That Time We Talked About Smart Buildings

This is episode number 68 of The Homeowner Show. Whether you're DIY or looking to hire, we're here to help you find the best information and options for you and your home. My name is Kevin Hackett, and here with me is Craig Williams.

Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to The Homeowner Show. We're glad that you could join us for this very special episode. How you doing, Kev?

Man, I'm tired. Yeah, you got frustrated. Dude, I don't know, man. Like, sometimes you, you look at life and you go, why am I doing this?

Just life in general? Well, or just like today?

Uh, I don't know, depends on the day.

Stay with us, Kev.

I'm not suicidal, y'all. Not, uh, no, I, I love life. I just hate when things that should be simple aren't nearly as simple as they should be. So here, here's the problem.

Welcome to the Homeowners Therapy Hour, guys.

Yeah, yeah. So, um, when we, when we moved here, we had a certain, uh, homeowners and auto insurance company that we used and we liked. Well, whenever we moved to Texas, it was going to be more expensive to use them, so we decided, meh, we'll go with someone else. So we did.

Yeah, stick it to them.

Yeah, well, Yeah, just save our own ability to own a home is what it was. So, so anyway, we, uh, we go with another company. Everything's good, right? Um, a buddy of mine opens up a new insurance agency with the company we used to have, right? And we liked them. Everything was good. I like this guy. I know for a fact that he would look out for me if anything went wrong, blah blah blah blah. So Originally, he wasn't able to match, but some new stuff came out. He was able to pretty much match what we were already paying, and, uh, and honestly, it was a little bit more coverage than what we had. So it was gonna work out just fine. So effective the beginning of this month,

we, we started this new policy and canceled the old, right? Well, um, the only thing they got to do in order to make sure everything's going to work is they got to come out, and the new company's got to come out and do an inspection on your home. So I get a call back and they say, hey, everything looks good. Um, the only thing is, um, we, we rate your roof and you're, uh, you get a basically a, a 1 to a 3.

Right.

A, a 1 is good and a 3 is not good, and yours is between a 2 and a 3. And, uh, we don't know if it needs to be repaired or if it needs to be replaced. That's a roofer's call, but you're gonna have to call a roofer and figure out what it needs to be, right, to start the process to either get it repaired or replaced before your roof is insurable. And I said, what? Like, So, so what you're telling me is I had perfectly good insurance, good insurance, and then I change over to your company and you're telling me after I've dropped my other insurance and now you've drug your backside long enough, there's been 16 days, and now I'm finding

out that something that was perfectly insurable is no longer insurable with your company. Yep, that's what they're telling me. So to make a really long story short, they basically said your best— like, because, because I'll tell you right now, it's a 20-year-old roof. I knew that. I told them that up front. Um, I put a claim in it on, uh, claim in on it a year ago and it got denied. Wasn't quite bad enough. Apparently now it is. Um, and so Anyway, um, I know that I probably need $15,000 of a new roof, and now it's gonna be 100% on me.

Yeah.

So they're literally— their recommendation was you need to see if your old insurance will reinstate you. That's going to be the best thing for you. So, um, I called the broker that I used with the other insurance, and which I really like him and I like the other insurance just fine, and said, here's the deal, I'm not interested in this other company anymore, can I be reinstated? And he said, I don't know, never done that before. I mean, he's been doing this for a while too. He's like, most people that move, move.

I guess most people just don't come back. Yeah.

And so, uh, he called me back like an hour later and I was like, hey, talk to underwriting, and, and they said that they're willing to to keep you, to reinstate you effective the date that you canceled. Thankfully, the other company, again, a buddy of mine, he understood the issue. He said, we'll work it out no matter what. They were able to cancel effective the date that we started. That's all going to work itself out. My stress level last night was through the roof.

Yeah.

This morning and today— Part of the fun. Pretty much anything could apparently go through my roof.

That's right.

Um, but as of today, everything's kind of back to normal. I'm good, I'm happy. The problem is now that my lender has— for, for my, my home, my lender has already paid new company. And so I've got a check sitting at my house from the old insurance company for escrow. And now I've got to figure out how to get Money's back. Yes, I've got to get the old— my current, now current, uh, insurance company, I need to get them to pay escrow, and I got to get it refunded. It's like this whole stupid mess.

The old switcheroo on the insurance money scam.

That's right. And so here's, here's the thing, like I was talking, and you, you may have just found the secret honey hole, right? And I don't know, I mean, I don't I don't actually know if this guy— he might listen to our show. I don't know if he does actually 100%. He's still a friend of mine. I'm still— I'm not mad at him. I mean, he's— this isn't his fault or anything, you know. I'm not, not upset about that. I'm upset about the company and the way they do business.

Yeah.

And so my— I just want to put it out there for everybody that like insurance companies, they do this. They, they switch you over, right? They cancel your old policy and then they do the inspection.

Yep.

They don't do it the other way around.

Yep.

They should do it the other way around. They should do the inspection, make sure you're insurable, and then switch you over. But they don't do that. And my understanding is they used to, but they don't anymore because they were losing money on people who would just chip in for the free inspection. That's right. They get the inspection and then they would have no intention of ever buying the policy.

Thanks to all you freeloaders out there.

Exactly. Don't be that person. You're ruining it for all of us. This is why we can't have nice things.

That's why we can't have nice things.

And so Like, I mean, and you and I talked about this off air earlier, is like, you know, it would be super simple for these companies to be like, hey, it's gonna cost you $150 for an inspection unless you buy the policy, and then we're gonna throw it in.

Yeah. And that's— I mean, that's actually pretty standard business practice. Absolutely. We do that in our business all the time where like people call us with like, if there's a severe problem and they want us to like just come take a look at it, right? It's like, okay, we're gonna come take a look at it, but there's a service call, right? If we end up doing the work, we'll take that out.

But You know, that happens all the time.

Yeah, but it's not a big deal.

It's not the way these companies are run. They know they've got you, you know, hogtied basically. And you've got— I mean, if, if this other company wasn't willing to take me back, I'd be screwed right now. Yeah, completely screwed.

And so thankfully, um, doing another roofing episode is what we'd be doing.

I'd already had Justin on speed dial for— from Fair Claims, uh, the episode that we did on roofs. He was— I mean, he's a friend of mine too, so I was gonna call him, be like, dude, you've got to figure something out here for me. Uh, but, um, but so, so here's, here's my recommendation, everybody. Like, if you choose to switch insurance companies, um, first of all, if there's anything in your mind that makes you think, I might be uninsurable for this, right? I've got an old roof, you know, that I've got some siding that's needing repair, I got, you know, whatever. Um, don't cancel your old insurance until that inspection has come through. Just

don't do it. Just wait.

Yeah.

And if you're doubly insured, then you're doubly insured. Congratulations, you're paying out the wazoo for insurance and it'll work itself out and you won't wind up with a problem that I almost wound up with.

Yeah, it's funny you mentioned that, man, because like when we, when we bought this place, I was really surprised that it wasn't inspected. And then I started working on it and I was really surprised that it wasn't inspected.

Probably pretty glad it wasn't. Yeah, got lucky.

Yeah.

But, um, on, on the, on the flip side of that, like, I'm getting pretty excited because, um, it's not part of their Christmas present, but we're telling our kids at Christmas that we're going to Disney next year. So I'm getting pumped about stuff and getting—

Christmas is in the air.

Yeah. So I love all that kind of stuff. Honestly, you want to know what I'm more excited about than anything else? What's that? Mickey's Runaway Railway.

You're excited about it?

Super excited about it. Have you, have you read up in any, on any of the tech that—

No, because I'm still bitter about it. I don't, I don't want to like it.

I know. I mean, they got rid of, you know, one of my favorite rides. Yeah, absolutely. So, uh, but I'm, I'm pretty excited about what they're doing with it, so I'm excited to go ride it and see what what it's gonna be, but—

Am I supposed to be scary?

No.

Okay.

I was curious if your kids were gonna get on it.

Oh yeah.

Okay, 'cause it's Mickey.

Yeah.

All right.

Yep, it'll be good. Awesome, man.

Well, we have a really cool episode tonight. We've got David and Tyler in from Smart Size Buildings to talk about all the different fun buildings that they put together for homeowners. And let me tell you guys, this is a, this is a wide buffet of, uh, of selection you got, you got coming at you tonight. So this is pretty interesting stuff. How you guys doing?

Great, great. Glad to be here.

Yes, sir.

Awesome. Glad you guys could, uh, could come in studio and, and share with us a little bit about what you do. Uh, real, real quick, um, before we get into, to, to smart size buildings, I, I was, I was telling Tyler earlier, I saw earlier today you were, you were, you're thinking about doing some, some educational stuff for, for the kiddos. Is, is that, is that accurate?

Yes, that is. Uh, You know, I have people ask me weekly to teach their kids, and honestly, it's a huge liability bringing kids into a woodshop, a manufacturing setting. So still exploring it, possibly trying to put together some type of DIY at-home, you know, parent, you know, kids program.

Yeah.

It's in the works.

I think it's fantastic, man. I mean, like, you know, anything we can do to teach— I mean, like, because kids don't have shop class.

No, you know, not at all.

They don't learn how to do this kind of stuff anymore unless they have a dad, you know, or like an uncle or something that shows them how to do this kind of stuff. So I think it's fantastic you're thinking about doing that.

And also nowadays, you know, even with the dads, you know, everybody's got a busy lifestyle. Everybody's busy, and it's hard for a lot of dads to fit things like that into their schedule, especially if they don't work with stuff like that. You know, if they don't have a 2x4 just sitting around.

Yeah.

You know, so, and that's where we would come in. We would actually, you know, pre-cut everything and, you know, lay everything out and then ship it to you, and you would literally assemble it with your kid.

Yeah, I think, I think a lot of people that live here don't, don't realize, because I mean, because Houston is a huge commuter city.

It is.

You think of big cities, they're usually pretty tight. People commute either on public transportation or they've got a 20-minute drive. In Houston, it's not uncommon to have an hour or an hour-and-a-half drive. Moms and dads are literally spending sometimes 3 hours on the road every day getting to and from work. You're absolutely right. They're busy because they're spending a huge chunk of their day driving.

Yeah.

So they don't have time to do stuff at home. Everyone I talk to in this area is just like, if you ask them how they're doing, it's like, I'm so busy.

Well, part of that is where we live. We live 40 miles, actually more than that, more like 45 miles from the center of Houston. So we are definitely a bedroom community in a lot of ways, even though Conroe has its own hub in a lot of ways. But that being said, you're right. You know, even if they get home at a point in time when their kids are still up and, you know, maybe they have weekends off, those sorts of things, you're exhausted, man. You just don't have time to— yeah, to do some of that. So—

So anyway, commendable. Good, good idea. I, I encourage it. If I can help, let me know.

Awesome. Yeah, it's still in the early stages. I have talked to the website designer and, uh, you know, bounced a lot of ideas off of a lot of family and friends and, uh, just Pretty much made it somewhat Facebook official the other night. It was really just putting feelers out there to see.

I think that's where I saw it was on Facebook. Yeah.

It's like, okay, what kind of response am I actually going to get?

Did you get a good one?

Yeah. Right now I have around 80 people that, you know, said, yes, keep me updated.

Awesome.

Uh, you know, I threw a little offer out there, but okay. Yes, keep me updated. I am interested. And, and we're— so now it's like, okay, let's move forward and actually start putting a package together.

Awesome. Cool. I love that.

Cool.

Well, get us, get us into the genesis of, uh, of Smart Size Buildings. Where did this, where did this come from? Like, have you, have you always wanted to build stuff, or how'd this thing get going?

Well, uh, you know, growing up, we were the type of family, we don't, uh, we don't hire out, we just get it done ourselves.

Okay.

And, uh, so I, I gained a lot of experience as a kid. My kids, uh, my parents had a remodeling business growing up, so, okay, you know, I was 7, 8 years old and they're being the demo crew. So that was—

7 and 8-year-olds are really good at that. Yeah. Sometimes they'll do it even without being asked. Yeah.

Yeah. Tore up a lot of stuff that I shouldn't have and, and, uh, got in a lot of trouble here and there, but, all right. Um, you know, it, it, uh, it always stuck in the back of my mind. And then I actually went into sales and I was working for a, uh, a large mobile home company.

Mm-hmm.

And, you know, with, with single-wide mobile homes, they always have storage issues.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

So worked it out with a one of my now competitors, but at the time I'd worked it out to where I was just sending them the referrals.

Okay.

And, um, things didn't go as planned towards the end.

Okay.

And, uh, we happened to, to cut our ties with the referral program and started doing it on my own. Uh, actually, my— I want to say my first 6 sheds were built in my parents' driveway. Um, they were building them for me after work. While I was still working at another company.

Oh, wow.

And once I realized, hey, there is a niche for this, there is an area, there is an opportunity, it just took off and everything happened to fall in place.

That's fantastic. So how long have you guys been in business now?

A couple years. March actually makes 3 years.

Okay.

Yeah. So, you know, like I said, at first it was more on the on the side, just here and there. Uh, last month made 2 years of being in full-time.

Okay.

Uh, with the business. Uh, I used to sub everything out to contractors. You know, I went and rented a shop. I would go buy the material, put it in the shop, call them, say, hey, go build the shed while I'm at work. Mhm. And ran into quality control issues, uh, inventory issues.

Ah.

Um, so it just, like I said, it just worked out to where I could step in full-time, and that's when I started hiring employees. And Tyler was one of the, one of the first few actually that I'd hired, uh, in a little 500-square-foot shop.

Nice.

About 2 years ago. Yeah.

So you've been with the company 2 years now?

Yes, sir.

Awesome. And, and, and so it is, is most of what you guys producing Like storage sheds, or you guys doing it— because I mean, like, from what— from our conversations online earlier, I mean, it's like you guys do a lot of different stuff now, right?

We do, we do. Uh, we'll, we'll pretty much do whatever the customer needs. You know, we, we aim to do everything in the backyard.

Okay.

Uh, you know, I'm looking at adding a line of, uh, backyard patio furniture.

Okay.

Um, you know, and I have opportunities to buy it out of state, bring it in on a on a truckload, but I'm the type of person, instead of paying somebody else money to do something, I'd rather pay my own guys and keep the money local.

Yeah.

So, uh, you know, I just— we don't ever work weekends, and I actually just offered for him to work a weekend instead of paying another contractor to do some work for me. So it's like, hey, you want to work Saturday?

Yeah.

Um, so yeah, we're, we're looking at adding a backyard patio furniture line, uh, The, the, what we do every day is storage sheds, you know, storage sheds, portable buildings. Last year, we started adding chicken coops. It's a little higher-end chicken coop. It's not the normal chicken coop that you would find at the local feed store.

Right.

But, you know, we started adding chicken coops and those things took off.

I bet.

You know, there is a market for those.

It's a huge market right now.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

It's crazy. We built, I kind of designed one. Let's see what happens. And then it was more, for a few months, it was more than 50% of our business.

Oh, wow.

So we went from a storage shed business to a chicken coop business.

Are you, like, for the people that you're building chicken coops for, I mean, are they looking at having like, you know, 2 and 3 chickens in their backyard? Or are you, you know, is this like, you know, full scale, like we need 20 birds in this thing? Or is it the full range? That you're getting?

It's, it's everything. Uh, the smallest chicken coop we've built was an 8 by 8, uh, 8 foot by 8 foot.

Okay.

Uh, the largest we've built to date was, uh, 12 by 20, I believe.

No.

Okay.

And it's actually sitting on the display lot right now. It's a used model.

Okay. Somebody bought it and then—

They bought it and then they moved.

Oh, okay.

So what they told the, the rent-to-own company is they moved and they couldn't take it to the, the new property.

Okay, so they asked you guys to come get it?

Yeah, yeah, they did a voluntary repo, so, uh, sent Tyler out there to pick it up.

Yeah, so, so, I mean, as we're sitting here talking about this, so I assume y'all do like small stuff for, you know, tools and lawn mowers, that sort of thing. Do y'all do all the way up to like RV, um, size buildings, or once we get into that, I mean Are, are also, I'm curious, are these mostly like wooden buildings or do y'all do metal buildings? What are your, what are your parameters?

So right now I am an online dealer, uh, for a carport company. And what that means is I don't actually have any stock inventory. So everything we would sell for them would be just on paper.

Okay.

You look at pictures, you can buy it. What we do in-house, and we're actually the manufacturer of wood frame portable buildings and storage sheds, we can do wood frame carports. But then it runs into pricing to where most people want the cheaper option of the metal frame. Yeah, the square tube frame is just cheaper. But if you need it to match your house, or you need the wood frame for HOA, things like that, that's where we would step in and we would build it ourselves.

Okay.

So as far as size, we can do anything from You know, a 4-foot by 4-foot deer blind all the way up to a 16 by 40 in a single section. And then you would step into the double sections from there. And that would go all the way up to 32 by 40.

So definitely big enough for RVs. Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure.

So that, you know, as far as the carports, we could build whatever size.

Okay.

You know, it's, it's an engineered truss system. So we'd have the trusses engineered. And I want to say they go all the way out to, uh, uh, 56 foot is how wide my engineer will work up to.

Yeah.

That's impressive.

Yeah.

We just, we haven't built anything that big yet. But if you're out there, yeah, we're taking orders.

I bet you are.

Yeah. So definitely something that big, we definitely have to build it on site.

Sure.

So the standard customer that, you know, calls you on the phone, reaches out to you on Facebook, however they're getting ahold of you, what is the primary reason people are looking for like this additional storage on their home?

You know, there's, there's actually a lot. It's hard to narrow it down to one specific customer or even a couple. I mean, we have people that, uh, you know, just went through a divorce, need a storage. A lot of people realize that they're paying, you know, more than $100 a month at these big self-storage companies.

Oh yeah.

And they're never going to own it.

No.

To where With us, you could pay, you know, for the same size room, you could pay $100 a month or a little bit more, but then you're going to own it in a couple years.

Okay.

So you have that ownership.

Yeah.

Instead of making somebody else rich off of your rent.

We have a lot of— I mean, real quick, do you guys finance these things?

Right now we don't have any financing options per se.

It's—

they're very sensitive with the legalities, the terms. It's rent-to-own. It's a rental payment.

Okay.

Yeah. So it's not an interest rate. It is a rental payment.

Got it.

So you rent it for however many months we agree on the term, and after that term, it's yours.

Okay.

But it's also a rental, so you can cancel.

And you'll come pick it up?

Yeah.

Got it.

You can cancel at any time.

I gotcha.

Yeah, so there's pros and cons to it.

For both of you?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, for us, the rent-to-own company, and the consumer.

Hmm.

So what is— I mean, like, obviously you're not an attorney, and none of us here are attorneys. But like, what—

I'm close.

You're close?

All right.

Way in here, Kev. Okay, uh, what, what is the legal difference between like, you know, basically financing something and renting to own? Is that, is that the big distinction? Is that like, you know, basically this thing, you know, either one of you can cancel this, you know, agreement and the property can be, you know, retaken? Is that, is that basically the difference? Or—

Uh, yeah, with a rent-to-own, there's no credit check. Okay, so you have no credit check. Literally, if you have a spot to put it Regardless if you own the property or you lease it, you have an ID or driver's license, some type of income to pay for it.

Yeah, you're approved.

Yeah, it's that easy. With financing, obviously, it's a little bit different. There's a lot of banks that don't want to finance them, right? Because they are so small.

Mm-hmm.

So a lot of the times when it comes to financing, if a customer is dead set on financing, I try to send them through one of the credit unions. Uh, for a personal loan, there's a couple banks we've been talking to that do offer financing, and they do have a lot of restrictions. You know, it has to be—

I would imagine. Yeah.

You know, this and this and this, and, you know, job term, uh, credit scores, all that. So, um, and it's just— I, I hate to say it, it's, it's a pain.

Yeah.

So Rent to Own, it's, it's quick and easy, and our Our customer normally needs something pretty quick.

Yeah.

You know, people come to us and we do lose quite a bit of sales just because we can't build it quick enough.

You don't have them sitting right there for them to pick up unless it's a big chicken coop, obviously.

Yeah, yeah, we only have a few models. We like to do build-to-order. You know, I'm not a huge company that has hundreds of thousands of dollars of inventory. So, you know, we are a smaller company. I'm the only member in the, in the company.

But, uh, but I imagine that that also gives you somewhat of an advantage in that you can be a little bit more custom.

Exactly.

Like, what color do you want?

You know, what do you want it to look like?

All those kind of things.

Like, we can get you what you want.

Yeah, yeah, we can get it exactly the way you want it. Windows, doors, wall height, pitches of the roof, uh, shingle colors, everything.

So, so how do you, how do you work deals out for, um, Electricity in these things, or, you know, if you need plumbing in any of them for, for one reason or another, do you subcontract that stuff out? Or do y'all build that stuff in upfront?

A little bit of both. So it depends on the situation, we can actually pre-wire the shed with the shed electrical package. Okay, but we cannot legally tie it into the electrical service. So that's when we would contact an electrician, say, hey, come out here, inspect the shed for us, make sure we did it right, uh, to your liking, because obviously he would have to wire it in and sign off on our work.

Correct.

Uh, and we do have an electrician that we've met here locally that will come out and inspect the shed and, uh, do all the electrical tie-ins.

Okay. For very reasonable costs. Yeah. So y'all, y'all take care of that. So if I were to come as, as a homeowner or, or a renter And say, I want this building, um, I'm not having to contact the electrician, you're— that's something y'all will do for me. Okay.

Yeah, we refer him out.

Okay.

Uh, that's, that's not an issue at all. We try to do as much as we can just to make it easier on you, because buying anything is, is hard nowadays.

Oh, it is. And, and there's a reason that they need that storage, right? I mean, they're, they're—

They've got something they need to put in there like yesterday.

Yeah, they don't have the time. And we were just talking about that. They don't have the time to, you know, go out there and find all this stuff unless they already have relationships with these people. And a lot of people don't realize, like, just putting a shed out, out in your backyard with electricity, that's not necessarily something that just happens.

No.

Most people don't have wiring out in the middle of your yard, right? You gotta get, get it out there. You gotta have someone to dig a ditch. You got someone to lay the conduit and put— you know, it's, it's not just a simple process. It can become simple by someone else who knows what they're doing taking care of those things for you, but it's just not plop it down and bam, it works.

Yeah, exactly. I think I've only had one situation where the electrical was already there.

Okay.

And honestly, the guy had ran an extension cord through a piece of conduit.

Oh no.

And it was— he ordered a playhouse for his daughter.

Okay.

So when we delivered the playhouse, he said, hey, can y'all do this and this It's like, well, we can't, but you can. It's already there. Yeah. So that was a very easy, uh, easy job for him.

Sure. Nice.

So yeah, we, uh, so the, the house we lived in in Little Rock had 2 sheds in the backyard. One of them was a, uh, more of a pre-engineered, um, type of building. It was metal exterior, was wooden on the interior. The other one was just a that someone came out and built. I mean, the homeowner may have built it, but it was falling apart, all this kind of stuff. And, you know, we ran into some electrical issues here and there, and it, it winds up becoming a pain. And, and at the end of the day, like, you really want someone to come out and do that. You do not want to do just a DIY job on some of that, because

if you don't have good conduit down, or you put something in the ground and then it's You don't know where it's running. Um, you know, obviously there are companies out there that'll come and, and let you know where your wiring is, but yeah, it's just a big process. So it's, it's nice that y'all are able to kind of take care of that and, um, and take that off the, the purchaser.

Yeah. Yeah. We try to help out as much as we can and word of mouth goes a long way. So as long as we keep the customer happy, we, we keep the customers coming in.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, so what, what is— I, I guess that sort of leads into what is the actual process with you guys? I mean, so someone calls you, they need us, they need a shed. Do you guys— I mean, do you guys have— I think you said you had models to pick from, or do you kind of go through like a design process with them?

So we do have a few models. Uh, you know, we've built a lot of sheds.

Yeah.

Over the past few years. So we have a lot of pictures to go off of and Realistically, we, we do go through a design process. It's okay. What are you, what are you looking for and what are you looking to use it for? You know, what, what style, what size, um, you know, what kind of quality? Because we do have different levels as well.

Okay.

So it's what exactly do you want? What is your budget? And then if, if, you know, it's not realistic, we say, okay, well, with this is what we can do to help you. Uh, and that's actually where my business name came from, Smart Size Buildings. We're gonna make a smarter size building for you. To kind of help you out with, okay, well, you can put this and this and this in that shed.

Mm-hmm.

Um, so we, we would sit down and, and really design everything, uh, and every building we sell is, is drawn up for that specific customer. So, you know, the customer approves all their renderings before we actually build anything.

Oh, okay.

So when the customer changes things last minute, You know, like, hey, go from— I want instead of 2 3-foot doors for a 6-foot opening, let's change it up to a 4-foot opening. It throws a kink in things, but we can overcome it. You know, as long as we know soon enough, it's not a huge issue. And that's where the renderings come in. You know, we make sure they approve it before we actually build it.

Yeah. And then once, once it's approved, what's the next step then?

Once it's approved, we would, uh, we would move forward with the production of the building. So we actually go buy all the raw material. So we buy 2x4s and 2x6s just like everybody else would.

Mm-hmm.

Uh, we bring it into the shop. It's more of a, a factory setting. So we've gotten, gotten the, the labor costs down enough and the material costs down enough to where we can still make a profit and not charge an outrageous price. But, um, you know, we, we cut all the boards, we precut everything, palletize it, and then start assembly.

What does that mean, palletize it?

We actually get everything labeled and on a pallet, so it's— it then becomes a big erector set in the shop.

Okay, yeah, so you're basically doing that for efficiency of like, this is this project, this is this project, and you go work on project number 1, you go work on— is that kind of the reason for that?

Exactly, exactly, yeah. So it just, uh, you know, it eliminates the The need to have somebody standing around waiting on somebody else to go cut a board or, uh, hey, where's this piece of material at? It's, it's all right there.

So, okay. So you, you've put the kit together, so to speak.

Right.

Okay. That makes a lot of sense. And, and so what is, once you have, you, so project's been approved, got everything out. I learned a new word tonight, Kev. You got everything palletized. Great.

There we go.

So he's gonna screw that up next week.

That's right. I promise.

I'm gonna use it in an inappropriate way.

That's right.

Um, you got it, you got it palletized. What's your turnaround time on that thing?

Just depends. It really depends on the size of the building and our current backlog.

Okay.

Uh, so right now, today, we just sold, uh, or took a deposit on a building. It's a 20 by 32 cabin shell. We're building it out in Grimes County. Um, it's backed all the way out till the end of January, beginning of February.

Okay.

So right now we'll, we'll go ahead and start working on the design, getting everything approved by the customer. Uh, and then we'll, we'll move forward with the production, but it is a few weeks backlogged.

Yeah. So you, and it's because you got other projects in front of it.

Exactly.

So not, and not that we would ever want this to happen, but say you had no other projects. What's, what's the turnaround time on like a standard shed?

Uh, 10 by 12 inside the shop, we should be able to knock out in about a day.

About a day. Is this where Tyler jumps in?

And yeah, that's, that's who I call and say, hey, why isn't this shed built yet?

You know, uh, that is pretty much what I do.

And then, uh, you know, he's right now, he's kind of my, my go-to guy. It's, here's the key to my truck, you know, go get the material, go deliver this, uh, go run this errand for me, make sure this gets built. Yeah, I'm gonna go run this errand, you know, make sure everything's staying in track and, and on on track and in line.

So you're the project manager?

Yes, sir.

Okay.

Yeah.

Okay. Now that's, that's awesome. You know, one of the things that I'm, that I'm hearing is that anybody can go to Lowe's, for example, and buy a shed, right?

Yes, sir.

And they can get it brought to their house. Someone will even come and assemble it for them if they want to pay for that to happen, sort of. Um, yeah.

Um, and lucky in his 3 fingers.

Exactly. And they can get it done and they'll have that. Um, but what I hear you saying is we can build any size, any design, any number of openings, any number of, you know, lighting, whatever it is that you need in there. So the difference is you're getting fully custom. And also you're guaranteeing a certain quality. And not only that, like, I know who to call if I wind up having an issue. Um, whereas if I buy this from Lowe's, they're going to be like, but we're not— we just sold it to you. Like, I just started here, right? Yeah. Yeah. I'm waiting for my name badge still. Um, so truly you're, you're giving the customers a very different experience than they're

getting by just going to a box store and buying a shed.

Yes, definitely. And they're, they're also shopping local. You know, it's, we do everything here. We're, we're not one of the other, uh, shed dealers that orders product from Kentucky and ships it in on an 18-wheeler.

Slam on Kentucky outta nowhere.

Oh yeah.

Yeah.

That was the only state I could think of where, where I don't know of a shed manufacturer.

That's fine. We don't have many downloads there anyway.

Yeah, that's true.

So. You know, we're not one of those dealers that just, you know, buys it from another company and resells it. We're not a dealer for another manufacturer. We manufacture our own product. We warranty all of our own product.

It's—

we deliver, I'm going to say, 90% of our own product.

Mm-hmm.

Every now and then, we do have to outsource it. We just had a 12 by 32 cabin, a little 1-bedroom, 1-bath that we delivered to South Houston. Obviously, we couldn't work it into the delivery schedule and the size of it. I opted to go ahead and contract it out to another driver. It was a piece of cake for him and it just worked out for everybody.

Yeah. Well, you mentioned something that I want to take a sidebar for. We've never really talked about this on the show, but you brought up something you've brought up a couple of times now, and it's the idea of this buying local. Can you give us just your opinion? I mean, you're a local business owner. Um, trying to do your best to, to make a living, but also, um, do it in such a way that it is local. You're calling it local for a reason. What, what is the purpose behind— like, why would I care as a, as a person who lives in this area? Why would I care about buying local versus buying from, you know, wherever? What, what is

that benefit?

Let's go with Kentucky.

Let's go. All right. What is your opinion on this? Because we've never really talked about this. Um, I've got my own opinions about it, but, um, I'm, I'm pro that, by the way.

Um, left him hanging there like, are we about to have a fight? No, no, no, no.

I just, I'm just curious what, what that, what that means to you.

You know, honestly, there's, there's a lot, but the biggest things is probably, uh, growth in the area and, um, the unemployment rate is really high. So when you do shop local, you're actually employing people, even if you're not employing them directly. Uh, when you buy a product or a service from a local business, you're helping multiple families put food on their table, not just that business owner. Uh, to where if you're, you know, buying from one of the bigger companies, where is it?

Yeah.

You know, um, a lot of these bigger companies have head corporate offices, and some of the bigger companies, you don't even know where the corporate office is.

Right.

Us, it's very easy to find us. So it's all local, and with that, you know, it helps me employ several employees and keep them at 40 hours a week so that they can do what they need to do to take care of themselves.

It boosts the economy.

It does, yeah, in the end, yeah, especially in this area, not just everywhere.

Yeah, and I don't think that— I don't think a lot of people realize that, that most people that own a local small business actually do want to employ more people. You know, they, you know, they, they want to help people take care of themselves, provide for their families, put food on the table. They want those things for other people. They don't want to— and, and most, most business owners that I know, you know, will, will take it on the chin themselves in order to, to make payroll, you know. Um, and, and so like, they, they wanna, they wanna take care of their people and they don't just— and they, and, you know, and that's hard.

So yeah, it's, it's happened a few times and, yeah, and, uh, luckily, you know, we always make it through even in the slow times.

Yeah.

But, uh, and, and that's just Part of business ownership, I guess, or for a small business owner anyways.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And so I think on some, on some level, I think it's important to know that, let's say you go to, you go to Lowe's, you buy it, you know, you could, you find a shed, oh, it's gonna cost me $1,500 for this, for this building. And I don't know what your buildings cost, but let's just say it's, it's twice that. Let's just say it's, it's $3,000 instead of $1,500. You have to make a decision, right? I mean, and you got to make a business decision, and you got to make a household decision and a good financial decision. But one of the things that I hear you saying is that, like, if you want to continue to have a place to buy other things, you need to— you need to support local business. Like,

find a way to, to support the local people, um, because otherwise the economy goes south. I mean, good luck. Your cost of living could go up because of lots of various things.

Definitely.

There's huge upside to doing those sorts of things. Plus, I don't know, you just feel good at the end of the day. I didn't just buy this pre-manufactured by someone who doesn't care about my family. This is someone who cared about what I needed, when I needed it, how I needed it. And you, I think you can feel really good about that.

Yeah. You know, a lot of the times, uh, some of the bigger box stores like Lowe's, uh, you know, their, their buildings may actually be cheaper than ours, but in the long run, you're gonna wind up spending a little bit more, uh, just for repairs and things like that and maintenance on it. So we, we've changed a lot of the products that we use to go with better products just for the warranty purposes. You know, we went from using a wood siding that had no warranty to using a siding with a 50-year warranty on it. So, you know, we've, we've tried to change along the way for the better. Some things, you know, we couldn't keep up with, but we're trying to keep up with, with

all the warranties and make sure that everything is good.

What kind of a wood siding has a 50-year warranty?

It's actually an LP Smart Panel Smart Siding. Okay, it's an engineered product. Uh, but it does have a 50-year warranty on it.

But it's, it's made completely outta wood.

Uh, yeah. Yeah. It's an engineered, it has an engineered exterior.

Okay.

Engineered face on it.

So it's like a finish on it or something, or, okay. That's crazy.

Pre-primed from, uh, you can buy it from Lowe's.

Home Depot.

Um, I mean, you can buy it from those local stores. Sure.

But, well, no, I, I, I think that there's also something to be said about you get what you pay for. I mean, you know, you're, you're gonna get— you know, warranties aren't free.

No.

But there's also a reason that someone would offer a warranty on a product. They're saying, look, I have some sustainability in this product, versus someone who's just like, look, I'm gonna sell you this product. If it goes bad, should have bought the warranty, you know?

Yeah, we have a 5-year Yeah. 5-year structural warranty included on every product that we build.

Oh, wow.

Yeah.

So that's great.

All right.

I'm gonna, I'm gonna try and lure Tyler into the, into the conversation here. So like, and cuz you, you were, you were chuckling earlier when we were talking about some of the, the inferior products that some of these other big box stores, what, what, what do you see? Because you're, you're putting these things together, right? What do you see as the big difference between like what you can buy as like a metal shed from a big box store versus what you guys are putting together?

Uh, the design of the building. I've actually looked at other companies and how they build their buildings compared to us and the quality of their building. There's much of a difference.

Yeah. Um, now what, what for you makes, makes it quality then?

Longer screws.

That's, that's Kevin's only trick.

Right shank nails.

The right, right equipment is part of it.

Yeah.

You know, uh, you can't just go around screwing everything together.

Sure. So, um, come on, Kev, we gotta be professional over here. Yeah.

There's, there's a place for a screw and a, a place for a nail.

Yeah.

Right.

So, okay.

They have different structural strengths.

Okay.

Um, 'cause I get nail gun happy. I mean, me too.

Sometimes I'm not gonna lie.

It's just fun.

It looks great on video.

That's right.

It's also easy.

Yeah.

You know, when, when Tyler first started, I think he was probably a couple months in, I actually, uh, had him go look at some of our competitors locally.

Mm-hmm.

And, uh, take pictures. And, uh, I actually went and took pictures of a, another competitor and said, go look at these buildings and look at the quality difference.

Mm-hmm.

Uh, you know, we try to build our, our product where it's built like a house. We build it to the same standards. We can build to 140-mile-an-hour Florida wind zone.

Mm.

Uh, you know, we don't always do that because obviously we're not on a coastal county, but we can. It's, it's engineered for that. And a lot of the, the competitors around here, uh, you know, framing would have a, a half-inch gap.

Uh, where 2 boards butt up and like, don't turn around quick inside of it.

Yeah, it's just, it's just, it's unacceptable. But that's also a company that builds, you know, 100 4x8 wall panels and then puts 3 wall panels together to make a 12-foot wall. So, uh, to where we're actually building a 12-foot wall as a unit, uh, to where they're doing it multiple sections.

Sure.

But yeah, he has seen a lot of experience with a lot of the competitors.

There's a big difference between being massively manufactured compared to where we do each one with our crew every time. So any mistakes, we catch them right then and there, get them fixed, and then keep on trucking.

Well, okay, so you guys have mentioned a couple of times now something that is really intriguing to me, Um, yeah, uh, we're getting— we're getting— we should see if we can go live here. Yeah, but, uh, one of the things you guys have mentioned, I think you mentioned a cabin, and I know one of the things I think I've seen on— I think it was on your Facebook page— tiny houses, which is a huge, huge market right now. Like, like, people are, you know, either buying tiny houses or building tiny houses, or I think there's like this recurring story out there on the internet about these, you know, Group of retired people all buying these tiny houses around a parking lot together. So you guys put some of these together. Uh,

how many of these have you guys done now? I think you just told me you just, you just had a cabin delivered.

So, so I don't actually have an exact count, honestly. By the end of 2019, my goal was to be doing 51%, uh, tiny houses or cabins.

Yeah.

Tiny houses, that term is very tricky. Come to find out, there's a lot of regulations for the tiny houses.

Now, does this have to do with them being on wheels?

Yes.

Okay.

Yes.

I gotcha.

So then we started looking into park models, which could actually go in an RV park. But then there's even more legalities with that.

Okay.

As far as square footages, wastewater, and things like that.

Yeah.

There's been a little bit of a setback as far as building 51% of my inventory is tiny houses and cabins. But as of right now, we can build a cabin shell, no problem at all.

Okay.

You know, we can even assist with the interior framing, the electrical work, the plumbing work. We just can't do all the tie-ins, and we can't do the finish-out work.

Okay.

So with that, that's where you'd have to hire another contractor to come in and, and completely finish it out.

Okay, cabinets and furniture and those sorts of things.

Right, right.

Okay.

Yeah.

Yeah. So Yeah, it's, it's a huge movement right now. And in fact, I was, I was talking to a buddy about this just the other day. I was like, why, why would someone buy a tiny house over like an RV? I mean, you know, what's, what's the big difference? And I think ultimately, um, you, you, you doing what you do in and of itself tells you the difference. Like the difference in, in an RV and a tiny home. And I know because I've been remodeling Just recently, parts of my camper, they're built super cheaply.

I mean, yes.

The materials inside of them, I mean, they're— first of all, they're framed out with 2x2s, if that. Sometimes they're like 1.5x1.5s, right? And, um, there's very little insulation in these things. They're, you know, structurally, they don't take much. But I assume these tiny homes, they're built and engineered quite a bit more hefty. Is that, is that something you would agree with?

I would, yeah. So with travel trailers, RVs, motorhomes, they all have to be— they have to meet a certain weight to go down the road.

Yeah.

So with our cabins, obviously they don't. They do have to meet a weight. Obviously, if it's too heavy for me to transport or any of my my employees to transport, we would sub it out to a driver that could.

Yeah.

Um, and we would get it there or we would build it on site. But with that, we build the same specifications as a, uh, site builder, as a house down the street, you know, a half a million dollar house. We still use the same materials, the same framing, the same framing techniques. You know, it's, we do have different framing packages so you can choose, you know, 12-inch centers, 16-inch centers, 24-inch centers.

Okay.

Things like that. But so do house builders, you know, you can upgrade your framing. We use the, like I said, the same panels that they use, you know, plywood and treated plywood.

They're just tiny.

They're just a smaller version.

Yeah.

So it's built just like your house that you're in right now, just on a smaller version.

Okay, so you're getting a much, much more quality living environment, right, right, than what you would get otherwise. Now here, here's something that I'm curious about. Have you seen the ones that stand up on their end?

I have seen a tiny house that stood on its end.

Okay.

Yes.

Unbelievable. It's, it's the most bizarre thing ever.

So is it like a tower or is it—

Yes.

Okay.

Yeah, maybe thinking of a different one.

Okay, well, this one, it's a— so, so yeah. Basically, this thing, it goes down the road, right? Yeah, gets to its place and they literally just sit it up on its end and it's like a tower.

I haven't seen that one.

It is the most bizarre thing I've ever seen. Hmm, but interesting. And it also had like some, some features where it like had a porch that like came down and like it trans— it was like this Transformer type of thing.

I guess you better have everything tied down in there before.

I don't have a clue how it I don't know what all the functionality of, of how it happened. Yeah, but it was on, it was on one of those tiny home shows that I watched.

You need to find, you need to find a link to this and put it up on the page so we can, we can all—

I'll try to find it.

Bask in its glory.

So it's like a pop-out house?

Yeah, I guess instead of a pop-up.

Yeah, it just pops out.

Yeah, it's weird.

Anyway, I have seen one of those, uh, it was a CGI, you know, computer-generated image, but you know, to where it all unfolded Yeah, it transported like a metal shipping container, and then once it got there, it was like a 3,000-square-foot—

Yeah, well, you know, I mean, and you think about it, that's one of the— that is one of the benefits of owning a travel trailer or, or fifth wheel or something like that, as opposed to a tiny home, is there's more square footage because you wind up having these slide-outs that produce a lot of space inside, but you're still living inside an engineered type of vehicle versus, uh, the type of manufactured home that you're talking about, right? Very different.

There's not always more square footage. Like I said earlier, we can build up to a 16 by 40 in a single section.

Okay.

And then the double sections, we can go up to 32 by 40. So when you get up that big, that's a small house. Yeah, you know, it really is.

But I've actually seen some— a lot of these have like essentially 2 floors, you know, where there's like kind of like a loft area and it creates a little bit more space above like a bedroom or different things like that. And so they're able to create some space that way as well.

Yeah, we can do lofted barns. We haven't built any actual 2-story sheds, uh-huh, uh, just for the simple fact of majority of our sales are rent-to-own and we can't rent-to-own a 2-story.

Oh, really?

Uh, yeah. So some of the big local box stores that have a 2-story shed on display, they've had it there for several years because guys like myself, uh, we charge too much to go out there and take the second story down so that we can transport it.

Got it. That makes a lot of sense.

Yeah, so it's gotta pass underneath the, uh, bridges, the bridges and the overpasses, the power lines. Uh, I don't know how many times I've been called to transport a 2-story barn out of Tumble and it's just— Can't do it. Yeah. I ask them, okay, is it the red one? Yeah. I'm sorry. We just, we're gonna refuse.

Is it the red one?

Yeah.

We just, we can't do it.

You know, it's— I know about old—

No, it's not the red one. Blue? No. Yellow? No. Which one is it? 'Cause I'm not doing it.

I'll swing by today.

That's right.

Look at it at least. But yeah, the, the 2 stories, you would have to completely disassemble the top floor to get it under the transport height.

Oh wow, that makes sense. So, but it's not something that most people think about. Not at all. How many people transport their home? Not that many.

Yeah, you do see that a lot though, where people will be like, hey, free house if you just come move it.

Yeah, which is $15,000. Yeah, it gets very costly.

Nothing's free, especially on a A brick and mortar—

I mean, a pier and beam house, to move that is very expensive.

Is it more expensive to move than like a foundation home?

Hmm, I'm not sure. Probably not.

Probably not.

Probably not. Because pier and beam is already off.

It's already off the ground.

So they can just put their beams underneath it and their axles and go.

Go. Yeah.

You know, mobile homes obviously are cheaper.

Hitch.

Just because it's—

they're made for that.

Yeah.

Yeah. So portable buildings, they're not too bad.

Okay.

We make them to where they are portable. So that helps out a lot.

Well, I was going to ask you earlier, uh, cause you were talking about the cabin, um, and, and before the show you and I were talking about concrete and you say like, you know, we'll, we'll do concrete work, but like, you know, if it gets a little too complicated, that's out of our, out of our range or whatever. But like, you know, for like, like the cabin, was that, was that pier and beam or was that sitting on a slab?

Uh, the most recent cabin, it was, uh, it was actually just a dirt foundation.

Okay.

So it was a pier and beam.

Okay.

Uh, we have built, uh, we have built one that was on a slab. It's probably 2 years ago.

Okay.

And we've also poured slabs and then put the cabin, a portable building, on top of the slab.

Okay.

We've done that a couple times too. So just depends on what kind of foundation you want under your shed.

Okay. Yeah.

So if you're gonna be putting a lot of weight in it, you know, we can build sheds that can hold a vehicle inside.

Yeah. So, uh, does it make a difference if that— if there's, you know, plumbing needs to be put in? Because obviously you can't do the tie-ins, so someone else would have to do that foundation if they needed to be plumbing going through that, right?

Right. Yeah. Or we would try to stub it out the side.

Okay. Yeah.

To where they could still just make it all exterior walls.

Yeah. Okay. Makes sense.

That would be an option.

All right, cool. What you got, Kev?

I don't know. I mean, I, I, I think that, that it's, um, it's really, it's really nice to know that there are people out there that can, that can do more than just buy something at Lowe's, you know, because— and, and, you know, not, not to slight Lowe's. I mean, they're, they're offering a service out there that's very accessible And honestly, it's, you know, it's inexpensive. Um, but it's nice to know that there are other options out there. And, um, I, I hope that the, the people listening today are, are finding out some stuff. And what that is, is you, you don't have just one place to go look for these things, and you don't necessarily have to have a metal building, especially, you know,

like you said, to meet HOA requirements or whatever. Like, there, there are people out there doing things a little more customizable and you're getting a different quality out there. So hopefully this is something that, you know, everybody out there is going, oh, okay, now I know more about this than I did before.

Yeah, HOAs can be tricky. You know, we will work with your HOAs and that's where we— the renderings come in, the 3D drawings. Um, you know, HOAs, some of them are very easy, some of them are Not so easy. So, uh, for adjectives there, we can make it work. Uh, and, and we don't like dealing with the HOAs, but we have the ability to deal with the HOAs on our behalf.

Well, and unfortunately, living, you know, there are some places that you might live in and that's not an issue. Where we live, it's an issue. most places in this area have an HOA of some sort.

Yes, um, even I have an HOA.

Even you? Even me, believe it or not.

Wow.

Yeah, so yep, makes a difference. Um, well, what else, man? Anything else you can think of?

No, I would— I mean, like, I'm, I'm kind of struck that you can like do the style and the color match for the shed. I mean, I think that's like a really cool option that, you know, one, It makes it look cohesive on the property. 2, it makes it sound like it's easier to talk the wife into. You know, like, babe, we're gonna get a shed, but it's gonna match the house perfectly.

Yeah, hopefully it's an easier sell in the future as well.

Yeah.

You know, it's like, oh, this isn't just some random piece of junk someone threw out here.

That, that's actually one of the things that really irritates me when I walk onto someone's property, is like when you just have this hodgepodge of like Non-cohesive buildings, just like, what's that? Oh, that's— no, we've got something that's kind of like an oriental style going on over there. That's, uh—

Even your property has some cohesive design. It does.

I will grant it that. It is all completely equally weird.

It's made out of the same stuff.

Yeah.

No, but I, I do think that that's a— you know, I see Tyler, you know, Actively nodding his head whenever I said something about like sellability. Like the, the resale on, on y'all's products has got to be a whole lot better as far as, you know, not, not that people are reselling that product specifically, but they got— some people are selling their home and go, look, this is not your run-of-the-mill shed. Like this is not something— because how many people buy homes, they're like, I'm gonna have to take that thing out.

Mm-hmm.

Like that thing, it's falling down. Like I don't even know how it's gonna pass inspection, won't get insured. Right. Um, but like, this is a quality piece of, of, you know, structure that you're going to be happy to have. And you're, you know, if I'm looking at a house, I'm going, wow, that's a nice piece of, you know, material. You know, it's built well.

Yeah. Earlier this year, we actually had a bank out of Dallas call us, um, because just insurance purposes, the shed would not pass an inspection. And they bought one of our sheds to get it on the property. Unfortunately, we couldn't get it exactly where they needed it, but luckily they had contractors out there doing other work on the house, and we assisted them with moving the shed into place.

Palletized it? Yeah, yeah.

I want to say they actually bought one of our lower-end models that we build to compete with the bigger box stores.

Sure.

So, yeah, that was nice that a bank called us.

Nice.

So I'm glad I remembered this because this was something I really wanted to ask you about. One of the other— I really wanted to ask you about tiny houses. And so the other trend I wanted to know if you guys have tapped into yet is the she shed. Have you guys, have you guys jumped on this, on this yet?

She sheds, he sheds, uh, you know, we sheds.

Yeah, for the ambiguous.

Yeah, the we shed.

They're, they're all a shed. Yeah, yeah, you know, it's all about how you decorate it and the colors you paint it. We can do tropical colors, we can do pinks and greens and browns. It's, it's—

Galveston is not that far away, people buy them.

It's not. And I actually had a customer here locally that bought a beach-themed cottage.

Nice.

So they, they have a big Texan's backyard and decided they wanted to have a Galveston backyard as well. So the wife got her wants and husband had his wants.

There you go. You know, I— so, so this is kind of a little funny story. So early on, we bought this house in Arkansas and it has those 2 sheds I was telling you about. One of them is very nice. It was insulated, paneled, you know, we actually put an air conditioning unit out there. And so it was It was nicely air-controlled, those sorts of things. And my mother-in-law just kind of offhanded one day, she was like, looks like a good mother-in-law's quarters someday. And so my response was, you know what? That's a great idea. Anytime you come visit us, you can sleep out there. That's not the response that I got.

Yeah.

How did that go over? She's like, that's not what I meant. meant, Kevin. I was like, oh, okay, honey, we need to move. And our current house has no shed, so, well, no mother-in-law's quarters.

That's right.

But I, I love my mother-in-law, she knows that.

We need to get a shed, dude.

I may need to get my own shed.

Exactly.

Speaking of the he sheds, we're just right down the road.

So that's right, we got your man cave.

There you go.

Well, and I, I bring that up because like, I, I think typically when people think about a shed, like, well, That's, that's where the husband or the man of the house is gonna put the lawnmower or gonna put, you know, the tools or, you know, whatever it is he's got going on. This seems like, this seems like a pretty wide trend going on right now. It's like, well, mama wants a shed too.

Well, yeah, she wants some place to craft and do her things.

Yeah.

Yeah, there's, there's a lot of it, you know. Uh, uh, typically when the, the wife wants a shed, it's either to clean out the garage of her husband's stuff so she can park her car back in the garage, especially Yeah. Now that we're getting ice on windshields. You know, these 28-degree mornings are kind of weird around here. But it's either that or, you know, the wife bought too much Christmas stuff and the husband needs it out of the house and they don't have enough attic space.

That's right.

Or they, you know, they need maybe an at-home office, in-law suites.

I've actually seen that in people's backyards. Yeah, they're using them as offices.

Well, and again, you know, for example, We used that storage shed. I didn't care what I put out there because it was, it was climate controlled.

Yeah.

I mean, I, I can— I had my baseball cards out there. I've got, I've got 25,000 baseball cards and I had them in a shed outside. Who does that? Yeah, most people don't. That's not, it's not smart unless you have a nice shed that, that's climate controlled, that you know, hey, it's— there's nothing bad.

Yeah, absolutely.

And so you can't really do that in an attic. Uh, there's some things you can do to, to cool your attic down so that it doesn't, you know, get to be 170 degrees up there. But even still, you know, it's probably getting up over 100 down here in Houston.

Yeah.

And so, you know, being able to climate control things is, is huge. Not that you'll— I, I know y'all do sheds that aren't climate controlled, but you can, right?

Yeah.

Absolutely.

Yeah, we can, we can do anything that you're willing to pay for.

There you go. Money, money, money, money.

Yeah, just saying, just saying, just saying. In case people don't know, if you do use it as a home office, I mean, like, I'm no CPA, but you can write that booger off.

Oh yeah, you're working out of your house.

If it's a workspace in the home.

There you go. So boom.

And you can write off the end. I mean, what's, what's cool about that is if it's a separate building, you can actually write the whole thing off because if it's a home office, it, you can only use like so much square footage of the home to be designated as the home office. Whereas if it's a separate building, that's just the office.

Ah, okay. Very true. That reminds me of a Seinfeld episode. Are y'all Seinfeld people? No, sir. What is wrong? There's a lot of people out there listening going, I'm out.

Wow. I mean, like statistically in the room right now, there's something wrong with you.

Uh, yeah, but well, maybe so. But there's a— there's an episode where they're talking about writing things off, and, and Jerry's talking about like, what is a write-off? And Kramer says, I don't know, I'm not the one writing it off. This whole, this whole thing. He's like, you can write that off, you can write that off. Anyway.

Now we're gonna have to YouTube it.

That's right.

Yeah, find the clip. That and the standing tiny house, or—

Yeah.

Yep, yep, we'll figure that out. But now we need to get to the final 4.

The final 4.

Yeah, so final 4 questions we ask all of our guests. So we'll ask both of you to answer each of these questions. Um, so, and by we, we mean Kevin, cuz he asks the questions. That's right. And that's just cuz Craig doesn't remember them.

Although I did learn tonight that I actually did write them down in my phone.

Oh, so for future episodes, if there's an emergency, you never know.

Yep.

It happens.

Pull the ripcord. There you go. I got the questions.

All right.

First question. What's the must-have tool you won't leave your house without?

Tape measure. Anytime I am in the shop, um, I've got a tape measure.

Okay.

You know, it's, it's, uh, part of quality control. It's part of making sure it's getting done right. It's just, it's everything.

Yeah.

Without a tape measure, uh, I'm, I'm lost.

Well, well, now Craig has a question for you.

Well, yeah, so it would never be— Well, but like, I know that he's an Android guy, so he may not have this.

Oh, he's got another really cool app that we can't have. Oh yeah, yeah, go ahead.

Well, yeah, because we have the Measure app. Do you guys have the, the any kind of like—

Yes.

Yeah, Samsung does have one too.

Do they?

Yes.

Have you guys used that?

I don't.

I haven't. I'm, I'm, I know he's gonna be curious how accurate you find it to be because that's what he, he's, he's asked a number of guests this.

So, well, is yours pretty accurate?

It's within— it's usually within 1/16 of an inch.

That's pretty good.

Yeah, it's not bad.

Yeah.

I mean, like, I mean, considering they designed it to like hang pictures on the wall, like that ain't bad.

Oh, okay.

Right.

Yeah. That's not bad. No, my, uh, I use Stanley.

Yeah.

Craftsman.

Yeah. Yeah.

Not Android. No, I do have an Android phone, but not—

you mean the actual physical tape measure?

Yeah. Old school.

Old school.

If I see guys in the shop on their phone first, just like, hey, get off your phone, dude. Then it's like, come on, man.

Come on, man.

Get off your phone, Tyler.

Yeah. So, so there's a, there's another app that that Android has that I have no idea anybody that's used— I've just seen it out there where like you can, you can basically put it up against a wall and it'll show you what's in the wall, like piping and wiring and different things like that. It'll show you, and I don't know how it does it, I have no idea. All I know is that it's unavailable for the iPhone, but it is available for the Android. So you can kind of see through the wall to show you where the studs are, all that kind of stuff.

That is nice to know.

I don't know the name of it. But it's out there.

So I will say this, I learned something about mine the other day when I was using it. I was just showing somebody how it worked. I was like, you know, grabbing a point on the wall and measuring it and like, look, this wall's an 8-foot wall and whatever. And so it 3-dimensionally maps the room. And what it did when I measured that wall, because it had that perspective, it started grabbing stuff on the wall and like measuring it automatically for me.

Really?

So like it grabbed like a light switch and it told me that it was like 4.5 inches by 4 inches or something like that. And like it was just grabbing like pictures the wall and tell me how big they were. It was crazy.

Um, that is crazy.

Yeah, so like it does a bunch of stuff I probably haven't figured out yet because— interesting.

Yeah, cool. All right, Tyler, your turn. What's a must-have tool you won't leave your house without?

I was also going to say the tape measure, and I think it's David's fault for that, is he's kind of got me stuck on it as well.

So, because I walk in, see him without a tape, hey, where's your tape?

Yep, always on me.

Yeah, always have it.

Good. At work, Not at work. Yeah, I have it somewhere.

Nice.

You got it on you right now?

In my car.

Yeah. Okay. Yeah, that's close enough.

Yeah, I don't have one on me, so—

I mean, I got my phone.

Yeah, but I don't have a Stanley or a Craftsman.

No.

So, all right, next question. Uh, what's a job you've walked away from? So when we wrote this question, we meant for it to be like What's a project around your home that you started and you were like, you know what, I cannot do this. Like, I need to hire someone out to do this because I'm not doing this job anymore. It got too complicated. That's what we intended the job you walked away from question to be. However, some people take it to be a career. Some people take it to even be like a— maybe, maybe a customer's come in and said, hey, you know, I want this. And they were just so difficult to work with or something. They, they had unreasonable expectations and you were like, ah, Yeah, can't help you. So I

want you to take this question how you want to, but what's a job you've walked away from?

Well, there's quite a few. So, um, hmm, and see, I was trying to think of this earlier. I should have. So I would say we, we actually turned away a pretty big job. I guess about a year ago. I spent a lot of time in the drawings on this job.

Yeah.

And, and no charge, which is not normal. So we did a lot of work up front, and it just, it just got to a point where we had to tell the customer, hey, we're out.

You know, it was just too big, or it was just Yeah, a little bit of everything. Too big.

I didn't have the experience at the time. Actually, we were still in the old shop in Plantersville.

Not enough room either.

Yeah, it was a couple years ago. I mean, we were in 500 square foot at the time. That's as big as a garage. So it was very small. It was very tight. There wasn't very much room at all to move around, and it was just too big for me at the time and with the crew I had to meet their expectations. It was a decent-sized commercial job, and they were wanting multiple units. And it just— we had to turn it down.

Mm-hmm.

I mean, it would have been a great project to add in the portfolio, would have kept us busy for a long time. But it was one of those things we knew upfront that it wouldn't happen, it would take too long. And then I would have a very angry customer. And, you know, which would hurt my reputation. And also ruin a friendship. You know, we did create a friendship along the way and took the customer out to dinner and said, hey, it's just not gonna work. I did refer them off to another contractor and said, hey, you know, this is what he does day in, day out. And, you know, they, they got a project and happy as can be.

Yeah, so win-win, kind of.

Yeah, yeah, I just passed it off to somebody else. Yeah, we just, we couldn't do it, unfortunately. Now we're in a position we could, but at the time it was more than we could handle.

Sure. All right, Tyler, a job you walked away from?

Uh, I think the first time that I got on one of the bigger sheds that we built, uh, I almost slipped off the roof.

Whoa. On accident.

Wow.

Doing shingles. And, uh, I think that's the only job I've really walked away from.

Okay.

Until I finally got back up there.

Yeah.

I can—

not a problem now.

Yeah, but you're like, for a while you're like, yeah.

I was like, Nah, I'm not feeling it.

Yeah.

Just gotta get back on that bike.

Yep.

Just gotta get back on. Yeah. I, you know, heights can be scary if you fall down. Yeah.

It, it does hurt a little bit. A little bit.

Well, and, uh, it's probably the most scary of being high.

Sure.

Yes. Yes. Are we still talking about being on top of roofs?

No, I thought we were.

Okay. Just question. Okay. Third question.

If you're high and you're high, there you go.

The, the chances are a lot higher at that point. That's right. Okay. Uh, 3rd question, how do you wind down at the end of a long day?

Well, we talked about driving time earlier, so typically it takes me an hour and 15 minutes to get home.

Wow.

From the shop. So honestly, I drive home with no radio.

Mm-hmm.

Um, just drive.

Yeah.

And relax. And that's my quiet time because when I get home, you know, you got kids running around screaming.

Yeah.

And then you got to help with dinner or what you can help with. So that's my quiet time. Normally, I drive to work, no radio on unless I know I need to get myself pumped up, and then I turn something on to get going. But yeah, I just— Silence.

Yeah, you know, I, I really like that. That, um, not too long ago, uh, I was, I was part of a group that kind of challenged each other to, uh, to find time for silence in their day. And one of the, one of the easiest ways to do that is in your vehicle and to just turn things off, those sorts of things. Uh, because if you're not gonna listen to the Homeowner Show, what else are you really gonna listen to?

Right, garbage.

Garbage.

Those apps that reward you, or quote unquote, but keep you off your phone. Just put your phone down and just forget about it. Just put it down. Just drive.

That's right. That's commendable. I like it. Good stuff. All right.

Beat that, Tyler.

Well, mine is actually the opposite. I like to listen to music on my way home. That is my getaway, is music and driving. I love driving. Been around a race car family my whole life. So I love driving. But I have to have music on. I cannot do the silence. And then, I mean, when I do have downtime is probably when I'm going home.

Yeah, that's about it.

You know, it's, it's very strange on my drive homes. Sometimes I feel like I'm at the shop and then I'm home.

Hmm.

It's like I don't really— what happened on the drive?

Yeah.

You ever get like that?

Absolutely.

Yeah, autopilot. And then it's like, man, I'm already Wow, it's a bizarre feeling too.

It's like, how did I get here?

Yeah, it's like that a lot. And, and I think that's just my, my away time. I'm kind of zoned out and just driving. Yeah, so, but yeah, I hear his music, you know, 5:30 hits, Tyler's in his car. Yeah, so everybody hears it, neighbors and all. Yep. But luckily we haven't had any complaints yet.

Yet.

Hopefully they don't get any ideas by listening to this show.

That's funny. I had a, uh, a buddy in, in high school, he had a pickup and just extended cab pickup. And in the back of— so in the back seat, the extended cab portion, he had 2 18-inch subs.

2.

Wow. And, and from a block away, he could make glass rattle from a block away.

It's crazy.

Crazy.

All right, last question. We're almost there. What's one of the best pieces of wisdom or advice you've ever received?

Can I be bleeped out before? Like if I say something, can y'all bleep?

We can bleep you.

Okay, we can bleep you.

They're probably probably already heard it. Bleep!

When do you want me to start bleeping you? Okay.

Okay.

The best piece of advice that has been given to me is do not put your hands where you would not put your pecker. That is the best one.

Okay.

Not everybody listens to that. Yeah, that's, that's why I've preached it to him so many times. You better start knocking on some wood. It's worked out.

Yeah.

I got nothing to follow that up with. So David, what's one of the best pieces of wisdom or advice you've ever given— I mean, received?

You know, it's hard to pinpoint. I've had several mentors, you know, in this business and previous businesses and, you know, previous employers, and it's really hard to narrow it down to the best one. It's all very good. You know, one of them is don't retire on one customer.

Mm-hmm.

You know, don't try to retire off of one customer. Growing up, if, if you're not, uh, if you're not early, you're late.

Yeah.

That's a good one. I like that one a lot. I've said that several times over the past few weeks to a lot of new employees.

Yep.

Or ex-employees.

But, uh, they did not receive the wisdom, apparently.

Yeah, they just didn't stick.

Yeah.

Um, not sure if they listen to this or not, but we'll find out in the next couple weeks, I guess. Yeah, because We are still Facebook friends.

Hopefully they were there long enough to learn the bit about the hands.

Yes.

Yeah, exactly.

Actually, well, no, he didn't actually learn it, but he explained.

Well, he learned the hard way. Oh, okay. He learned the hard way.

Yeah.

Please. Definitely an L.

Yeah, but, uh, yeah, if you're not, if you're not early, you're late.

Yeah.

Okay.

Show up 15 minutes early. Yeah, it's, it's easy. Uh, so much can happen on the road, especially, you know, in an hour's drive time.