As a group with backgrounds in the home design and building business, we have decided to embark on a mission to share some of our expertise gleaned over the years to help new or experienced home buyers in making the right decisions with regards to new construction or renovations as well as tips on painting, insulation, landscaping and irrigation, lighting, patios and outdoor fixtures, and whatever else we might dream up to talk about. Our skill sets are diverse and so there is no telling where these pages might lead, but we are looking forward to the journey.

All four of us have a desire to share our knowledge with others. A couple of the guys talked about teaching at technical colleges, and one does, but the Internet seemed to offer up a better way to get the messages out at a higher level. In these pages we will try to provide enough detail to get the idea across and will also link to other sites we found that offer more detail on the same topic.

We will cover a lot of material here but do not have a grand plan for how this will roll out. We decided to let each person take their discussions wherever they want. There is no boss here, just a few guys wanting to share experiences and hopefully provide information that readers will find compelling and thought-provoking.

The artwork on the site is clearly not provided by anything resembling a professional photographer. We have all taken quite a few pictures of projects we were involved with using our cell phones. We will share some of those with you, and hopefully you will forgive some of the lack of clarity, absence of perfect lighting and backgrounds, and other imperfections inherent in the pictures.

Since none of us can be accused of being technically savvy, Steve’s son has agreed to help us out with the technical aspects of the site along with my daughter providing design and layout ideas. I think both of these people silently chuckle behind our backs but try to show some respect for their elderly students when in our presence. Good upbringing. We agreed to provide them with the text and pictures and they agreed to create the pages and put the stuff in. We will show them other sites we want to link to, and they will somehow get our site to do that. Seems like a good deal to me.

In the course of having electrical work done, I ran into a company that not only does electrical work, but also does solar panel installation in the mid-Atlantic region. Had an in-depth discussion with the owner of the business, Chris, who provided me with a ton of information and ideas related to solar panel installation on single family homes. This technology has come a long way in commercial uses, and this has helped start to get the cost down, but the costs are still a bit high for the average homeowner. If these costs come down another 25% or so, I think solar panels will start to become more mainstream.