My Cedar Flats place setting on 2-1/2 acres... a nice clear cold creek loaded with trout running in the back The family and our dog Enie. this was about nineteen-seventy-four or so. After Steelcraft I designed this house and me, the kids and their mom worked on it all summer untill they had to go back to school but helped me on the week ends, we finished it to the point we could move in before the rains came in November of that year, but had much inside work to do. It was a cool house and a great learning experience for my kids and the opportunity most kids never get. We all loved it and was a happy time but was also the end of this era for me. I was into sunken living rooms, stone fireplaces, spiraled staircases and lots of real wood inside and out with this one, hand-made cool. All my homes were, you my have one.

Builder

Dad had bought 6 lots in a row in 1938 for $45.00 each [ forty five dollars], when him and my mom split he moved. He sold the family home to his brother Joe for $7,500 and I bought the empty lot from Dad for $2,500. He moved on....to his next dream, the appeased price on the lot was $2,000 but I wanted the lot  it was close to where I was living so I paid him the premium price, had some wanting to leave my sent, bought it and built my first spec house I was off and running. A very exciting time in my young life. My dream may come true yet, I was hoping. No bail out in my time, the country was at least not socialist yet, you just packed up your shit and left, starting over with nothing. My Monticello would have to wait I guess.

The first piece of that part of my past went for $14.950.00 ...about  15 to18 grand was about it for a nice 1100 to 1200 sqft 3 bedroom 1 1/2 bath and double car garage on a big lot in 1959/60 same thing goes for 200k and up now, It took a lifetime to make a million dollars then at that kind of money.

Now its 2008 and there are a bunch of builders, bankers, realtors or have anything to do with anything are packing there banana boxes today.. its a greed-power cycle that will never be broken.

So if you thought you were bullet proof and/or a genius .....whip out your money clip and take a look. Don't you just hate that word "Leverage".

May need to retrain... The Chinese are coming.

I don't have any photos of houses I built in my twenty's, at the time I was so devastated, I burned my drafting board, all my prints and photos out side in the trash burner, sucking down the sauce. I suppose that I could get off my ass and drive down to the home county, run around and find some of the houses if I can even remember where and take some pictures but it don't seem that important, but maybe I will.

Ugene McCalligan..............Builder/Artist