Hey, there. It’s been a minute since I’ve poked around here, mainly because we didn’t know what the next phase of Boden Construction was going to look like. In the beginning, after we lost Jon and we started building whatever Boden has become, we were clueless and overwhelmed and just put one foot in front of the other. And somewhere at the heart of it I knew we wanted to be accessible. I’d heard story after story about the difficulty in finding builders, how hard it was for people to find a communicative contractor, or to get anyone to call back. So at a minimum we felt like we could do that. And then, well, covid and rising inquiries and all the things got in the way, so over the last few years I’ve neglected our online presence here and Boden altogether really. So I’ll start with an apology: if you’ve emailed or reached out in the last few years I’m so sorry if we left you hanging. That’s on me and we just couldn’t keep up. I know building a house is a process and the bare minimum, in my opinion, is a connection with your builder, so I’m sorry if we just couldn’t make that happen for some of you. I know this social media/online prescence is a game we are supposed to play, but I’m just not that into it. We’ve never loved attempting to sell ourselves through target marketing and seo, or asking clients to open their homes, their private spaces, to photographers and parades, etc. etc. We’ve had the opportunity a few times over the years to scale and expand and whatever else, but that really just isn’t who we are. We’re trying to do what we love and keep space for the people we love, too, and when running a small business that’s a delicate balance to keep.
This business is fully integrated into our lives. Period. Full stop. My kids, my inlaws, our family has been on every job site, built saunas and elevators and cleaned and cleaned and cleaned. We work hard. We build things. And the homes we have built, for ourselves and others, are the foundation of our entire lives. We spend time in them, spend our time at home talking about them and we’ve built great houses for great people that have become great friends. And, like any business that consumes your life, there are times you try to figure out where you are going and who you want to be. Truth be told, I never wanted to be a real estate agent or a bookkeeper, and Adam, if he could, would be on the job site wearing a tool belt and swinging a hammer instead of managing schedules and constantly answering calls. But, things change and we adapt, pivot, to fit whatever role we’re supposed to at any given time.
So while we love what we do, when we get to do it: dream, build, create things, learn, grow, change, all the while creating a space for a family to live, sometimes figuring out our own roles in this ever changing life is tricky.
And then, just when we thought we had it figured out, crusing forward attempting to figure out where to go next amidst the chaos of covid, we lost my dad, putting us on another path that involved selling and moving and probate and grief, and it made us rethink the direction we were moving. Grinding all the time didn’t make sense, so we essentially put a successful, growing business on hold and took six months to travel the world with our kids. Long story long, we still don’t have it figured out. But, in the meantime—we accumulated some properties. And it’s time to move them, in a housing market that is tepid at best, such is life.
We’ll start with this cute single family home in Lead that Adam essentially transformed into a brand new house with his own hands.
We’ll start here and then figure out what to do next. Adam is slowly dipping his toes back into building for clients, and as of now we’re not exactly sure what that looks like beyond the next year or so either, but thanks for following along.
Take Care, L.
