All right, today we’re talking about space planning and making things functional, and then also making them fashional.

That fashional, that fashionable.

Fashionable.

So Lincoln, when you’re designing a layout, what are some things that you like to do?

Yeah, design-wise, it’s the most important thing that we emphasize with Kingdom & Co is, functionality is the number one priority, and the number two is beauty.

Because there’s nothing worse than having a really beautiful home with a terrible layout.

Yeah.

And so, one of the things that’s important to understand is, and what keeps us in business, to be honest with you, is there’s so many builders that had such terrible layouts.

Yep.

From the 90s, 2000s, 80s, multi-level change.

I mean, everything’s just boxed together and nothing flows well.

So, because of that, it keeps us in business, and we’re able to basically look at it from a level, it’s almost like a science.

It’s crazy to watch our designers do this, but you see it from the top view, and they’re able to get so creative and make things so functional based off of priorities and based off the way people live and their lifestyles.

If your kids are out of the house and you wanna have a home prepared for grandkids, or if you’re a new family, a new couple, it just depends on the situation, but to be able to specifically design a space according to the current situation and the future takes a lot of scientific calculations.

Yeah, just some forethought, right?

So one, obviously the big trend that we’ve seen over the last couple decades is the open floor plan, right?

And what I’ve seen more and more often happening now is also the Butler Pantry thing.

Very important, yeah.

Like, I’m not a huge fan of it, but a lot of people love it.

I love it, yeah.

Yeah, so maybe talk about how, when you do the open floor plan, how that kind of led to the Butler Pantry and why the Butler Pantry became more popular.

Yeah, lots of times they’ll take the space, right?

They’ll blow out all the walls and open it all up.

And then from there, lots of times they’ll take the kitchen and they’ll move it more forward.

And then typically behind the kitchen now is where a Butler Pantry is.

And most people like to have a walk-in pantry that has a lot of space for organization.

And so that way their actual kitchen isn’t full of stuff.

Yeah.

It gets really cluttered pretty quick if you don’t have.

So the intent behind it is it helps you keep the kitchen cleaner and more presentable?

Yeah, and then it also allows you to have more open shelving in the Butler’s Pantry to where you can see if you’re low on chips, or you can see if rice is getting lower.

It helps you keep your inventory.

It’s not tucked behind the topper.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, exactly.

But yeah, so we noticed that open concept’s very powerful.

It still is.

It’s not, we’re not getting crazy open anymore, but there’s still the open concept of being able to cook and entertain and still have people out and about.

And having that, when you’re having a party or something, you can have 15, 20 people in a comfortable area.

So that’s very popular.

Another important layout is adding a casita.

Yeah.

That’s been huge, or adding a loft above.

Yeah, there’s a ton of two-story homes that were built, 80s, 90s, early 2000s, where that first room you walk into, it’s completely useless, and it’s floor to ceiling, right?

And so getting more utility out of it by converting that loft area is pretty helpful for people.

Yeah, especially in the areas where the price per square foot’s expensive.

Like a lot of our clients in Summerlin, when you have a loft that’s 1,000 square feet, and you can do it for the price that we can do it at, a lot of times it’s $100,000 investment.

And they can make, they can add $100,000 of equity in their home just by adding a loft.

Yeah, they pick up that square footage, and now their home’s worth 100K more.

Yeah.

So that’s an easy one.

Okay, have you seen anybody that’s gotten tired of the open floor plan and wants things more compartmentalized?

Is that a thing?

I mean, I’ve seen a lot of designers pushing that lately, but I haven’t seen it too much because, again, most people don’t like to feel cramped into one space, but I think you’ll have a hybrid of that eventually in the future is my guess.

Yeah.

On the bigger homes, people are, and they do a game room, right?

And for me, in my house, I only want one main collective area, I don’t know.

But if you’ve got the space, a lot of people are doing dedicated game rooms and movie theaters and stuff like that, but that comes, that’s a different tier product for sure.

Yeah, for sure.

If I’m a client, Zion, what should I expect if you are knocking down walls, and you are opening things up, and you are adding big slider glass doors and things like that?

How do I budget for that?

It does, it can get expensive, yeah, because as you increase the spans, you increase the need for engineering and supporting those loads.

And it’s not just the load above.

A lot of times it’s putting in new footings, particularly when you do these large spanning sliders or accordion doors.

It’s not just about putting in those big headers, it’s about where that load is gonna transfer, and then you gotta do these footings.

The footings is probably a more expensive part than what’s overhead.

Yeah, and it’s one of those things that’s doable, and we do it all the time.

It’s literally what we do day in and day out.

It’s, and I don’t wanna discourage people from thinking it’s too expensive, but it does add up.

Yeah, it does.

And you gotta look at it this way.

You know, likely the group that built your home was a production builder, and they’re trying to build it as economically as possible.

And so doing larger spans isn’t really in their economic plan, okay?

And so a lot of what we do is, yeah, now that this home’s worth more, it makes sense to put that additional investment in there to make it more usable, to make it more functional.

And yeah, it’s where it comes at a cost.

For sure, yeah.

It’s one of those things where I used to always think was, cause before I got into this business, that it was just unattainable.

And now the more I’m in it, I’m like, oh, it’s not that hard, it just can cost more money.

You know, and we noticed with our clients, sometimes it’s 10 to 15 to 20% more if they are gonna do those things.

Yeah, if you’re doing a reconfiguration, yeah, it is a lot more money.

If you’re taking the kitchen and moving it to the other side of the house, or if you’re- Oh, that’s even more.

Yeah, if you’re knocking down walls, or if you’re adding a big slider door, you gotta, you know, things like that, but it also changes your home into something incredible.

It can, yeah.

And you gotta look at how it impacts your mechanical systems, your air conditioning and heating.

As you start moving stuff around, a lot of those bulky areas that you don’t like in your home, usually there’s something above that.

Yeah, that’s true.

There’s a pipe.

So it’s rerouted.

Yeah, there’s a, what’s the thing called?

There’s a duct.

A duct.

Not a quack quack duct, an air duct.

There’s a duct.

Yeah.

There’s nothing worse than fighting ducts inside the ceiling.

I wouldn’t believe what we find out there.

But no, like, yeah, so, I mean, is there any stories that come to mind on a customer’s experience when they are changing the floor plan, when they’re changing up the, or even your own personal experience, is there anything that comes to mind that you wish you had known before, or going into this project like this, what you wish you could understand?

Okay, I think one of the biggest transformations we see are for layouts that have a galley kitchen.

A galley kitchen is almost like a hallway.

And particularly in homes that were like 60s, 70s, and 80s, they had galley kitchens.

And maybe they just did it to like get rid of the wife and like tuck her away in a corner and they didn’t have to integrate with her.

Maybe so, but they’re- Anyway, they might come back.

Anyway.

Those have the biggest transformation because obviously once, and they do take some engineering, but they totally transform the space.

We had one project, I think it’s called the Parker, on our website.

And not only are you blowing it out towards the living area, but you’re also blowing it out towards the backyard with a nice accordion window or an accordion door.

Those ones have the most amazing transformation because they go from just being something that nobody wants to live in to being something that everybody would love.

Yeah, it’s amazing.

With the Parker, I remember going out there and just seeing this wall cutting off the kitchen and the living area, and basically you have the whole golf course on the side.

And so when we blew up that wall and opened up the kitchen, it was like, oh my gosh, the golf course opened up, the kitchen opened up, everything just seemed to flow better.

It was just like, whoa, just knocking down one wall can make such a difference.

And it’s just so powerful.

And that’s what we do.

So as good designers and builders, we look at, okay, what’s gonna have the most dramatic change to that space.

And space planning can get very creative.

There’s certain things where you’re like, okay, there’s plumbing here, so let’s do our best to keep our plumbing stuff in this area at a safe cost.

It’s really important to have a team that understands cost savings when you’re doing these dramatic changes, or else you will overspend and be over budget.

Yeah, we call it value engineering, right?

When we’re value engineering a project, I wanna limit the amount of intrusions into the slab, particularly.

Yes.

So when it drains, it’s not so much the water supply, where you’re getting the water from, but it’s where you’re gonna put the water after.

So digging into that foundation gets expensive, and it’s labor intensive, and then just dealing with concrete.

And then if you’re dealing with a home that has a post-tension slab, you have to x-ray it, and so that even gets more complicated.

So those are things you wanna avoid.

For sure.

And yeah, like I said, our team is really good at that.

Yeah.

So we’re the best at it.

Also, one of the things that’s important with a good design build process is obviously thinking two, three, four, 10 steps ahead.

So recently, we were doing a job where we’re just installing the windows.

We sold a nice window and door package.

It’s a new home build.

And there was just a lot of having to think, okay, once we put this window in, who’s coming behind us?

And how are they gonna finish their product to our product?

And that matters to the customer, particularly, and the ultimate finish of their project, okay?

So in particular with how Windows finished a stucco, in this instance, we had to think about that, right?

And okay, you’re gonna finish with this thickness of stucco, there’s foam involved.

How is this door gonna swing?

What’s gonna happen when it opens and closes?

And how is it all gonna tie together?

A lot of times when we’re working with outside designers, we’re gonna come in there, and we’re gonna have that foresight to make sure that customer gets the best finish possible.

And there was a lot of readjusting that we did to make sure that happened.

Yeah, a lot of times if you don’t have design that understands how to do design build, what really happens to these projects is every single trade has three or four or five of those little tricks that they don’t understand until it hits.

And so to be able to understand those things, and to be able to project those things, and have a plan for those things, it’s just, it makes the process and the product smooth and seamless.

And so it’s so important to have, we can’t emphasize enough, design is so important.

It’s so important.

And you really wanna take as many decisions out of the field as possible.

You want them to be following instructions and be prepping because there’s, otherwise, you’re always gonna get that guy who comes in behind, and he’s just gonna do whatever’s easiest, and that may cause a lot of complications later.

Yeah.

It’s kinda like a Jenga board, like our Jenga puzzle thing, where you pull out one thing, the whole thing can fall if it’s done wrong.

Yeah, absolutely.

Wait a minute, the glass is put in wrong, and then you have four or five trades after that.

Yeah.

And then you have to fix it, and then you have to call back the painter, you have to call back the drywall guy, you have to call back the stucco guy, and then you have to call back the electrician, and then you have to call back the framer, and you’re like, we have to call, try scheduling six trades to come in one day.

And nobody wants to take responsibility for it.

And nobody wants to take responsibility for it, and they’re all too busy.

Yeah.

Put that formula together, and times that by 50, 60, 300, 400 decisions, and my goodness, it could be a train wreck.

So design build is the key, for sure.