HOME-GROWN BUSINESS: Husband-wife team specialize in custom home design, construction
By CARL E. FEATHERLifestyle Editor
For many couples, the ultimate test of their marriage is building a new home.
Tate and Jen Hedrick have built 60 of them.
The Harpersfield Township couple own Hedrick Homes, a custom design and home construction company they operate out of their residence. Tate and Jen have been in business together 12 of the 20 years they've been married.
"What we do is stressful," says Jen. "We're responsible for what is probably the biggest investment anybody is going to make in their entire life."
"It's all on your shoulders," Tate adds. "You are trying to make everything perfect for them."
Jen and Tate say working together on these stressful projects, where they seldom have a day that everything goes according to plan, has given each other an appreciation for what they go through on their jobs. It's also allowed them to establish a mutual agreement for the down time.
"The biggest rule we've tried to follow is that when the work day is done, everything is left behind us," says Tate. "In this business, you can have a lot of bad days."
They've also come to appreciate the value of periodically putting it all behind them: When the stress level gets too high, they take a trip out West or to another destination to put everything in perspective. Tate also enjoys working on the hobby farm they are building to the east of their home on South River Road.
Tate and Jen, both 38, say being in the home construction business has given them a good lifestyle, despite the stress. Their flexible schedule has allowed them to attend school and athletic events for their three children, Megan (Acord), 20; Jessie, 19; and Laramie, 17. They've also made many friends of the subcontractors who work for them and the clients for whom they've built homes.
The Hedricks says they build a relationship with their client before they build a home for them. It's a relationship that continues long after the final nail is driven.
"We've become friends," says Emily Harley of Kingsville Township. The Hedricks built a two-story country home for Harley and her partner Walt Robertson four years ago. Emily says she got the plan for their house from a magazine and the Hedricks took it from there.
"Everything went perfectly," Harley says. "We loved the experience; they were great people to work with. They were the only ones we went to and we highly recommend them."
Jen says they help their clients design a home that meets their tastes right down to the faucets and light fixtures.
"I think what we do best is truly the custom home," says Tate. "We have a lot of insight. I think we have a very good feel for what people want."
The Hedricks say many of their clients are teachers who do their research before approaching a builder. "They know what they want," Tate says. "They'll come in with a whole folder of stuff they've clipped from magazines. Teachers are very organized."
The Hedricks' typical new home construction job is in the range of $250,000 to $300,000, although they have done half-million projects, as well. The Hedricks typically do not build in subdivisions, and prefer building homes in the country - the initial home construction project is often followed by a garage, barn and other hobby farm buildings.
"We had one house we built for $175,000 and it should have been a four-month job," Tate says. "Eleven months later, we'd built a house, barn and boat dock."
The Hedricks say they learned their motto from that project - "Yes, dear."
Tate says those are essential words every husband needs to get into his head at the onset of planning and building a new home with his spouse.
"The husband better learn 'Yes, dear,'" says Tate.
Building their dream
The Hedricks got their experience in home building from three sources: family, on-the-job training and by building their own home.
Tate's grandfather, Charley, developed the Hedrick Drive area in North Kingsville and worked as a corporate construction project manager. Tate's father, David, was a union carpenter.
Jen's father, Larry Brunner, was in the fabric business in Ashtabula.
Tate started working in home construction while a Geneva High School student. He did drywall work and joined the painter's union out of high school, then went into the carpenter's union with his father. After hours, he took on side jobs to expand his skills and income.
"I took any job I could possibly get," he says. "I worked night and day and picked up the tricks of the trade. ... I guess I was never afraid to try anything."
His day job took Tate all over northeast Ohio; Tate worked on Jacobs Field and the new Cleveland Browns stadium, but he grew tired of the travel and started thinking about becoming a home builder.
The acid test of his dream was the year he and Jen spent building their home. While they had planned to eventually build a new home on land they purchased along South River Road, their timetable was moved up when they got an offer to sell their house.
That put them in a financial squeeze, and they economized whenever possible. Jen still recalls spending the night outside KraftMaid, watching the O.J. Simpson story unfold on a portable television while waiting for the cabinet maker to open it's doors for the big closeout sale the next morning.
They performed every possible aspect of the construction themselves, except the plumbing and heating. Family members gave hundreds of hours to the project, as well. Jen's father showed up for work every morning to meticulously perform the monotonous job of staining the cedar siding.
Their kitchen and living room were designed around excess lumber Charley Hedrick stored in his barn. It included some large beams that would become support posts and the mantle of their stone fireplace.
Jen says Charley opened his storage barn to them when he learned they planned to build.
"We took one look around that barn, backed up our truck and had it loaded in about 10 minutes," says Jen.
It took a year to build the house. They moved in Christmas Eve; the next morning, Jen's father showed up at 8 a.m. to go to work, just as he'd done for the months leading up to their big move.
"He said he had to be here the first morning everyone was in here," Jen recalls.
Looking back on lessons learned, Jen says they probably would have built a smaller house; the 3,300 square feet is too much for what will soon be an empty nest. Tate says he'd also put in a geothermal heating system if he were building today; the option was too costly back then and they went with wood and electric baseboard.
The most important lesson they learned from building a house together was about their potential as business partners.
"We learned we could actually work together," she says. "It was a lot of work. We had to do everything ourselves. We didn't have any money. We were so broke."
Getting started
Tate says convincing other people to let them build a house for them wasn't as difficult as selling banks on the idea that they could do it. The Hedricks believe it was because of a recommendation letter written by Dave Payne, Ashtabula County building inspector, that they were able to get their first project financed.
"He really helped us out ... he was the reason we got that first job. He really helped us get started," Jen says.
Tate and Jen say jobs seem to come to them through unusual channels, such as running into a childhood friend whose daughter planned to build a house, and building a home for her as well as her parents and in-laws. To this day, they do very little in way of traditional advertising; most of their work comes from the referrals of satisfied customers.
"We're not salesmen at all," Jen admits. "If somebody wants a house built, they come to us."
They recently added a Web site to their marketing efforts. It showcases many of their jobs and provides a reference point for clients working through myriad materials and colors options.
Both Jen and Tate work with the client when they are designing the home. Tate does much of the actual construction work. "I'm spending more time ditches digging this fall and more on roofs than I have in the last two years," he says. "I do a lot of the work nobody else wants to do.
"She does most of the paperwork, 100 percent of it," he says. "Insurance, taxes, Worker's Compensation. Good stuff I don't know anything about."
Jen also makes sure a house is spotless and ready to receive it's new family when the work is done.
Although custom home building is their specialty, they also do renovations and additions, especially if it's a challenging job. Tate admits the new home market has cooled significantly from what it was a year ago, and there is a glut of homes, including new ones, on the market. However, people are renovating and expanding what they have, and at this time, that makes up the bulk of their business.
They also are seeing an influx of out-of-state new home buyers coming from congested areas of the nation to retire in rural Ashtabula County. This trend, along with the tourism impact of wineries and The Lodge, give them optimism for the future of their business.
"In the long term, I think Ashtabula County is going to be a good place to be a contractor in," Tate says.
"There is still room, a lot of room here," adds Jen.
Star Beacon Print Edition: 11/6/2006
