Welcome to the Steve Nyhof Enterprises custom home design and custom home building


Teenage Years Home Building I am the youngest of four brothers. We all worked for our father in the residential construction industry building custom and speculation homes. We did everything except electrical, plumbing and heating and cooling. My job at the age of about ten was to keep my father and older brothers' aprons full of nails, mix cement and mortar, carry 40 lb. blocks for the foundation, keep them supplied with wall studs, carry roof shingles to the roof, etc. I was the gopher. For several years we prefabed walls in our barn on an 8 foot by 40 foot table. In one day we could put the walls up on a house and have most of the roof sheathing in place before nightfall. Kitchen and Bath Several years later our father also started a business selling and installing kitchen cabinets. I was thirteen years old when I began installing kitchen and bath cabinets in new and existing homes. That included any trim work, installing tile and laminate countertops, installing sinks, hardware and back splashes of various types. We continued building homes and installing the cabinets. From age fifteen to eighteen my brother Mike and I did all the trim work in the houses. From laying the 5/8" particle board sub-floor, to hanging doors, to base and casing. I could remember up to seven different measurements including fractions in my head to cut flooring around doorways. I loved to bug Mike who had a hard time remembering four - by rambling out random numbers - man he could get mad! Early Twenties A year in Africa I was almost twenty when half of our family went to Uganda Africa to help the refugees of Karamoja come back to their homeland. Idi Amin (the late president) had recently been overthrown and the country was in chaos. My job was to organize and maintain the vehicles and excavating equipment. Mike's job was to survey the land and divide it up and give it back to the people. Jim's job was to oversee the new building complex for the staff and get a runway excavated. My fathers job was to educate the people and bring them the word of God. Linda (one of my three sisters) started and organized the orphanage. I could go on for a long time with stories from sleeping with rats running around the room at night to being shot at by the Martinico tribe with machine guns. A change in Industry At twenty one I was on my own. The family now was in all parts of the world; I was looking for employment and got a job at Drawform (a metal stamping company) where I quickly excelled to Production Toolmaker status. I worked there for eleven years and was involved in every aspect of tool making. From designing tooling, to machining, heat treating, grinding to tenths of a thousandths of an inch, assembly and finally work the tools into a machine to run parts for the military, automotive and other industries. My brother Jim went back into building after returning from Africa and had me design his house plans which I did on the side after work and weekends. I had no prior training but being artistic and having a love for drawing, I quickly caught on. Through the years I continued to pick up more work from other builders and customers. I was about twenty three when I built my first house. Barrel, vaulted and tall ceilings were just a beginning to what I put into that home. I designed and built a mitering jig that rounded the outside corners of all my window and door casing. With my mechanical background I also designed and built motorized sliding doors to cover a skylight - it worked like something you would see in a James Bond movie. I was twenty six when I married my wife Mary. We have three children, two boys and a girl. I purchased my first computer for home design in 1989 and quickly learned several programming languages. We built our next home in Borculo a few years later where we lived for about seven years. Early Thirties Time to move on I quit Drawform after eleven years and went to work as a designer for my brother Mike, where I drew over 100 plans a year. We were building about 40 custom and speculation homes each year. After about four years Mike decided to slow his company down. It was time to move on and start my own business designing and drawing house and condominium plans. We sold our home in Borculo and moved into a speculation home my brother Mike built in Holland. I drew several house plans for our next home while we had the house for sale. After seven months the house sold and we began the process of building the home we live in today. We also built a two story hobby barn where myself and three full time employees work everyday serving our community. Middle Forties Just being a family man My son Jordan is now 17 years old and over 6'-8" tall. I now look and feel small at 6'-6". I'm feeling older too. Time just doesn't wait for anyone. Jordan enjoys. no loves all kinds of cars, and they need to go fast! Hmmm, wonder where he got that from. My son Travis is now 13 years old, growing tall and thin like his mother. He loves fishing with the fellow I painted the car for and his Grandpa B. Travis also enjoys a number of different computer games. Probably where he is now. Alicyn has grown up so fast, we all can't believe it. You know she was in the air on 9/11/2001 traveling from Korea to Chicago. That's a story in itself. Aliy gets everyone's attention with her amazing charm and beauty, what a blessing. The picture to the right was taken when she was 5 years old, dressed up for Halloween. By the way, I did the photo work. My wife Mary is the most beautiful woman inside and out you will ever meet. She loves jewelry and is the reason I work so hard. No, not to support her habit of clothes and jewelry, just because I love her.


January 1998 A Bold Beginning Drawing about 50 plans per year Because of my background of drawing plans on the side for over twenty four years, starting a business was not so difficult. (Paying for my own insurance was a new thing!) I made a few phone calls and quickly got to work. Through the years I never stopped developing programs to automate the designing and drawing process. The beginning of our company database to store information about contacts and house plans and plan data. Worked for six months developing the color art work for front elevations. Finally complete, we developed the process to generate water color looking front elevations in the computer in only a few hours. Sometime in 1999 to 2001 E-Mail and Web Sites Drawing about 200 plans per year I was very intrigued with the whole Internet thing from the very beginning. In 1990 I got a hold of my first modem with a speed of 300 bits. (For those who don't know, today we have connection speeds over 4mb or 4,000,000 bits.) I watched the whole thing develop from black DOS screens with blinking cursors to what we have today. It was time to get connected and use E-Mail as a form of communication. While I did have my own E-Mail account, there wasn't much to do with it because very few people I knew had E-Mail. I was also hit up for a web site which I really wanted but didn't know how to make effective. Back then, web designers were just getting into web site templates, but the web designers still needed to add the content. I have always been the type that can do things myself so I purchased a web development program and setup our first company web site. (Which has been altered to what it is today.) Sometime in 2002 to 2004 Interactive Web Sites Drawing about 350 plans per year After learning web program development, we plunged right in and designed our own interactive database driven web site templates specifically designed for builders. Taking what we were learning about databases and web sites, we quickly applied what we were learning to our own on line services. The first thing we worked toward was an on line plan library with search capabilities. Today we have over 600 plans on line for builders and customers to search from. We then took what we learned from the plan search database and connected it to the builders web sites so their customers could search for house plans from the builders site and not ours, keeping the customer from roaming. We continued to develop the database filters to where our web sites know what web site a person is browsing. I began to see how databases and programming could effectively automate many of our day to day tasks. The next project was to upload the working plans to the web site so our builders and customers could access their plans from home. This system grew into what is called the Plan Center, where most of our customers spend their time reviewing and printing their plans. Customers can now order their plans on line and pick up full sets the next day. Builders can E-Mail small copies of the plans to their sub-contractors and save on printing costs. Developed home sales software for big builders marketing housing developments. The software is designed to organize all aspects from developments, phases, lots, drawing detail, pricing and options. An upload utility connects to the builders web site and displays very user friendly web pages and printable brochures. Early in 2005 Starting the Construction Division Projecting over 400 plans this year Stop developing the home sales software for consumer use to continue its' development for our own use. Added the scheduling module to the database and implemented a visual web page that displays the schedule to our customer and all our sub-contractors. Added a community Forum to our personal builders web site so our customers and sub-contractors can log the process of the building project. This was later hacked by an unknown source who then deleted months of archive data. We then added a simple Project News system to help keep our customers informed of the days events. Added a small user friendly web site for our long distant customers with a picture gallery, so they can watch the process of their home being built from any web browser - even while on vacation. Added our specifications to the web site so prospects can see what exactly is included and what our options are in new home construction. This is linked to our sub-contractors, vendors and suppliers. I am having just way too much fun creating one of the most interactive and informative builders web sites in the industry. Come back now and then to learn more about the services we will be providing to help prospects and our customers stay in touch with the building process from start to finish. Steve Nyhof July of 2006 Running along in low gear Projecting about 250 plans this year Took the summer off to paint cars. Made a new company called Involved Painting where I get the owner involved with the work so I don't have to do so much. So far, I have done most of the work. I can't even get my sons to help. I painted a 1935 Ford Sedan with 4 different pearl paints in the flame job. It's amazing. I setup my third stall with lighting and an air system for spraying. Through the years I had painted about 20 cars. Worked on my 1959 Chevy Pickup and got that running. Did some fishing. Went to car shows and won a few trophies. Painted flames with an air brush on a Harley Davidson motor cycle. Finished the homes I was building at the end of July. I was still working on a big remodel on Lake Michigan which we did get and broke ground on August 28. I made a web site for the owner to help promote her rental property. Started an Internet Search Engine Marketing company called Leading Site Ranking after learning how to promote my own company web sites. FInally learned how to make Flash presentation videos that finally work after trying for over a year with various software. Found some cool text to speech programs. Starting to develop the Task Manager for our builders web sites. This will allow builders to better communicate the items that need to be done and by specific dates. Coming soon. March through summer of 2007 Design business doing well Projecting about 200 plans this year Well, I think we are in it for the long hall. The Michigan economy is very slow. So far this year we have drawn only a few speculation homes. Large custom homes and remodel jobs is what is still moving today. The large remodel job we did on Lake Michigan is done and beautiful. Completed on time and has kept me very busy. I have become an Internet and book junky and have decided it was time to get back into programming as the new systems I wanted to build will require the latest coding... PHP and MySQL databases and languages. Took this time to really work hard on the builders web sites and add a few more services. To begin with, we set the task manager aside to concentrate on two new great web interfaces. The Home Listing page and the House Plans page. These are database driven systems that are easily setup and maintained. Worked on the Plan Center plot interface. Our system now uploads plot files to a builders local print house server. That mean that builders will now be able to order their house plans online and pick them up the same day just down the road. No more shipping costs. On the drawing board so to speak is a new interface that will allow builders to take and include plans from our database and add them seamlessly to their database of house plans. If you are a builder and do not have many plans your self, but would like to use a searchable plan system and offer plans, you will be able to select the plans you want or have the system choose for you by criteria. Until Later Steve

800-834-6198

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