This is not a short story per say; make note I was born in 1955 and took interest at the age of 3 in Lincoln Logs my Grandmother had at her house along with yellow and red stained wood bricks that had alignment pins and sockets that may have made the invention of Legos. Didn’t take me long and these building blocks were figured out more so when I was about 5 years of age. These did somewhat resemble what is known as Lego’s now but they were wider and longer made out of solid wood and only just the bricks, no windows and doors. I had strong interest in playing with an erector set of any size or type but this item never got filled on my Christmas list nor did Lego’s when they came out around age 8. I saved money and bought my own. From that point on, I was a builder you could say. I could fit my matchbox cars into the garages I made in the small city’s I build. No, it was no Sim City but you get the idea since we had no electronic devises back then to play with. I do recall a 13 transistor AM radio (no FM stations yet) I had when I was 13 or so but what they called portable back then working off a 9 volt battery was larger than todays digital camera’s.
I had always offered to help friends and family out with any project while earning money doing jobs I didn’t like. I did my first Formica job when I was 16 on my cousin’s basement along with all the framing and other task needed. I did tons of work on my aunt’s house around the same age and learned plumbing and more finished carpentry and my aunt didn’t care if I screwed it up a bit. She like the labor rate she was paying which was just nice meals and I’m here to tell you; she was a great cook! I bought my first home when I was only 19 for $13,000 USD and I did mostly paint and putty along with new flooring and such but gained more experience over those 3 years of ownership to add to what I knew already which many would consider allot for someone so young. Hell, the USAF tested me before I went in back in 1973 with a very high electrical and mechanical aptitude. 360 hours of classroom work and I was classified an “Aircraft Maintenance Specialist (Jet Over Two)” for god’s sake, so you can see I’m not trying to brag here.
So after many years of working jobs I hated which included wax injection, GM Fisher Body and the straw that broke the camel’s back, Deutch Electronics in Carlsbad, CA; I got tired of being underpaid for my skills and stopped the insanity. This was back in 1982 as I took out a little handyman ad and just charged time and material to anyone that called and dared to try me out on something they needed fixed, repaired, replaced and or remodeled. This grew into a home improvement business out in CA called Browning Improvements. Yep, you guessed it; I had to design things such as kitchens, additions, sunrooms, decks, baths and even basements. The school of hard knocks as some may call it, as I took every opportunity in figuring out how to do the job and read blueprints I saw and emulated the design techniques. I became a Home Improvement Expert and not just a jack of all trades but a master of all trades more or less. At Deutsch, I trained under a Master Industrial Electrician as well. I worked with old timers that taught me all their tricks and kept adding to my tool collection each time I need to do and learn a new trade. I worked with my ex wife’s father at the time that was a retired school teacher that taught woodworking for 40 years. Yeah, this guy made custom furniture too. I learned from so many skilled workers then including a master stucco plasterer too. Oh, I messed up a few jobs along the way but this trial and error process made me into a professional of most trades over these years. And there’s no school that can teach you the hands on experience I achieved. This later on all grew into my having a 5000 square foot kitchen showroom employing over 25 people also running a custom countertop shop. We even sold appliances and flooring. This is where I had my first PC experience using windows for workgroups 3.1 and my first CAD software to learn how to draw on a PC instead of graph paper and yeah, didn’t need an eraser any longer, lol. Man, what we paid for the R&D on those PC’s back then. From my first 33Mhz PC to the Intel i-79700K 8 core custom PC I personally built and now using, is such a big change in how fast I can do my work these days as well. I’ve put more than 290,000 hours of CAD experience on my PC’s since then if this is an indication of what I know today! Very skilled at drawing any residential project mind you and yes, I’m a self taught Architect. You wouldn’t know by looking at my drawings!
Anyway, I shut down that 5000 sq. ft. kitchen showroom in 1999 due to the amount of employees taking from me, my warehouse items and cheating on their time cards. Yep, big headache so then I had met a guy named Patrick Condon that owns the Finished Basement Company and helped kick start his endeavors as he showed me the high interest in Basements and the designs and construction needed for such. I recall we stopped the car one day after running a lead and he pointed saying, “what do you see out there?” looking over the many subdivisions south of Denver at the time. I said “roofs mostly!” He laughed and said “but what’s under those roofs?” I replied “well of course, basements!” and you could see hundreds of roofs that day! Pat just got very expensive and desires clients that have little to no budget restraints and can spend over 100k on their basement finish. I later moved on to Basements and Beyond and grew Bill Kennedy’s company from $800,000 USD a year in revenue to almost $3,000,000 USD a year back in 2003 (was a lot of moolah back then) in the 2nd year with him. He sold it I heard and it’s too bad I didn’t get stock options I deserved, right? I’m sure I had something to do with his net equity, for sure! I loved it though and how it provided so much more experience for me and it’s the reason I now have a record of designing over 3500 basements to date.
So due to my life long love for building and design and the great demand on me for my natural skills, this is how I got started in this and now own and operate since 2003 my web site Basement Finishing & Design Service . Just see the 5 star reviews and what others say about my skills at HOUZZ.