Each printing usually has a three to five year shelf life and then we’re out taking new pictures for the next one. I think we’re on our seventh brochure since that first six dollar black and white one, that we inherited. We usually sell the booklet and pricing pages through the mail at what our printing and mailing costs are, because we are certainly not just trying to sell our catalogue. One big mistake I made in 1982 was to have our brochure a 1983 calendar, featuring homes for each month of the year. We sold a lot of them in the fall and into the winter, but couldn’t give them away after that. They were dated. Actually, we did give most of them away and probably threw a few away. I might have even started a fire with a few. I knew I screwed up by not having girls in bikini’s at least standing on the front porch of each home.
Sometimes we needed to take pictures before the homes were landscaped, which happened quite often. I remember a beautiful model we built just West of Portland and I wanted to feature it as our “Dutchman II”. The house looked great but the surroundings were dirt and lumber scrap piles. Just before the brochure went to press, I asked if they could fix the picture by adding grass around the exterior. You know, to look natural. The printer said no problem. Of course, we never proofed the copy and printed thousands of the booklets. From then on we were constantly asked “What planet is this house on?” Actually, it was a similar shade of Stallone’s polo field, kind of a fluorescent green. I wanted to get some of these stories on paper before I forgot them all, and I’m sure a few are embellished and distorted, but that’s the way I remembered them. Anyway, that is the first ten years of Homestead Log Homes and I hope you enjoyed it. We certainly did.