, they're like it's all going to crash and you know, right before the election or whatever.
• 40:25
  Speaker 2: It's not, it's obviously not.
• 40:27
  Speaker 2: There's parts of the country that are going to have issues, but I think our area here has found a new resiliency after, especially after COVID.
• 40:33
  Speaker 2: But I don't know how we change you know the entire industry, but if we can make some incremental change in our area, that would make me very happy.
• 40:47
  Speaker 2: And so what does that mean?
• 40:47
  Speaker 2: Let's build more homes for families that you know are energy efficient and resilient and are not relying the same way on fossil fuel.
• 40:56
  Speaker 2: And whether you agree with any of it or you don't, it's still a better home and so that's a good thing.
• 41:03
  Speaker 2: Do we go into doing some of these?
• 41:04
  Speaker 2: I'm not going to say as a spec home or you don't, it's still a better home, and so that's a good thing.
• 41:05
  Speaker 2: Do we go into doing some of these and I'm not going to say as a spec home, because I don't believe that we can do a spec home right I think our quality and our core values just outweigh everything that happens in the spec world.
• 41:17
  Speaker 2: But can we go into it maybe in a different way?
• 41:20
  Speaker 2: Maybe we can get a little farther down the process for the client before they even get involved, and make this process easier?
• 41:31
  Speaker 2: New York State has said that we're lacking housing.
• 41:33
  Speaker 2: We need more housing, but then they make it difficult to get a permit, to get the housing bill or whatever it is, and so can we maybe take some of that burden off of the client so that they're not spending three, four, five years.
• 41:44
  Speaker 2: They're spending two years and they're spending a manageable, foreseeable amount of time.
• 41:49
  Speaker 2: So I'd like to do that.
• 41:50
  Speaker 2: We'd like to do multifamily housing too.
• 41:52
  Speaker 2: I mean, our technology and our quality can translate very easily to either high-end or just affordable.
• 41:59
  Speaker 2: Um, I think one of the best things you can do in this world is, if you're successful with what you're doing at a high end, then you can translate it to the masses in a way that still meets our values, right, and you know why not provide more housing if we can build it and be effective with it?
• 42:20
  Speaker 2: Um, so I think those are some of the big things.
• 42:23
  Speaker 2: My wife and I always joke, of course, that we'll build another house, but I would yeah, Well, we survived this one.
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: So I know, yeah, but see, if you're like me, it's like you design it, you quote, finish it.
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: It's never finished.
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: And then you're like, oh, but I could do this.
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: And in order to do this.
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: That means we need a different piece of land and a different house, and you kind of as creatives, I feel like we have the bug to keep going, because it never is finished.
• 42:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I would agree.
• 42:52
  Speaker 2: I think I'm also creatively trying to find ways to keep the golf ball in the fairway for a little bit before I even go and do another house for myself.
• 42:58
  Speaker 2: But you know, I will definitely build another house For us.
• 43:03
  Speaker 2: It's just a matter of when and where.
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: Right, that's okay.
• 43:07
  Speaker 2: But this is going to stay as our family home as the main home.
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, this isn't bad.
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: Unless someone wants to write a very very very large check.
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but this is not exactly slipping it House $1.
• 43:18
  Speaker 2: Pain and suffering $80 gajillion.
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: Oh, your home is absolutely beautiful.
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: Thank you 80 gajillion dollars, you know, oh, your home is absolutely beautiful and we'll include clips of it in the video so that people can see, because your house is incredible, all right, so before we go, is there anything that I didn't ask you that you think you want to share?
• 43:34
  Speaker 2: I think we just like to do good projects for good people at the end of the day, and I think that's exceedingly what we look at right.
• 43:43
  Speaker 2: Is the whole team right Design team, build team, client you know all of it.
• 43:51
  Speaker 2: Is everyone on board with what the ultimate mission is?
• 43:55
  Speaker 2: And to me, the ultimate mission here is always the same is providing a really high quality home for a family.
• 44:02
  Speaker 2: Right?
• 44:03
  Speaker 2: Whatever that family makeup looks like, it doesn't matter.
• 44:05
  Speaker 2: It could be a home that they're only using two days a year, I don't particularly care.
• 44:09
  Speaker 2: But if that experience for those two days is what they want it to be, then I'm very happy.
• 44:13
  Speaker 2: Right, and yes, we're making it a little more passive or a little bit more energy efficient.
• 44:17
  Speaker 2: That's helping the environment and all of that.
• 44:19
  Speaker 2: But is the family experiencing it the way that they want to experience it?
• 44:25
  Speaker 2: And so our ethos is always quality first.
• 44:29
  Speaker 2: We have a very strong kind of rip it out mentality, like if something's not right, if they don't like it, if we don't like it, whatever it may be, it's going to be made right, you know.
• 44:39
  Speaker 2: And so that is the most important thing to me, you know, other than that we most important thing to me, you know, other than that we just like doing cool stuff.
• 44:46
  Speaker 2: I mean that's and that's kind of the fun part of this is that we're not.
• 44:49
  Speaker 2: You know, our upcoming projects are all very cool, they're different.
• 44:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they're interesting and they're not traditional.
• 44:57
  Speaker 2: You know kind of quasi-American traditional homes.
• 45:01
  Speaker 2: They're architecturally inspired and interesting.
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: Which is so great.
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: Would you build anywhere?
• 45:07
  Speaker 2: We will build anywhere.
• 45:08
  Speaker 2: You know.
• 45:09
  Speaker 2: Currently we're looking at South Florida because it's obviously a good market based on our you know design, theory and tech.
• 45:15
  Speaker 2: We're looking out west.
• 45:16
  Speaker 2: We've got clients who have asked for Tennessee, you know, and we'll look at anything.
• 45:21
  Speaker 2: You know and we'll look at anything.
• 45:30
  Speaker 2: Our style is to stay agile and small and dedicated to the client.
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: I'm involved on every single project that we have.
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: There's not 17 layers.
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: So they get you, they get Sam For the good or bad Good bad and ugly?
• 45:37
  Speaker 2: Yes, definitely.
• 45:38
  Speaker 2: That, to me, is also very important.
• 45:40
  Speaker 2: I want to be involved.
• 45:42
  Speaker 2: It's not that I need to be involved, I want to be involved and I want to have my finger on the pulse of each of these projects.
• 45:48
  Speaker 2: So we're not doing 37 projects at a time where it's a name and you're not getting the name right.
• 45:55
  Speaker 2: It's a name and you're getting the team and our team is always moving around between projects so that everyone is involved and everyone knows.
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: Oh, interesting.
• 46:05
  Speaker 2: So it's really important to me that we stay small and agile and in a kind of very functional circle like that, where it's not you know if you're sick there's a problem you know what I mean Like everyone can help and everyone's aware, and so that's really, I think, also just a difference, right, Like we're not looking to grow in the same way as some of these other companies have.
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: So my purpose for doing this podcast is really talking about wellness within right Wellness within people personally and wellness within their environment.
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: And I find, as an interior designer, because I care about wellness, I tend to attract to me clients that also care about wellness.
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: My clients meditate Exercise is really important to them.
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: They care about the energy in their home, they care about the light, they care about having plants.
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: They care about the things that I care about when they go to hire me as a designer.
• 46:57
  Speaker 2: Good, partnership, good team Right exactly Because it works.
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: We're aligned with similar values and it's also we want just a similar lifestyle.
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: We believe in the same type of living and the importance of things with living.
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: Do you find that's true for you as well?
• 47:11
  Speaker 2: Yes, 100%, and I think one of the best things that we do as a company.
• 47:17
  Speaker 2: And again, you could go to a big, massive home builder around the country and they're like, hey, come see a show home and it's staged, whatever.
• 47:25
  Speaker 2: It's like, this is the show home, right, you get to see where my daughter sleeps.
• 47:30
  Speaker 2: You get to see where I sleep.
• 47:31
  Speaker 2: You can find me if you need to.
• 47:33
  Speaker 2: You know what I mean.
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: I've seen your bathroom.
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: We've talked about your shower.
• 47:37
  Speaker 1: I've been in that closet that you talk about, but no, so I mean.
• 47:40
  Speaker 2: So part of it is like come and experience the wellness within this home, right For yourself.
• 47:46
  Speaker 2: Yep, right, we joke all the time, but like we over filter the water here to the point like you could drink the toilet water if you were into that, right.
• 47:54
  Speaker 2: But like what I've learned with all the individuals I've worked with throughout the years, there's three big things that I find most folks really care about, and we try to be very cognizant of all three of these.
• 48:10
  Speaker 2: Number one is plastics.
• 48:11
  Speaker 2: Right, I think most of the not only ultra high net worth individuals that we've worked with, but just individuals that know, try to avoid plastic as much as is possible in our ever plasticky world.
• 48:25
  Speaker 2: And so what does that mean for us?
• 48:27
  Speaker 2: Well, when we have to use plastic in plumbing or in a fixture or in something, we're very, very aware of what it is, we have a specific list of the products that we're willing to use.
• 48:37
  Speaker 2: So our subcontractors are aware and it's maintained appropriately.
• 48:42
  Speaker 2: Number two is air quality.
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 48:45
  Speaker 2: Right, well, we talked about that.
• 48:47
  Speaker 2: But our air quality?
• 48:48
  Speaker 2: Like we have air monitors all over the home.
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 48:51
  Speaker 2: They're always at zero.
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: Right, always yeah.
• 48:53
  Speaker 2: And, like I said, during the wildfires they were like at 10, which you think about it, like oh God, that's a thousand percent worse than zero.
• 49:00
  Speaker 2: But that means everyone else was like 10,000 percent worse, way worse.
• 49:03
  Speaker 2: So that's number two, and number three and we touched on this also is sound.
• 49:08
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 49:08
  Speaker 2: And what I've learned, especially with a lot of our clients, is they're sleeping time.
• 49:14
  Speaker 2: They're very, very sensitive to sound.
• 49:18
  Speaker 2: They're very sensitive to light.
• 49:21
  Speaker 2: Know we can help control that significantly.
• 49:27
  Speaker 2: The sound piece of this is obviously kind of based on where you are and what we have to contend with, but those are some of the like the biggest wellness pieces that I've noticed and that I think we focus on.
• 49:39
  Speaker 2: I don't know that?
• 49:40
  Speaker 2: You know, like we have a home gym and some of our other clients are having home gyms, and you know there's have a home gym and some of our other clients are having home gyms, and you know there's definitely like wellness spaces that are getting built in.
• 49:47
  Speaker 2: I think for me as a builder and as like, what I'm looking at personally is those three, but also light and air and just spaciousness.
• 49:56
  Speaker 2: I think there's something really nice about being in a space that's, you know, well-proportioned but not too big, not too small, yes, and just the feeling of like I don't know how to describe it, but being able to kind of let go of space.
• 50:09
  Speaker 2: And you know we lived in the city for years.
• 50:13
  Speaker 2: We had apartments.
• 50:14
  Speaker 2: I mean, we joke that my wife's first apartment could probably fit in our master bedroom.
• 50:17
  Speaker 2: Now, right, so, like you know, like there's something nice about being able to enjoy space and not always feel like the walls are closing in.
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: Confined Right.
• 50:28
  Speaker 1: Well, and this space I will say, having been here and walked around here, your ceilings are really high and you have very few carpets, which is unusual.
• 50:36
  Speaker 1: You have these beautiful hardwood floors, but yet your space feels so inviting and so calm and so welcoming, and so it's an incredible blend, and this feels like a house that was built with wellness wellness considered.
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: And how you live in it and how you breathe in it and how you feel in it, and it feels clean and crisp and your home is absolutely- 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
• 50:56
  Speaker 2: We have someone cleaning it.
• 50:57
  Speaker 2: No, I'm just kidding.
• 50:59
  Speaker 1: All right, yeah, with your four-year-old.
• 51:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, just so they follow her around.
• 51:05
  Speaker 1: Right, yeah, with your four-year-old.
• 51:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah, just when they follow her around.
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: You know, I can attest that that's not true.
• 51:07
  Speaker 1: All right, sam, anything else, I didn't ask you that you want to share with everybody, no, I think.
• 51:10
  Speaker 1: Okay, perfect, I'm going to link in the show notes.
• 51:14
  Speaker 1: I will link your website, your YouTube channel, your Instagram handle everything that is all about you.
• 51:19
  Speaker 1: I thank you so much for allowing us to come into your beautiful home to showcase everything that's here, allowing us to share photos of your home as part of the video.
• 51:28
  Speaker 1: So I thank you.
• 51:29
  Speaker 2: My pleasure.
• 51:34
  Speaker 1: I want one of your homes.
• 51:35
  Speaker 2: Write a check, there we go, I know right, or wire transfer, or PayPal.
• 51:37
  Speaker 1: I just need a big sponsor for the podcast, and then we can have a home.
• 51:40
  Speaker 2: There we go, so thank you so much for your time.
• 51:43
  Speaker 2: It's been a pleasure.
• 51:43
  Speaker 2: Thank you for coming and putting this together.
• 51:44
  Speaker 2: I really appreciate it.
• 51:45
  Speaker 1: Anytime.
• 51:46
  Speaker 1: All right, we'll talk to you all soon.
• 51:48
  Speaker 1: Have a great week.
• 51:48
  Speaker 1: Bye.
• 51:49
  Speaker 1: Thank you for joining us for another episode of the House of Germar podcast, where wellness starts within.
• 51:58
  Speaker 1: We appreciate you being a part of our community and hope you felt inspired and motivated by our guest.
• 52:04
  Speaker 1: If you enjoyed this episode, please write us a review and share it with friends.
• 52:11
  Speaker 1: Building our reach on YouTube and Apple podcasts will help us get closer to our mission to empower 1 million women to live all in.
• 52:16
  Speaker 1: You can also follow us on Instagram at House of Jermar and sign up to be a part of our monthly inspiration newsletter through our website, houseofjermarcom.
• 52:27
  Speaker 1: If you or someone you know would be a good guest on the show, please reach out to us at podcast at houseofjermarcom.
• 52:35
  Speaker 1: This has been a House of Jermar production with your host, jean Collins.
• 52:40
  Speaker 1: Thank you for joining our house.