Modern Rustic Homes Modern Rustic Homes

Hi, welcome back. This is David Grubb and Michael Grant from Modern Rustic Homes. This is the Creating Shelter podcast. The last time we had an interview with Michael, we talked about the upcoming trends for building homes. 







And today, we’re going to dive a little deeper into home building and design. And we specifically want to talk about how people use space in their homes. I realized there are different categories of space, there are different areas, there’s entertainment areas, there’s personal and private storage, flex rooms, and outdoor space. 







So let’s just take a couple of minutes and talk about these different areas, and the home just real quick, so that we kind of have an overview of what we’re talking about today.







Well firstly, David, thank you for this time together. Again, I have some, as you may recall, definitive ideas and thoughts about how we use our homes today. And to your point, we do kind of segment the spaces in our homes to be more purposeful, if you will. 







And a very good example, you mentioned flex spaces. That’s one that may have less definition too, because it is just that it’s much more flexible. It’s not like the private bedroom and bathroom, where we go to relax and unwind. 







But flex spaces are many things, there can be many things. And certainly, over the last several years, we’ve seen flex spaces That will function as a home office, but also function as a guest room. And in my case, that place where I place a lot of things that I don’t have anywhere else for it to go, but nonetheless it’s flexible. 







And that’s good and bad. Flex space is oftentimes when we’re using something as personal as a home office. Let’s say you have someone come to stay overnight. If you need to use that space for that purpose, then it becomes a little awkward because now you’ve got a space that has a lot of personal stuff in it. Your guests just may have things that are not needed to have in their sight line, 







I guess is how I say that. But flex spaces are very much needed because they serve more than one purpose. And the reality of that is it reduces your square footage in a house. So I think they’re important spaces nonetheless. And that kind of is a good segue into talking about those spaces that are very definitive. 







We’ve got our living or social spaces that we use for family gatherings as well as when we have friends over. And those spaces obviously are the kitchen, dining, and living room areas. And those have been the trend for a long time. They are open spaces where you can see the host and hostess can see their guest from one viewing area. 







They’re all in your sight line. And I think that’s what has made that open plan concept for planning as popular as it has. The other aspect of it, as it becomes one space, is that it has a variety of functions in it. And because we’ve removed the walls to make it an open-plan space, it feels bigger than it is. 







And I think that that’s an important way of keeping the home at a manageable square footage. So the social entertaining spaces encompass a lot of activity, but all with the same intention of sharing that interaction with our friends and family. 







So they’re very significant. I think another one that is keenly important, and for me more important every day, is storage spaces, and storage spaces, have become much more specific. I’m going to give you a great example, pantries. I think I’ve talked about this with you before, David, pantries have taken on a whole new meaning.

So I think we’ve moved on from talking about the culture to really talking about the lifestyle, and people are enjoying being outdoors more, so that’s what you’re talking about this glass and just feeling a little bit more connected to nature and the outdoors. What are some of the other aspects of the lifestyle that’s driving these trains today? What about – what about hospitality?







I mean, that’s a huge trip, but that’s just been ongoing. I think how we express it is a bit different today. You know, there’s, there’s a very good reason why there’s somewhere around 135 cooking shows on television today; people are just hugely into cooking. But, of course, that’s the focal point of hospitality for most people. So, kitchens have become bigger, they’re more, they’re more thought out in terms of accommodating a variety of different functions. It’s no longer that magic triangle of, of kitchen sink, stove, and refrigerator. It’s just totally morphed into a much more inclusive kind of area.







So you have pantries; pantries have become huge again. People are not just keeping a week or two’s worth of food in their pantries today; they’re, they’re going to the, the big warehouse stores like Sam’s, Costco, and others and buying in bulk, and what they need is a place to store food in bulk. So we’re seeing that with dry goods, and we’re seeing it also with frozen foods, so it’s very common today to see an additional refrigerator, or certainly a freezer, in the pantry as well as just storage with your dry goods. So, pantries are a big deal. 







Another aspect of pantries is being used as a second food prep area. So there’s, we’re seeing a lot of sinks in these pantries, we’re seeing a number of people are moving those, those small appliances into that pantry that they use infrequently, but they want to go ahead and have counter space for it, they want to be able to plug it in. So, you know, these air fryers, which is hugely popular now, a lot more slow cookers are being used to prepare meals. So you can, you can have a place for these appliances that’s not in the main kitchen, taking up counter space. So there’s a lot going on with that.







It’s very interesting that you bring all that up because I just saw a television show the other day that, and it was saying how in the colonial days, there wasn’t actually a kitchen in the house. There was actually a separate building that they used, because we didn’t have stoves; they used wood to build fires, and they had to haul the water, so it was in a completely separate building. It’s kind of ironic that we’re, we’re almost like we’re training back to this – we have separate food prep periods we have separate.







It’s interesting you mentioned the kitchens being separate, a separate building. I didn’t understand that until I went to Monticello to see Jefferson, down there in Virginia. That was, what impressed me about that was of course the purpose of the kitchen being separate, as a separate building, is because they had a tendency to catch on fire. So, in order not to burn down their main house, they would keep that building separate. But that’s where the expression keeping room came from. The keeping room, and you see that in a lot of home floor plans. And it’s just that small space that’s adjacent to the kitchen. In today’s houses, but, you know, hundreds of years ago, 300 years ago, and we were seeing keeping rooms in houses and it’s where they brought the food into the house to keep it warm before they served it, hence the expression keeping room. But today, my keeping room is where my wife and I will have our coffe...

Today, we’re talking about building trends. And Michael, you’re a leader in the modern rustic building style. So, what is going on with building trends today, and how have those trends impacted creating shelter?







David, that’s a great question, and there’s kind of a number of facets to the answer. 







I really look at it as different trends. You have trends that are aesthetic, trends that are functional, trends that are somewhat culturally based, and then there are lifestyle trends, so it really kind of depends on somewhat what your interest is and what your circumstance is; but it’s sort of, it means different things to different people. 







But the easy one is an aesthetic trend, or the aesthetic trends that we deal with today. And that’s one that’s a bit more ever-changing, because we’re seeing trends for color, trends for style, whether it’s some sort of theme or an architectural style. But again, the aesthetic trends are the ones that we hear most about, and a good example of that is what we see annually with the major paint manufacturers coming out with their annual color-of-the-year trend, and that’s – that trend is somewhat based on other influences that are coming about with our homes today. But, again, that whole issue of trends is multifaceted, and will be – mean different things to different people, and their importance will like – equally be different for different people. But just in terms of aesthetic trends – I mentioned colors, the easy one – right, some things that I thought I would never see come back color wise, is pink. I never would have thought pink would become a major trend again, but it very much is. But like so many trends, it takes its own direction, and it has a little bit of a difference, if you will, pink is not pink anymore, just as white and black are not black or white anymore; there’s too many different variations of it. But that’s one that kind of surprised me. Green is another one. But what I’m seeing more are very rich, deep, colors now. So whether it’s a color that’s called black olive, or one of these more earthy colors of pink, there’s a variety of different shades of each of these colors that people are beginning to use more frequently. 







I think it’s kind of interesting when we – I remember very well in the 80s and even early 90s, when jewel toned colors were all the rage. That’s what everybody wanted. So you saw emerald green, you saw ruby reds, you saw turquoise blues, you saw deep amber, gold’s – just a variety of different jewel tones, and those all went away. And I think that there’s a reason for that, and I’ll talk about that a bit later. 







Aesthetically, another trend or somewhat – what I call theme trends, and the one that comes to mind is a botanical theme. We’re actually seeing this a bit more and more people, people that are using wallpapers that have these huge floral, or even just leaf patterns to it, but they’re oversized so that they – they dominate the room and the wall, and a project we recently completed; it was a – the theme of wallpaper they use were forest animals, so it had like a red fox and had raccoons in it. It was just very different and very playful, and a lot of fun to look at. And we’re seeing that also with birds – a lot of bird papers out there. And I think another wallpaper style that I’m seeing are some of the papers that were – we saw in the 30s and 40s, that were very craftsman in their pattern, so there’s some interesting aesthetic trends. And those again, as I said, those are the easy ones. 







And for the last several years, we’ve seen a huge trend towards gray,

Welcome to the creating shelter Podcast. I’m David Grubb and I have with me today, Michael Grant, our host. And today we are talking about housing and the 5L’s, lumber, labor, land, loans, and legislation, with Michael, to give you a little background. Why are you so passionate about housing?







Why are you so passionate about housing?







Michael Grant 0:16Well, first of all, David, it’s good to see you again. And I’m glad to have this conversation. You know, my passion for housing goes way back to my childhood. My father was a homebuilder, literally, he’s the guy that swung the hammer and used the hand saw, but he was also just a splendid craftsman, and he loved doing it. And I immediately had a great appreciation for what he did. And in fact, he built a house for my mother, which my family lived in for better than 40 years.







So I got to see the results of his labor firsthand. And I’ve always appreciated that, that we had that home to live in and the fact that my dad was involved in building. But beyond that, I’ve always had a passion for the scale of housing, there’s a human scale that all housing has. And it reflects many ways how we live, there are a lot of other influences that go into how the house is designed and ultimately built.







But it just relates to how we live and whether we’re living in a particular climate, or we have a particularly given lifestyle, whatever it is that your house ultimately ends up reflecting who you are. And I’ve always appreciated that. And it’s something that has never left me, so I relate to that scale of housing quite well.







At what age did you start helping your dad and what did that look like?







David Grubb 1:40You told the story before about how you’d go around and pick up the nails. So you started at a young age actually helping your dad?







Michael Grant 1:49Yes, I was 5 years old and my job on a late afternoon is I would go to the job site when my dad and I would pick up the nails the other carpenters had thrown down. And I’d organize them put a rubber band around them and hand them to my dad. So he had a fresh supply of nails for him to use as he was framing that next day. And my reward for it was collecting the coke bottles and taking them to Piggly Wiggly and turning them in for that two-cent deposit. So that’s how I got paid.







David Grubb 2:26Good. So you’re both an entrepreneur and a helper at a young age.







Michael Grant 2:31And that has not escaped me over the years.







What are the 5 L’s and how do people perceive them?







David Grubb 2:35So you recently talked at a builder Association meeting about the five L’s. And, you know, let’s just share with our audience real quick what those are. So those are lumber, labor, lots of legislation, and loans. And but kind of tell us how that meeting went? And how that was received?







Michael Grant 2:58Well, I think, first of all, I think as I presented it to the builder Association, and it wasn’t just the builders, it was a lot of our associate members, people who are in the business of supplying either materials or services to the construction industries. So that they had ownership and the five L’s as well.







And I kind of the five bills was really kind of the genesis, the genesis of the five L’s came from an article I had read a couple of years ago, put out by the National Home Builders Association. And at the time, they called it the three L’s, and those were lumber, labor, and lots and it did not quite feel complete to me.

Michael Grant 0:00Who’s the villain in the homeowner’s story? Well, it’s many. The first one is the lack of affordable housing. Secondly, restrictive zoning prevents a variety of housing types. restored or just restrictive zoning. Okay, we talked about that.







David Grubb 0:25Industry Professionals, no training.







Michael Grant 0:28Well, that is a problem. Lack of, of construction labor, of lack of trained or quality construction labor, to say you got codes as it relates to land use, I’m not talking about that I’m talking about codes as it relates to building system fordable pricing, qualifying for a house loan qualification to be able to create a mortgage. Proximity to work is an issue.







David Grubb 1:02Well, maybe the internet will take care of some of that, but







Michael Grant 1:05Well, it has taken care of a good bit of it. Another problem that directly impacts. Homeownership is the inability to qualify for a loan. And when you have too many roadblocks, you can often give up so makes them feel frustrated, feel and defeated. That is totally unnecessary. The globalist movement to have everyone. There’s a global smoothing that says you will own nothing, and nothing and you will be happy. I think that’s bullshit.







Okay, the great wealth created in the United States was hugely the consequence of stability, stability within our family structure, and stability for our basic needs for shelter, food, and safety, those things. And that was, housing was a huge part of that story.







That’s why when the GI bill was introduced to help these men and women returning from World War Two, to get into the housing that they could afford, was a huge benefit term to our overall GDP and financial growth of our country. There are lots of things that went on there.







Those look at when it’s we started to see a decline. The decline started in the 60s when our federal policies and legislation began to destroy the family as a consequence of entitlement programs, when the father was was the family was incentivized for the father to leave shirt when a woman could make more money or get more money from the government because she didn’t have a man of the house.







Therefore, he was not around. When I was with the big brother program, I had a little brother named Stevie, and Stevie’s mother Stevie’s dad was not present and his life for that reason they lived in government housing. And if she worked in an effort to better herself and her inner children, then her subsidies would be cut out.







So when she what she did to work was under the table she did worse rest, waitress work, cleaning houses doing things that were she wasn’t reporting and taxes and also plan. And then Stevie had brothers and sisters with different dads. And so no man was a permanent fixture in his life. As far as the parchment involved with the big brother program.







David Grubb 4:26One thing is the American dream, don’t have your own home. You know, so does that diminish the American Dream that future Americans may not be able to afford or get or have?







Michael Grant 4:42Well, you’re, you either are an owner or you’re a renter. And when you are a renter, the benefit of that is the owner is responsible for the maintenance and upkeep of that of your house and Unless, of course, you’re responsible for its destruction.







And at that point, you know that the need can get yourself in trouble. But your landlord wants you there because he’s making money off of you. Now, if you buy your own house, and you pay for it in a timely fashion,