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Simplifying Life Through Technology
SoundVision LLC is a lifestyle technology company located in Mooresville, North Carolina. We interview vendors, clients and staff with the purpose of demystifying the capabilties of new technologies for your home or business and sometimes highlighting local content that is important to our community.
Simplifying Life Through Technology
KDH Residential Designs: Kevin Holdridge
On this episode of “Simplifying Life Through Technology,” Mark, Sue, and Andrew sit down with Kevin Holdridge, Owner and CEO of KDH Residential Designs.
Have you ever wondered how your dream home transforms from an abstract vision into a tangible reality? The magic lies in the hands of skilled residential designers—professionals who occupy a unique space between architects, builders, and artists.
Kevin Holdridge, owner and CEO of KDH Residential Designs, pulls back the curtain on this fascinating profession in our latest episode. With 30 years of experience crafting custom homes throughout the Carolinas, Kevin shares the unexpected path that led him from building furniture with his grandfather to designing multimillion-dollar residences. His approach, which he calls "lifestyle design," focuses on understanding the intimate details of how people actually live—where they drop their keys, charge their phones, or put on their shoes—creating spaces that elegantly solve everyday frustrations.
What sets Kevin's work apart is his deep understanding of both artistic principles and practical construction. He explains the mathematical "golden ratio" that appears throughout nature and how incorporating this proportion creates homes that feel inexplicably right. This attention to detail extends to the latest technological integrations, from disappearing televisions and mechanical shade systems to whole-home automation that transforms houses into responsive sanctuaries.
The conversation delves into emerging trends like barndominiums—versatile structures combining living quarters with expansive garages for everything from RVs to blacksmith forges and basketball courts. Kevin explains how his team transforms these functional boxes into beautiful homes while maintaining their practical advantages.
Frustrated by the lack of formal education pathways for residential designers, Kevin has written a book sharing his expertise and established a training program to help aspiring designers avoid the trial-and-error approach that defined his early career. Listen to discover the invisible principles behind homes that truly work—and why the company who designs your house might matter more than you ever realized.
To learn more about KDH Residential Designs:
https://www.kdhresidentialdesigns.com/
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https://www.instagram.com/kdh_residential_designs_nc/
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Contact Us Today: (704) 696-2792 Ext. 1 | Info@svavnc.com | soundvisionlkn.com
So joining us in the podcast studio today we have Kevin Holdridge, owner and CEO of KDH Residential Designs. Welcome, kevin.
Speaker 2:Thank you, glad to be here, ubiquitous applause that Andrew likes.
Speaker 3:And I'm going to be a little throaty today. I'm a little under the weather, so I got a bit of a deeper voice. I'm thankful that Kevin is a talker so we can lean on him. We got sue in here hi sue, hello everybody. So you got kind of a deeper voice too. Are you okay, are you? Are you sick?
Speaker 1:no, you just came out of the boot I just came out of the boot, kind of how I go, hi, she goes, that's right, that that's right.
Speaker 3:Sue had an athletic injury that she has now recovered from. Anyways, we can go on about that, Kevin welcome.
Speaker 2:How are you doing today? Fantastic, fantastic. Looking forward to chatting with you guys.
Speaker 3:We just spent the last 20 minutes off air talking about triathlons that may come up during this pod, but that was kind of cool. So that's part of your background. But what about your background in home design? Kind of take us through who you are and how. How did?
Speaker 2:you get here. So, um, it's kind of funny, cause the path to residential design is is not a straight path. Um, everybody kind of comes at it from a different direction cause there's really no formal education, training on it. Uh, so, growing up in uh, western New York, uh little farm town um had some really cool architecture, some some very um, authentic styles of homes that, uh, I just kind of fell in love with. Um always loved building things, tore stuff apart.
Speaker 2:My grandfather was, was a, uh, you know, a a a furniture maker and an artist. Um, him and I are both left-handed and both bald, so I got a lot of things from my grandfather. Um, hair, hair was, you know, hair was one of the ones I didn't really want, but, um, it was. Uh, I always loved building things. So when as a kid I would just like make little things and you know I always tell stories about my linoleum roofs and the never really survived a Buffalo winter, but I would take whatever materials I had around as a kid and build little forts and things. So that was always part of what I wanted to do. And then I was big into art and big art major in high school. So, um, my son was born right after high school. Um, and I had to, like, figure out what I want to do for a living. So I was like, hey, let's go to do a design school and see if I can do that. I got into the art Institute, um, you used to have to.
Speaker 2:They'd send you like a flyer in the mail like oh, can you draw this and you get in. And that was oh yeah, that was your entry and I got in. And then but I didn't really know if I want to do that or not and I saw this design school. That was real quick and it was like a two-year degree in 16 months and I went there and learned. It was like our math classes were estimating and, um, you know, our, our english classes were writing specs and you know. So it was like all.
Speaker 3:So you kind of took the, you kind of took the idea of, of your which you liked an art, and then you were kind of just building stuff as a kid. You were a tinkerer, right, and you put those two together yeah would you?
Speaker 2:call that the inspiration that was really, yeah, that my son was the inspiration because I needed to grow up real quick, but it was, know, being 18 or 19 years old, with a, with a newborn, it was uh, you know, time to time to get your stuff together. And uh, did that? We moved um. When he was two, I had graduated, I worked for a contractor for a couple of years um building in Western New York and Northern Pennsylvania, so I got to get that where I was building things and putting things together and knowing how things get built. That was really the education. I think if you're going to design houses, you need to build them first. That was, I think, the education that everybody needs If they're going to be in this industry. They have to know how it goes together, because you can't really design it unless you know well designing it and putting it together.
Speaker 4:Two different, yeah, two different stories.
Speaker 2:So that's where we really spend a lot of time and effort. My company is is putting that together, but I moved down here in the 90s and and hooked up with a firm and worked there for 14 years and ended up, um, you know, designing some of the stuff. You know. I came up from the ground up and and towards the end I was running half the company.
Speaker 3:And let's back up just a sec, cause we talk about residential design and, uh, some of our listeners may not know, like, where that fits into the um, I don't know pantheon of how. Like where do you, where do you fit, say, are you an architect, are you an interior designer? Like, what exactly are you and are you not?
Speaker 2:So that's a great question, cause this is the thing that gets, I guess, the confused a lot Um, cause the the public um belief system is when I say I'm a residential designer, everybody goes, oh, you're an architect and I said, no, I'm a residential designer. When you see, during homorama shows you used to see the builder, architect, designer and it would be like a misprint that most of the people were residential designers, not architects, and the designer was actually listed as the interior designer. So it's very confusing. Yeah, nomenclature and what's accepted um, but you know, we've in most residential designers I know um never went to architecture school. They were builders, they were artists, they were.
Speaker 2:You know people that just found this and ended up working for somebody and learned a trade Um. They learn how to do it through working with somebody like myself. You know, growing up Um, I've, I've got um. It's actually a good segue. This is the reason I wrote this. I wrote a book about this um and just kind of dispelling a lot of things that in my career, you know I've been doing this for 30 years now and own my own company since 2007, but even with the previous company I was still hiring and firing people um, and there is no formal education for residential design. So the immediate thing is well, we'll go after architecture students but, like, architecture students would come to us and didn't know how to do roofs, they didn't know how to do residential construction, they didn't know and styles of homes.
Speaker 3:And so, at a kind of at a a high level, you are taking a concept that may come from your client I'm of course, asking here, your client or from you, and you are creating from nothing a residence for someone. Yeah, we want a residence in the mountains. And we say, hey, like we don't really know what we want, we just know that we want this beautiful place, and you kind of make that come true.
Speaker 2:So we uh, yeah, we have a questionnaire, we talk to people. I call it lifestyle design. So I want to know who you are, what kind of cars you drive um, what kind of pets you have, how many who's living in the house Do you are there kids? Do you have a mother-in-law, you know? Do you have people that come over? A lot of us are from other places, so when holidays come around, you have extended family that comes in for a week.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, you know so how do you need to entertain people and what? What are your workarounds? As humans, we always have workarounds, so where do you put the keys when you come in where you?
Speaker 3:put the groceries when you come in. How do you? Where do you?
Speaker 2:put your shoes on, like these, like where do you charge your phone? Like, yeah, what are the workarounds that you do right now, the things that are really like where do you put your trash can?
Speaker 3:we talked about that with in the coffee machine. So oh, sue likes to, sue likes to hide the trash can which by the way, which, by the way, I'm all for. I like the hidden trash can too, except when I'm trying to find it uh so, so, and and so you're guiding your clients through this process. You said you have a questionnaire, um, that you do, and and is that kind of the well actually, even before that, let me back up just a second. How do clients typically find you?
Speaker 2:Either through our web presence or, like I said, I've been doing this for 30 years in this area, so we've got a lot of, you know, referral partners that know who we are and know what quality we do and know the extent of the lifestyle design that we do. So we do get a lot of word of mouth, people and and sometimes it's funny to me cause they're like oh, so-and-so sent you and I'm like I have no idea who that person is.
Speaker 4:But I'm glad.
Speaker 1:I'm glad, I'm glad they did.
Speaker 2:And it's usually like a third, you know, like the six degrees of Kevin Bacon kind of thing, so like somewhere they they heard somebody say our name but, um, you know, I'm just thankful for that that we do have that reputation and, and most of the builders that work for us, once they build, once they build one of our designs, you know, they kind of see the, uh, the level of detail that we do in our construction drawings, cause that's where we really, you know, not only do really cool designs that are designed specifically for a person, um, but we also take the detail to make sure they can be built and make sure they're economical, and and we do some things that, um, some other firms might not do. But I, I know, I just that's the only way I know your deliverables. That's not, that's the only way I know how to do. It is to make sure that there's no headaches out in the field when they, when they go yeah build, because you know our whole thing is trying to bring the stress level down.
Speaker 2:It's a very stressful process, people, when you go from a blank sheet of paper to your house like nobody can, under you know, fathom how that happens. But asking the questions, having conversations, getting to know people. I'm a puzzle guy so it's like I'm putting a puzzle together and I don't have the shapes of the pieces yet until I start talking to them, and then I create the puzzle and then put it together.
Speaker 3:I'm going to guess that part of this answer is client dependent. When you have a new set of clients and you're working with them, how long does that process take, from when you meet them to like when a design is complete and they could start construction on it?
Speaker 2:It's probably about a six-month process with everything. Maybe six to eight, depending on timing decisions.
Speaker 2:Going back and forth yeah, our process is a little bit more interactive.
Speaker 2:Back and forth, yeah, our process is a little bit more interactive.
Speaker 2:So we're not the firm that's going to spit out a design in two weeks and go here, knock yourself out. We're the people that are going to spend two weeks with you coming up with the concepts and then putting it down on paper, knocking it around a little bit, evolving it into what that becomes our phase two plan, which is our design development, where we do all four elevations, we do a 3d walkthrough, we do all these visualization tools to make sure they understand it and during that, you know, they can start getting their pricing and doing things like that. So we kind of slow down before we do the construction drawings and then, after that gets all accepted and approved, then we start involving structural engineers and doing all the details. So we take the information from the engineer and actually put it in our BIM model. So as a building information model is a BIM model, so we're building it virtually with the actual materials, so the beam sizes are correct and we know if it works or if it doesn't.
Speaker 3:Oh, that's very cool and I'm assuming that's part of the 3d modeling.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so as we draw that, if we find issues we go back to our engineer and be like, hey, this doesn't work, or I want this to work differently, you know? Or sometimes it was just client changes, like we'd like to do a tray ceiling here, we some indirect lighting, we want some, you know, you know where our light switches go, like things like that. That's usually the hardest thing for us is is you know, I think that dovetails in with what you guys do, like we're doing. You know, there's so much structure in a lot of these houses.
Speaker 3:now that we're opening up all these floor plans, it's hard to find places for light switches and speakers and you know things like that yeah, and, and actually that's an interesting little side thing about how does not only technology, which would be for us, but like how deep do you go in the design? I mean, there's obvious, there's the obvious structure, like get that. But then, once you get in it, are you doing a lighting plan? Are you like looking at shade pocketing, you know whether it's there's a theater room or golf simulator or blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, like how much of that goes into your design?
Speaker 2:All of it. So we find out, um, we just got a project right now. It's a that we're doing a remodel on a house and they've got a giant shade. Um, cause it's all glass. So we had to put this mechanical shade system in. Um, you know, indirect lighting is big. Um, drop down televisions from the ceiling, you know because we got all this glass going on at the lake.
Speaker 2:You don't want to put an entertainment center in front of it. So you know all these different things that go into that design. These are the questions we're asking as we're going, like, what are you putting in the house? Because some of them are very specific. Like, if you're doing mechanical shades, I need to know what kind of soffit system I need to know. You know how that fits into the structure, so I'm not blocking anything.
Speaker 2:Um, and, and you know to the point of like, do you want accordion doors or how do you? You know how does the threshold on a door work and and how can I make the structure happen for that? So it's, solving all these little problems is really, again, like I said, I'm a puzzle guy, so it's really a lot of fun to kind of get everybody involved and put a team around it. So I'm not an expert in everything. Yeah, um, I, I know just enough to be dangerous and a lot of different things. But we rely on guys like you, like when it comes to technology, like, okay, you want to do this, this and this. Let's talk to these guys so we can coordinate this.
Speaker 3:And, uh, before before we ask a couple of um questions about, like cool requests you've had what from a lighting perspective? Excuse me, I've got a cold so I've been coughing. Hopefully Andrew will take care of that in the editing so it doesn't bother the crap out of everybody. But, um, with lighting, we see nationwide, uh, and especially in the bigger markets, that there is a huge shift. Yes, there's a lot of linear stuff, but the even the downlight stuff is different now, smaller aperture, different. Not everything's round. There's square, there's all kinds of stuff, there's mud in. Is that? Has that touched our market? Are you working with that yet or is that not quite? Are we not quite Miami, chicago, la, New York yet?
Speaker 2:It's definitely starting Like we're. We always say we're kind of on the bleeding edge of the design. So we're seeing a lot of things before it becomes mainstream and and you know the evolution of lighting. It's just in the past 10 years it's been absolutely like neanderthal.
Speaker 4:Game changing Just amazing.
Speaker 2:So the amount of things that we can do now is just absolutely ridiculous. So you know where it was impossible. Now it's possible. You're seeing, you know you don't have these giant can lights anymore. Every you know you've got Zellie D's that are really, you know, and some of the getting very small and um, so the amount of things we could do with lighting, especially around stairs, you know, hallway, dark hallways, things like that, like it's just amazing what we can do now.
Speaker 3:So you are actually taking advantage that you are, that is entering into your design oh, we try to tout ourselves as a one-stop shop.
Speaker 2:Like you, you come in here, you tell us what we want, and if we don't know it, we're going to find out somebody that does you know, okay, awesome, very cool.
Speaker 3:Any any weird I shouldn't say weird, that's the wrong word any unique requests, anything that uh stands out that that folks have asked for that are outside the box.
Speaker 2:I mean, we had a client that was a nudist one time when we had to do an indoor swimming pool in the front of their house. That was a little unique. We made sure we called ahead before we went to the job site.
Speaker 3:Oh, that's a good idea. Yeah, that's unique. That is a yeah, that, that's that's unique.
Speaker 2:We see, we see a lot of different things. Yeah, it's a it's. It's a fun business, especially when you get into tell me everything about yourself and then sometimes you're like well, maybe back off a little bit.
Speaker 4:That was to find everything.
Speaker 3:A little bit too much information there, but it's fun. Uh, what, what? What's the garden variety job that you do like? Where do you? Where's your typical designs at kind of size scope? Just a you know general ideas.
Speaker 2:So our typical right now. You know we're we're in a high-end boutique firm, so most of our stuff is is you don't get much for a million dollars anymore so everything seems to be like two million dollars and up um, and we kind of, we're kind of sea to mountains, so yeah, we do lake wiley, lake norman, um lake road, his, um.
Speaker 2:We've done some, a lot of stuff up in the mountains and um lenore, lenore, boone area and stuff like that. We got a, a couple, um little subdivisions that we just kind of started doing one or two and they're, and people just keep calling us oh, just call these guys, they'll come in and you know after that you know we've done some really cool stuff. We did some. We did a house in, uh, on the pamlico sound, which was a really cool house. Who sat on, you know, on the pamlico sound and a river, so we got like almost a 180 degree water view.
Speaker 3:That we had.
Speaker 2:That's awesome really cool angled up house that really took advantage of it and the client couldn't have been happier. So, um, I still have no idea how they found me, but they I'm glad they did. They were from Washington DC and they were moving um to a little town called Hertford, North Carolina, and we went out there and my wife and I stayed a little bed and breakfast and Edenton and it was just like a really cool little area of a small town. I got back to my kind of small town roots in there.
Speaker 4:It was fun small town, got back to my kind of small town roots in there. It was fun. That's cool. Well, your homes are beautiful. As you know, I've been following you guys on Instagram and stuff like that for quite a while. So every time KDH design, uh, something from Instagram comes off, I'm always, you know, looking into it and stuff like so you do incredible work, incredible work, Thank you.
Speaker 3:Are there? Are there any design trends currently that are starting to proliferate in your designs that maybe our listeners would say, oh, I hadn't thought of that you were talking about, like a charging station or I don't know. It could be little, it could be big, I don't know.
Speaker 2:So one of the big trends that we're and I don't know if it's a trend, but it's a, it's a unique thing is barn dominiums.
Speaker 4:Yes, we've been doing dominiums.
Speaker 2:Yes, we've been doing, yes, we've been speaking our language. We've got about three subdivisions of barn dominiums going in right now and we're we are like, literally, one by one, fine tuning the um how to do these things most effectively, most efficiently, and make them absolutely gorgeous. Cause, you know, the big thing with barn dominiums is it's this giant box. And how do you make a giant box look? Pretty Well, we figured it out.
Speaker 3:Okay, let's go into that for a second, Cause they that is a big thing here in our area and I've I've found out from friends that it is not necessarily big all across the country.
Speaker 2:Um, so I, I was actually in a business class, um, a national business class, the other. Uh, last week, and somebody asked me about the same kind of question and I, I showed him a picture of one of our barn dominiums and they're like, oh, that's big in Ottawa. I'm like, oh, and so, you know, you, you think about it like what they really are. It's a, you know, some of the smaller ones have a like 60 by 60 garage with at least a two bedroom house, you know, or a two bedroom, you know, living quarters attached to it and, um, you know, so they're big enough to put an RV and have a workshop behind it. They're big enough to to pull your boat in without taking it off the truck. You know, it's, it's, they're, they're big enough to put pull your boat in without taking it off the truck.
Speaker 2:You know it's, it's, they're big enough to put, um, you know, 40 or 50 cars in and do triple car stacks, and so it's for the car enthusiasts, the rv and there's a lot of people that are traveling and a lot of rvs, um, you know, people retire and they just travel the world in these rvs and need a place to park them, you know. So, um, why pay for storage when you could just store it in your own garage?
Speaker 4:So that's and have it be really cool looking at the same time.
Speaker 2:Yeah and have a really cool. But you know everybody that we've done. They've always had like a different twist on it. Like some guys are fishermen that want to put their bass boat in there and some of them are RV people, some of them are car guys, yeah, like, some of them are car guys. Um, yeah, like woodworkers, woodworkers we've done. We've done like we have actually have one guy that, um, put a forge in one and I'm like, oh, that's cool. So I had to do a little research what's a?
Speaker 2:forge. So he, he, he's like a blacksmith oh yeah, so we had to put in like a metal forge, okay, we had to put in like a a fire. You you know, fire pit for his for his forge with some wood lathes and stuff like we've had. We've had. We got barn to minimum designs. They have half court basketball courts in them.
Speaker 2:And I've actually got a friend of mine that is out of New Jersey, that does sport courts, and so whenever we do one, I'm again like, hey, you're the expert, what do I got to do? How does it? How deep does a parquet floor need to be underneath it, and what, how tall does this need to be? And you know the information that he gives me. It's like wow, this is really going to work.
Speaker 2:So it's not just kind of a half done forethought, you know, it's like, oh, we'll just put a basketball hoop up now we go through and be like, okay, if this was, you know, a legit basketball court, what do we need? Where does the scoreboard go? Where is this?
Speaker 3:yeah, has anyone done like a big theater? Because you could certainly do that too in there.
Speaker 2:So we've done some big theaters, so it there was a trend for a long time about big home theaters, and then it kind of like shifted into. Well, I don't really want to go into a big room. I want to just have the big room where the super bowl is or where we have a and people can watch it.
Speaker 2:They cannot watch it sure you know and and I think, uh, but we still have. You know, we just did one that's being built right now on the third floor of a house that has an elevator. It goes up to the third floor and the third floor is entirely just one big home theater with a popcorn machine.
Speaker 3:That's cool.
Speaker 2:And of course, the half bathroom Cause you don't want to take the elevator down. You don't want to miss anything.
Speaker 3:That's right. So what so, speaking of technology, what things are you seeing that are that are musts that people are incorporating, uh, that you have to take into account when you do the your designs?
Speaker 2:Um, a lot of um, you know, like control for lighting, like the everybody's again. Everybody wants to run everything on their phone, you know, and they want to um, whether it's HVAC lighting, whatever it is. It's really nice to kind of set the mood on your way home. Sure, I mean when you think about it remote starting cars. I mean we're so used to just pre-setting something and having it In the wintertime. I go into my phone and I start my car and it's 80 degrees when I get in.
Speaker 4:I did that the first time this winter because I never had a car that did that and I'm like I go into my phone and I start my car and it's 80 degrees when I get in. I did that the first time this winter because I never had a car that did that and I'm like I'm going to try that and it was awesome.
Speaker 2:If I can run, if we can run a hot tub and your lighting and everything else from my way home, yeah, and get home and have that sanctuary, feel I mean, that's what people really want. Is the home to be a sanctuary Like? This is where I'm escaping from the world for a couple of minutes, that's a great word for it. Yeah.
Speaker 3:We haven't had anyone say that before. That's a really good word for it. That's cool. So let's, you've got an actual book. We touched on it before. Yeah, we have never promoted a book. This is a first this is a first book out here. This is a first. But tell us about your book. You touched on it, but go maybe a little bit deeper into, into what it is and who would want it and what it you know, what it shares and that sort of thing.
Speaker 2:So, um, you know, I'm in nearing my mid fifties now, so it's, and I have no desire to retire, but I will. My whole thing with my company is I love like teaching people to trade, you know, because there is no formal education for residential design, you have to learn it on your own. Um, that's absolutely bizarre. There's a, there's a hole in education system and I tried to point that out.
Speaker 2:Um, I was the president of the American Institute of building design, which is a national organization for building designers, so our most of our clients are most of our clients, or most of our members, are residential designers and architects that do houses, so it's really just geared towards the residential community. And, um, we would have people, students, that would come in and say, hey, you know, I'm third year into my architecture degree and we haven't talked about houses one time. Like, how do I do what you do, what? Where do I learn that? I'm like you have to work for one of us. That's how you learn this. Um, so I actually went, as the president of AIBD went, to a guidance counselors conference in New Orleans, which was just a good excuse to go to New Orleans, but, um, uh, you know I went there with an agenda to point out the hole in the education system.
Speaker 2:So the guy that was you know, I went to the booth where the testing agency was that tests our children to say here's your attributes and here's what you're geared for and this is where you should go. And I said what's the path to residential design? My son wants to be a residential designer. Where does he go? And he flipped through his book and he said I don't show that as a profession. I said, well, you live in a house, right? He goes yeah, and I go well, somebody must have designed it.
Speaker 2:Somebody designed that house he goes, yeah, and I go, who do you think that was? He says, well, it must have been an architect. And so, right, the booth right next door was, um, the end carb for architects. And and so I said, excuse me, sir, can you come over here and tell this man about all your education in residential design? And he said, oh, we don't do houses. And he said, and I was like, huh, you couldn't answer that in a more perfect way. And so I, you know, I said you have a hole in your system and, and you know, there's nowhere for anybody to get this education.
Speaker 2:And the school I went to was a two-year school, um, where you got an associates in applied sciences and technology, and that's what it was. It didn't say anything about residential design, um, and that school is now gone, like they don't exist anymore, so, and there's only a few schools that even talk about this, but they don't talk about it in a way that I've kind of described in the book. So we go through house styles, we go through construction methods, um, I've got people I've interviewed that have masters in architecture degrees that don't understand that a two by four is not two inches by four.
Speaker 3:I mean, that's the kind of level of education that we're feeling Right, so so this is almost a textbook in some ways.
Speaker 2:It is, but I didn't want it to be a textbook I didn't want it to be dry.
Speaker 4:Nobody would want to read that.
Speaker 2:There is a lot of stories, you know. I mean, obviously I can talk a lot, but there's a lot of stories from my, my, uh, my history, in this history of here's why you need to do this, and this is a story of when I didn't, and this is how it got all messed up.
Speaker 3:Oh, that's cool.
Speaker 2:So you're, I want you to learn from my mistakes, and and so I always tell my, my employees, like I want you to make mistakes and I want you to make them fast, Like oh, we do that. All grew up as much as you want, that's right as fast as you want, because that's the only way you're going to learn. That's right, and so um we, I give people a long leash where, if they're designing something, you know they'll go. What do you think? And?
Speaker 4:I'm like what do you?
Speaker 2:think Like I don't like it, and I said me neither. Let's try again.
Speaker 3:So this is a there's, there's a lot of, there's a lot of anecdotal stuff in there. It sounds like you have the, you have the uh, you have the actual um information, which is would be almost the text, but then you, you use that in a more practical way to make it uh, to make it interesting to the reader.
Speaker 2:And I dedicated a whole chapter to Fibonacci numbers.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, we were talking about that the other night, I remember.
Speaker 2:And so when I say Fibonacci, most people are like what the heck is that? I don't understand it. But Sue is doing that right now.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so everybody knows. You know, in algebra we learned what pi was right and everybody knows that. But its long lost cousin is phi, which is 1.618, which is the golden ratio of design, which, if you look down at your finger, each one of your knuckles is 1.618 bigger than the next one. Your finger, each one of your knuckles is 1.618 bigger than the next one, like our entire body, is built on this proportion. Everything in nature is built on this proportion. So that's why flowers have one petal, two petals, three petals, five petals, eight petals. That's why the spirals of a pine cone are 13 spirals. The spirals of the solar system are 13. So all of these things are very cool and I teach a class on this, but I dedicated a whole chapter to this. I mean, everything in music, like the shape of an acoustic guitar, is that shape? Because sound bounces. So when we do media rooms there's actually a golden ratio where sound bounces. So I had a client that came in. He said I bought these special speakers from India you have to just read the instruction manual to their special and I want to be able to listen to music in the best way possible. When I looked at it I was like, oh, it's just Fibonacci angles. Okay, yeah, I can do that, and so we built a media room in that proportion and it was perfect. Um, so, yeah, it's.
Speaker 2:It's funny to me that nobody in the design world talks about it, but it's like the only rule that we have to live by. And if I always tell people, if you don't know the rules, you don't know how to break the rules. So, like you can, you can be within 10% of that, and there's ways to check it mathematically with geometries. It's a. It's a very cool tool for our, you know, especially my employees. I'm like, if that doesn't look right, they know how to run regulating lines, which are the Fibonacci geometry, and they know how to figure out what's wrong, cause you can look at something and go I don't like it and I just don't know why. I don't know what's wrong with it, but in about 15 seconds I can tell you what's wrong with it.
Speaker 3:So that's the kind of detail I'm glad we got to that Cause that's the kind of detail that you're putting into these designs. Oh yeah, that folks you know because you can go to. Well, I think you can still go to Lowe's and buy books that have like house plans.
Speaker 2:Oh, there's a lot of ugly houses that get built, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, and so that's why you would want someone that is a professional in residential design, is for those details that make your home a sanctuary, is for those details that make your home a sanctuary, that it's not just some kind of store-bought, off-the-sheet kind of design. And going to that kind of level is really, really cool.
Speaker 4:Really cool. Well, I want to get the book, just to learn more about that.
Speaker 3:Exactly.
Speaker 1:I'm hooked.
Speaker 3:Tell us, is the book out?
Speaker 2:It will be so right now. Uh, my publisher said I should have something by the end of the week, which is tomorrow is the end of the week. So, um, but it's in its final edits. Um, we do have a cover. That's made. I I showed you guys a cover.
Speaker 3:It's kind of cool that we'll put that on the on the that house kind of signifies something a little bit more.
Speaker 2:That's a little insider info, but that house was like the last house I designed from the firm I worked for before I started my firm and so while it was under construction that was like the first house that I was dealing with, still dealing with the client and the builder kind of under my company while they were building it. So it kind of transferred from company to company to company and just always loved that design and the. It was just absolute pure luck that the photo we took matched my hand-drawn rendering, because I still hand draw all the render.
Speaker 4:I was just going to ask you that, are you doing?
Speaker 2:the photo we took actually matched up with the hand-drawn rendering. So I had my friend who's a graphic artist kind of take Photoshop and blend the two and if you look closely at the photograph you'll still see my hand-drawn rendering behind it. But so that's our little tagline of let us draw your dream, because that's what we do.
Speaker 3:Well, we will definitely have the picture to accompany the podcast.
Speaker 2:But it will be on Amazon shortly, I'm hoping by the summer.
Speaker 3:And we're recording this May 15th. So just to give you an idea, because we said end of the week, but it depends on when you listen to it. When the end of the week is, I'm sure we'll do a nice little signing or somewhere I'll do a book signing.
Speaker 4:Book signing and invite everybody out. That's a great idea.
Speaker 2:This is kind of a dream of mine. I've wanted to write this book for about 10 years and finally got around to finishing it.
Speaker 2:That's awesome, it's incredible, it's really important to me and what I want to do, too, is put a training program behind it. So this is just kind of the tip of the iceberg of what you're going to know. Um, cause we're we're going to. I have a I have a team of people right now taking the book and turning it into workbooks in a training program, so this could be really cool for training.
Speaker 4:And you're also opening it up for kids or for young adults who once again want to do something like that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it is Absolutely I mean this you read this book and you book and you could start on your way to residential design easily, A lot easier than I did, Like most of the people in my industry. We just beat our head up against the wall, making mistakes and trying to learn from them and trying to figure out how to dimension a house and what kind of information to put on the plan and how to detail things and stuff like that. And this kind of lays it all out of what to do and why to do it and what happens when you don't do it right.
Speaker 4:And learn from your mistakes. I mean, I know I do. Well, you know, if I I'm a tangible person, I learn things by seeing it, doing it, and but if I hear something and I'm about to do it, but you've already done it and it's wrong, I'm going to learn from your mistakes so I don't have to go down that path.
Speaker 2:So we created as I originally created, as a training program for my, my company. But you know I talked to a lot of designers and they're interested in it. Could be students that like it. You know, it could be anybody.
Speaker 4:How many, how many people do you have working for your company, right?
Speaker 2:now we have seven. Right now we kind of fluctuate between seven and 10. That's just kind of a perfect number. But the team I've got right now we're ready to kind of, I think, expand exponentially in the next couple of years. So we're ready to blast away.
Speaker 1:That's exciting, very cool.
Speaker 2:Well, before we get out of here, kevin, we always like to end our episodes kind of gauging your music interests.
Speaker 1:So why don't you tell us who is your favorite band artist, any notable concerts? What's your jam?
Speaker 2:So that's an interesting question for me. Just my Spotify DJ gets confused. Um so, growing up you know everything was. You know, you know classic rock, you know.
Speaker 2:And then my grandmother had this little bar in Western New York and it was all country and it was like old country, like Patsy Cline and you know so it was like, yeah, so I had a lot of country influence and then, um, you know, in the eighties, I got into punk rock and I was into, like the dead Kennedys and like yeah, it's like Ramones, Like it was, it was really cool, yeah, and and so like, um, the uh, my, my music tastes are all over the board and I will. I will say that the one thing that I, when I design a house, I'm probably listening to pink or Kesha or no way, that's right.
Speaker 3:We were talking about this the other night.
Speaker 2:Now I remember the high beat female pop songs. I can just design like nobody's business to that stuff. But, um, you know, my wife and I are huge black crows fans. We've been all over the country watching the black crows and, um, she actually took me last year for my birthday to Chris Stapleton, which was one of the best concerts I've ever seen. It's really good. So, yeah, my musical tastes are all over the board.
Speaker 1:Like you never know what's coming out of my speakers. I love that. That's cool. Well, if our listeners wanted to learn a little bit more about your company, KDH residential designs, or get in contact with you, how can they do so?
Speaker 2:So our our website's, kdhdesigncom. All of our information's right there. All of our information is right there. If you call the office, it's 704-728-0505. You'll probably talk to Katie and Katie can help you do whatever you need to do and schedule you for whatever you need scheduled, awesome, fantastic.
Speaker 3:And I heard Sue, so I know that there's an Instagram account as well. Yes, are you on any other social medias?
Speaker 2:So our marketing department handles that. I have no idea.
Speaker 4:We will find out from the marketing department.
Speaker 2:Well, you are on Instagram, yes, Well, now that I know that, that's good.
Speaker 3:We'll make sure all those are on the show notes as well.
Speaker 1:Absolutely All right. Well, thank you again for joining us, Kevin.
Speaker 3:Thank you, guys, it's been awesome.
Speaker 4:Yes.
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