John Houston Homes is back to build jobs! On this episode of the Welcome Home Podcast we're sharing updates about our communities with available lots to build on as well as talking about the many tools we offer to help  our customers choose the perfect floor plan and design selections for their new home. You'll also hear from one of our very own JHH Builders, Curtis Green, who offers a builder's perspective on what building a home looks like in this current market, and what you can expect from our new and improved build process.

Intro: [00:00:03] Welcome Home, a podcast brought to you by John Houston Homes. Join hosts, Chelsi Frazier and Whitney Pryor, as they walk you through the exciting adventure of your home buying and building journey.

Whitney Pryor: [00:00:19] Thank you for joining us on today's episode of the Welcome Home Podcast. I'm Whitney, and Chelsi is here with me.

Chelsi Frazier: [00:00:26] Hey everybody!

Whitney Pryor: [00:00:28] So, it's exciting, we're starting to build again, right?

Chelsi Frazier: [00:00:31] Yes, finally, it has been long and anticipated.

Whitney Pryor: [00:00:34] Yes, t feels like it's been years, but it really hasn't been.

Chelsi Frazier: [00:00:38] In the Marketing world, it felt like years.

Whitney Pryor: [00:00:40] Yeah, of not being able to build homes from scratch, but here we are again. We're able to do it again. I think today you're going to kind of let us know what we're talking about. I think today we're going to get into more of what that means.

Chelsi Frazier: [00:00:53] Yeah, definitely. When we say we're building, we never stopped building houses, but we did kind of put a pause for a little bit on what we call build jobs, what you were saying from scratch. We were just selling spec and inventory homes for for several months there, probably more than that. We're back to people being able to come in, choose their lot, choose their floor plan and build from the ground up. We're going to talk about what communities we're building in today and kind of what that looks like now in this current market. With everything that we've been through in the past year, we are going to remind everybody of some of those tools that we have and just kind of go through some tips on building, communities and just all of that in general. We also have a special guest who knows about this better than anybody. He's in the field with it every day. We've got Curtis Green with us today. Welcome, Curtis.

Curtis Green: [00:01:51] Hi, thanks for having me.

Chelsi Frazier: [00:01:52] Yeah, thanks for coming. Curtis is a Construction Manager for John Houston Homes. What that means is he oversees the construction of the home from start to finish to closing. Like I said, he knows exactly what that looks like for the homeowner on a daily basis. We're going to kind of quiz him on some things that are helpful for the homeowner to know towards the end of the show, so we'll bring him back in in a little bit.

Whitney Pryor: [00:02:17] All right, so I guess we can jump into it. We're building in quite a few different communities in the Metroplex. Starting in the Fort Worth and Burleson area, we've got Hulen Trails. It is technically in Fort Worth, but zoned to Crowley ISD. In Burleson, we have The Parks at Panchasarp Farms. Both of those communities are awesome communities. The Parks at Panchasarp Farms is a Master Planned Community with a pool that is already built.

Chelsi Frazier: [00:02:46] Yeah, it's beautiful.

Whitney Pryor: [00:02:46] You can use it as soon as you move in. Hulen Trails is a little bit further north, but is great for those that are looking to commute and need Kind of a shorter distance for that.

Chelsi Frazier: [00:02:58] Yes, and we've got several communities in the Waxahachie-Midlothian areas. We have Sunrise at Garden Valley and The Oasis, both on the Northern side of town, with the oasis as part of the North Grove Master Development Community. Sunrise is just right around the corner of Broadhead, right?

Whitney Pryor: [00:03:15] Mhmm, yes.

Chelsi Frazier: [00:03:15] It is close to that area. Then The Arbors in Midlothian, that's 1-acre lots that we just opened up recently, but is coming along pretty nicely.

Whitney Pryor: [00:03:24] We also build out in Ferris, so that's kind of a newer area for us. Ferris is off of 45, about 25 minutes south of Dallas, just North of Ennis area. It's a newer area for us, but a great area if you're looking to commute into Dallas and don't want to deal with the 35 traffic because 35 is never going to be done, but 45 is just fine right now. For those that are looking to commute into Dallas, that's a great area, too.

Chelsi Frazier: [00:03:58] That one's just starting out. It's hard to understand what's going to be there because it's also a Master Planned Community with lots of future amenities.

Whitney Pryor: [00:04:07] Thousands of acres.

Chelsi Frazier: [00:04:07] Future, yes, absolutely. It's always less expensive to get in early or in those earlier phases just because property values and everything's going to increase over time. Definitely check it out because that's a really great, untapped community that's a little bit further out from our normal communities, but you got to go check it out for sure.

Whitney Pryor: [00:04:31] Then on the polar opposite of that, are our Mansfield communities, which are super popular because they're in Mansfield. We have M3 Ranch and then we have Somerset Phase 3. Both of those being in the Mansfield area and Mansfield school districts makes them super popular. Both of those communities are Master Planned Communities with pools, parks and playgrounds - the whole nine yards, beautiful communities.

Chelsi Frazier: [00:05:01] Then, down in our Waco-Temple areas, we've got Stone Ridge in Hewitt, The Renaissance in Waco, Sunwest Village in McGregor and then Legacy Ranch & Valor Estates are both in Temple, so even a little bit further South. If you're in the Austin area and wanting to get out of the city, definitely check out our Temple communities. Those are both really beautiful areas and you can kind of get out of the hustle & bustle of the city.

Whitney Pryor: [00:05:24] Yeah, so that pretty much wraps up all of the communities that we can build from the ground up in. With that, there's a lot of tools that we have on our website that are super helpful. If you are looking to build from the ground up and want some extra help on which floor plan do I choose? How do I go about that? We have a ton of resources on our website for you. With our 3D Floor Plans Page, that is a super popular page that people visit on our website. The best thing about it is that you don't have to get in your car and drive all across the Metroplex just to go visit our model homes in person to figure out which floor plan might best meet your needs. We know that seeing a floor plan in 2D on a website is very hard to visualize and really understand or know what that space looks like, so we've invested in a really awesome Matterport camera. We have taken all of these tours or recorded all of these model homes for people so that they can look at those from the comfort of their own home. They can literally go to the 3D Floor Plans Page and tour our Concord floor plan from the comfort of their own home. Not only to view the space, but even if they're looking for decorating ideas. Maybe they've purchased a home from us and they need to know how to decorate or what they can do with the space, so lots of different uses there on the 3D Floor Plans Page. We also have the new floor plans page and the floorplans page on our website is a way for people to explore all of the different plans we build, but not by community. Maybe if you don't know what community you want to be in yet, but you just want to explore what the different plans are that we have, you can go to that page and view things by floor plan. Then, when you're on that page, it'll tell you which community we build that floor plan in. You might fall in love with the floor plan before you ever figure out which community is right for you.

Chelsi Frazier: [00:07:33] I love that tool because it's kind of like another way to decide what you need. You can go see square footage, the layout of the home and then figure out what community to go to. Rather than, okay, I am going to go to the community. Well, you don't have a floor plan that works for me. It's kind of like a backwards way of doing it. Not backwards, but a just a different approach. I really like that.

Whitney Pryor: [00:07:53] Yeah.

Chelsi Frazier: [00:07:54] On top of the model home floor plan, virtual walkthroughs that we call 3D, we also have almost every floor plan with a virtual walkthrough as well, not just the model home. I think we have a little more than 30 floor plans in the same equipment, the Matterport virtual walkthroughs, for almost every floor plan that we offer that you can look at online as well. Kind of to your point of driving all over the Metroplex, traditionally, you go to a model home and a sales manager would say, "well, I don't have an Atlanta floor plan here, but we have one over in Waxahachie at this address. You can go walk it." This way, you can either do it right there in the model home or at home before you even come come to the model to make an appointment.

Whitney Pryor: [00:08:40] Yeah, I think it definitely makes it easier to narrow down your choices without wasting a whole day of having to go in and window shop.

Chelsi Frazier: [00:08:50] Yeah and with gas prices the way they are now, we're not trying to drive around any more than we have to.

Whitney Pryor: [00:08:55] No, no, we are not.

Chelsi Frazier: [00:08:57] We also have a really cool exterior visualizer tool. You can pick your brick, stone, color of your windows, color of your trim, your garage door color, all on this little tool, it's intuitive. You just click it and it changes right on the screen, then you can save it. It's basically just something to play with to see what kind of style you like and what kind of color schemes you like. We've got that on several floor plans on our website.

Whitney Pryor: [00:09:28] I love that because you can drive by a home, see it and you're like, "I have no idea what brick that is or stone that is, but I really like it." It's not like everything's labeled when you're driving through a community, but on the exterior visualizer tool, you can play with it and see what those color combos are that you really like so that way, you can go to the design studio and let them know.

Chelsi Frazier: [00:09:48] Yes and kind of wrapping up our group of things under our gallery section, we have model home photos. Any model home that is fully staged with furniture, we get pictures of, 30 plus pictures, and we put those on our website too. It's basically like a 3D tour, you're just not walking through it, you're just clicking through images, but that's also really fun.

Whitney Pryor: [00:10:08] We talked about all of these awesome tools that we have on our website, but I do just want to mention, especially as online salesperson, it's always best to go out into the community and view it in person. There's a lot of things that you can't tell from a photo or even from a 3D walkthrough. Once you've kind of landed on or narrowed down to those two or three plans that you're really stuck between, it's definitely best to go out into the community. For that, we have an Online Sales Team that is there to answer your questions every day of the week. You give them a call, any of the phone numbers on our website or that you see anywhere else for John Houston Homes. They're happy to answer any questions that you might have about those plans and then also help schedule an appointment at the right community for you based off of what you're looking for.

Chelsi Frazier: [00:10:58] Yeah, we also have the option to do a video meeting too. If you're out of state or if you just can't get out at a certain time, our Sales Managers can do video call and just show you around or things like that. I know that's not ideal either.

Whitney Pryor: [00:11:15] Yes, but if you're relocating, then it's going to be hard to get a feel for the community unless your sales manager can kind of take you on a video call through the community.

Chelsi Frazier: [00:11:23] Yes, we can get a GoPro for Stuart or something and he can just get out there!

Whitney Pryor: [00:11:30] Yeah, we'll just live stream our sales people.

Chelsi Frazier: [00:11:33] Yes, perfect.

Whitney Pryor: [00:11:33] They don't care.

Chelsi Frazier: [00:11:35] Nope, so after you've researched online, you've driven communities and have met with the sales manager, we have another really great option where you can see the products that we use in the homes in person. They are our Design Studio Open Houses and we have those once a month. I think the next one coming up is August 20th, we'll confirm that. We'll also put a link in the show notes for if you want to RSVP. We do those once a month and that's where you can come into the studio and you can see what products are available to choose. If you're going to build and you want to pick everything out, you're spending a lot of money, so you're not sure if you want to sign a contract until you see the quality of the products. That's a really great event for you to come to. We have designers there that can answer your questions and kind of explain what that appointment looks like once you get to that place, as well. We encourage you to to definitely kind of let that be one of the steps at the end before you decide, try to make it to one of those for sure.

Whitney Pryor: [00:12:35] Yeah, I definitely think once you get to that part where you're like, "okay, am I going to contract or not?" The next thing that people start thinking about is Design Studio, and it definitely helps to be able to go and preview that space and really think of those questions that you might have before you actually commit to something. I think it brings up those questions about what's your budget, what's your price point, and things like that, that are important to go over with the sales manager if you're deciding to contract on a home.

Chelsi Frazier: [00:13:02] I agree completely. The Design Team has done a really great job of putting together some selection packages, so you can kind of see about what it would cost if you were to upgrade certain areas. They really put a lot into the space. When we say studio, it's 6,000+ square feet. We're not talking about a garage converted with small samples. I mean, we've got thousands of pieces of product to look through.

Whitney Pryor: [00:13:27] So as far as building a home, we brought on Curtis here, because he is one of our favorite builders. We won't say the favorite on air.

Curtis Green: [00:13:36] I don't need any competition.

Whitney Pryor: [00:13:40] But we brought him on to kind of go over some questions that we have that I think a lot of people ask during the building process and kind of go over what that building process looks like.

Chelsi Frazier: [00:13:52] Yeah, in past episodes we talked about the build process and also building a home in the current market, where we've all been in this kind of crazy market, back in Season 2. Here we are almost a year later since that, so we kind of wanted to just check in with our listeners, from a builders perspective on what has changed. I mean, are we still seeing supply chain labor shortage? We have seen an increase in theft on job sites, this crazy weather, things that we've had with the freeze and the rain last year, now it's it's the heat. Curtis, can you tell people almost a year later, kind of what has changed and what can people expect right now when they're starting the build process?

Curtis Green: [00:14:36] Well, we've had some issues, obviously, but a lot of that has been fixed. We're not seeing as much of a delay anymore with our HVAC systems. I've had months where we were waiting for HVAC systems and now they're hitting their dates. Our biggest slowdown, if anything, is driven more by the lack of labor for the ceramic tile people. They're able to get the supplies, they just don't have enough crews to service the 300 and something houses that we currently have.

Chelsi Frazier: [00:15:14] Under construction.

Curtis Green: [00:15:16] Yea, so it's kind of hard for them to get to 100 houses in a month because they just don't have enough labor to be able to do that. Every one of the trades has some element of that affecting them, but I think our biggest one right now is the ceramic tile. We're going to work through that, it's coming, we just have to order it a little bit earlier, make sure we get our own schedule and we hit our dates. That's one of the things that we're working at really hard right now, is to make sure that we're staying on top of the schedule. It's the construction manager's job to make sure that they do that, so that's that's one of the biggest challenges that I face on a daily basis.

Chelsi Frazier: [00:16:06] So skilled labor is still a bit of a challenge?

Curtis Green: [00:16:10] Absolutely, I think it's always going to be. A lot of the forecast, as you know, with the Dallas-Fort Worth area being the number one construction market in the country for residential construction, you're going to have a labor shortage, just simply because there's just not enough people that live in this area that are doing that kind of work. It's reported that there's several thousand job openings right now in the construction industry and millions nationwide. We're not immune to that just because we live in the great state of Texas.

Whitney Pryor: [00:16:49] Yeah.

Chelsi Frazier: [00:16:50] We're immune to a lot of things because of that.

Curtis Green: [00:16:52] Not the heat, we're not immune to that.

Whitney Pryor: [00:16:54] That's probably why there are so many job openings because of the heat.

Curtis Green: [00:16:59] Yea, when it is hot, it is hot. When it is cold, it is cold.

Chelsi Frazier: [00:17:03] What can people expect right now when starting the build process?

Curtis Green: [00:17:08] You can expect it's going to take between seven and nine months to finish your house, depending on how big your house is and depending on..

Chelsi Frazier: [00:17:18] Unforeseen circumstances?

Curtis Green: [00:17:21] Yea, what time of year did you start? If I started in January and February, I'm going to have more chance of rain more chance of really cold weather and guys not coming to work. If you start it later, in March/April, you'll probably finish it before the end of the year. Here we are getting ready to roll into September/October, and it's going to get cold again. It's going to rain one day!

Chelsi Frazier: [00:17:53] Yes!

Whitney Pryor: [00:17:53] I know!

Curtis Green: [00:17:54] We have a really good chance today and we have a good chance tomorrow, so who knows? From a building standpoint, you can expect us to be able to move quickly through a few of the stages, and then there's going to be certain stages where it's going to take a little bit longer. You just have to be patient and rely on our communication. I know we're going to segue into that question pretty soon, I can tell.

Chelsi Frazier: [00:18:28] You see us shaking our heads like like..

Whitney Pryor: [00:18:30] That is the next question!

Curtis Green: [00:18:31] Yeah, when it comes to communication, I'll keep yall from even having to ask it, from a Construction Manager's point of view, if you're building a house with us, you can expect us to communicate with you on a weekly basis. I get together with my Sales Manager, we give you a call and we spend 5-10 minutes talking about what got finished. What we are going to start next, so that you're aware that "hey, I'm looking at maybe a little bit of a delay here. This door was damaged in delivery and it's going to take us another couple of days to replace it." Our suppliers are working really hard too. Just realize that there are some issues and there are some items that are going to fluctuate throughout the process. If you're building a two story home, there's a chance that it's going to take longer for your lumber package to come in, just simply because we're on allocation for the I-joists that are used to build the second floor. There are some builders in the industry that have stopped even building second story houses because they can't get the material. If you're looking at that, just realize that we are aware of it, our suppliers are aware of it, and we'll work within those parameters. We're going to communicate with you weekly. I encourage my homeowners to, if they're walking the jobsite, to let me know if they see something that they're concerned with. I'm always available by email and we call once a week, so there's lots of communication that's going to happen with our homeowners.

Whitney Pryor: [00:20:18] Yeah and I think that's super important. During this time, where things either are moving really fast or not moving at all, homeowners can get concerned over that, What's happening? Why is there no one here at the house? Just setting that expectation up front and ahead of time and saying, "hey, you know, there's crews there now, but in two days we know that this is not going to happen. This is what it is, here's how long we expect, but we don't have an exact date."

Curtis Green: [00:20:51] Yea, you have a crew scheduled to come in and do the work. You give them three days and it takes them one or you give them three days and it takes them five. You've got to move things around constantly. You can't predict what's going to happen with that. It's what I do for a living. I'm used to that particular kind of stress. A homeowner comes in and they get maybe a little bit stressed over something that I'm like, "I do this every day. It's nothing, you know." They're like, "ahhh!"

Chelsi Frazier: [00:21:22] You reassure them that it's going to be okay?

Curtis Green: [00:21:25] Yea, we've got this. We do this all the time. We understand what we're doing and we build a quality product. We want want you to have a quality product. There are things that you don't need to stress about, that's what we deal with.

Chelsi Frazier: [00:21:41] I think, for the most part, people are going to have questions. There's going to be an expected amount of stress, but I think as long as you feel like you're being communicated to in any situation, not just building a house, that will ease a lot of the stress and fears. Knowing Curtis is going to call me every week, or if I have questions, he's going to answer it, within a reasonable amount of time.

Curtis Green: [00:22:05] I think that's the key to it. If you express a concern and it gets addressed, it's just not swept under the rug. Here's three things that I've been seeing. What are you doing about them? I've already seen that and I've already scheduled this.

Whitney Pryor: [00:22:24] What would you say is the biggest concern for families that are building right now come to you with?

Curtis Green: [00:22:30] I think they're concerned, and I'm no expert by any sense of the imagination, but a lot of times the interest rate is giving them some concern. They are concerned that the interest rate is going to climb before the house is finished. The best thing I can tell you with that is, it might or it might not, so you just have to be patient with that and don't lock your rate in too soon.

Chelsi Frazier: [00:23:00] I never thought about that, as a question that would come to builders from the homeowner, but I can see where I mean, if you're in constant communication with that person, that's going to be something that comes up. I know there's rate float downs. Even after you lock, if it goes lower, you can float down one time. We've got mortgage loan officer experts on standby. You have one dedicated to you to answer all those questions, too. I can understand that being concerning, especially if it comes at a time where you haven't seen something moving along in a while and and you're getting a little concerned. I wouldn't have thought that that would be a question that comes to you, so that's very interesting.

Curtis Green: [00:23:40] Yeah it does, simply because they're looking to me to give them a closing date.

Chelsi Frazier: [00:23:45] Right.

Curtis Green: [00:23:46] "Hey, we're 60 days out." "Great, I can get my lock!"

Chelsi Frazier: [00:23:52] Yeah.

Whitney Pryor: [00:23:53] A lot can happen in 60 days though.

Curtis Green: [00:23:55] A lot can happen in 60 days and a lot has, so it's definitely something that I have to deal with. Like I said, I'm not an expert on it, but I do know that we're doing our very best to hit the dates that we have.

Whitney Pryor: [00:24:09] Yeah, and that's just something that's come up recently. It used to not be a thing because interest rates were pretty even keel for a long time. Now with them going on the rise, I've gotten the same question from buyers, "well when is the home getting close and when can they close it by so that I can lock my rate?" Like Chelsi said, we do offer one free float down, I think with our interest rate locks, so that's something to look into. If you do lock in and the rate goes lower in between that time that you lock in and you close, then we've got that option for you. Also, our Construction Managers can't give a date until they know a date.

Chelsi Frazier: [00:24:51] Yeah, you can only do what you know.

Curtis Green: [00:24:53] Yeah, I can look at the software and I can go, "well, it's trending to close on this day," but all it's going to take is one week and it'll push it.

Chelsi Frazier: [00:25:03] Yeah, one person not showing up.

Curtis Green: [00:25:04] One person.

Chelsi Frazier: [00:25:05] Or one week of rain.

Whitney Pryor: [00:25:06] We do lock in around the 30 day mark, right, when Construction Managers know about 30 days in advance that they can hit that date. That's when they'll let the home buyers know, that way they can do their rate lock.

Curtis Green: [00:25:20] That's exactly where we're at.

Whitney Pryor: [00:25:22] Okay.

Chelsi Frazier: [00:25:23] Well, one thing that you are an expert on, for sure, is you were a teacher for how many years?

Curtis Green: [00:25:30] 20.

Chelsi Frazier: [00:25:31] Yeah, I was at high school for 20 years.

Chelsi Frazier: [00:25:33] That's so cool! We met Curtis through a partnership we had with Waxahachie ISD, but kind of looping that into a previous comment we made about there being a labor shortage, job market advice. We know the construction industries in high demand for employment. What would you tell people either considering coming to work in construction as a Project Manager or Construction Manager, or maybe wanting to go get some training for some of that skilled labor?

Curtis Green: [00:26:05] Well, there are definitely lots of programs in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. You can go to several colleges that are offering Associate degrees in Construction Management. TSTC IN Waco has a good program for that. There's North Lake College. there's several different colleges. Collin College has a really, really good new construction program that I was exposed to as a teacher. I know that there are programs for people that have no experience. They can go and get some training from those schools, that'll work for you too. Of course, there's obviously the four year university. Several of them have programs that if you're in high school and you want to get a four year degree, you can go to several universities that can do that. You can get a lot of experience just coming out onto the job site. I would tell my students all the time, I'd say, "go get your hammer, go get your nail bag, go to Home Depot, go to Lowe's, buy something that you can can use." Go out and drive into any cul de sac and you can find somebody working and say, "hey, I'm interested. I've got a little bit of experience from from high school, can you use me?" A lot of those guys are paying $12 to $15 an hour for no experience whatsoever.

Whitney Pryor: [00:27:31] You're working a lot of hours. It's not just 40 hours a week.

Curtis Green: [00:27:35] I got framing crews that are out there working 60 hour weeks. I met a tile guy just the other day. We were talking and he made over $200,000 last year tiling houses.

Chelsi Frazier: [00:27:47] Wow!

Curtis Green: [00:27:47] You know what he told me? He said, "they got to work. If they don't come to work, they don't get paid. I come to work every day and that's how I make the kind of money that I make." You can want and wish all you want, but if you don't go in and do the work, you're not going to get there. We do have a shortage and there's a lot of jobs out there.

Whitney Pryor: [00:28:11] Even if you don't have the experience, you know that you might not have the skill set, you don't want to go to college, but you don't want to work at Mcdonald's, think about it. I mean there's money to be made in it if you're willing to do the hard work.

Curtis Green: [00:28:31] Every plumbing company that we have, every electrical company, every HVAC company, every framing crew has guys on their crews that don't have any experience that they're paying. I like to work with my hands and I like to at the end of the day see that I did something, the construction industry is definitely for you.

Chelsi Frazier: [00:28:52] If you don't want to sit behind a computer at a desk inside.

Whitney Pryor: [00:28:55] We all know people in our lives don't want to do that.

Curtis Green: [00:28:58] Yeah, I was one of those guys and I did it for a little while as a teacher, but I also got to move around and do stuff, there was some of that. I still use the computer every day with the job I'm doing, but I get to work with with a lot of different, really cool guys and I have a lot of fun!

Chelsi Frazier: [00:29:19] You also do this really cool non-profit, so we can't let you escape without giving a shameless plug on that, tell us what that is. You can definitely, drop a number or website if you want to, tell us about it!

Whitney Pryor: [00:29:34] I love seeing your posts on the weekend about what you do!

Curtis Green: [00:29:36] About three years ago, I stumbled across an organization called Sleep in Heavenly Peace. Sleep in Heavenly Peace provides a twin bed for children between the ages of 2 to 17. We accept requests for beds on our website. You can go in and request a bed. If you find yourself in a situation where you have a child in your household that doesn't have a bed, they're sleeping on a pile of clothes or they're sleeping in the recliner, or you find yourself in that kind of situation, Sleep in Heavenly Peace has got an answer for you. There are two chapters in the Dallas-Fort Worth area and we're serving over 6 million people. It's estimated that 60,000 people in the in the Dallas-Fort Worth area are sleeping on the floor or do not have a bed of their own to sleep in. I work with the Fort Worth chapter, and we've delivered about 11,000 beds in the last three years. I mean, sorry, 1,100 beds, we haven't gotten that big yet.

Whitney Pryor: [00:30:39] I was like, wow, you are like a Christmas elf!

Curtis Green: [00:30:40] I don't keep track of all the deliveries, but I've been on on more than 12 deliveries and I average more than ten beds at delivery. You can do the simple math that just myself, I've delivered over 120 beds. We have two phases of the organization. There's the build, where we do a community build or a private sponsor build. Recently, we did one with H-E-B. North Texas managers of H-E-B got together, there were about 300 of them, and they built 88 beds in about 3 hours. We put those into inventory and then we go to our waiting list. The older your request is, you're at the front of our delivery list. When we start doing the deliveries, we diminish the stock of material that was built. You get a mattress, all the bedding and a bed. This last Saturday, I delivered to 2 different households and we gave five beds to each household. It was two bunks and a single in each of those houses. It's amazing to see a kid crawling into bed and getting ready to go to take a nap at 11:00 a.m. in the morning because they never had it. They didn't have a bed, and now they do.

Chelsi Frazier: [00:32:03] That's amazing.

Whitney Pryor: [00:32:04] That's got to be really rewarding. .

Chelsi Frazier: [00:32:07] Yes, I mean a good night's sleep is something that some of us take for granted.

Curtis Green: [00:32:10] As a teacher, I saw results all the time. Kids need X number of hours of sleep, depending on their age. The older they are or the younger they are, the more sleep they need. If you're sleeping on a pile of old clothes because that's the softest thing you can find, you're not going to sleep as well as you will in a Sleep in Heavenly Peace bed. That's what our mission is, is to end child bedlessness in the United States.

Chelsi Frazier: [00:32:39] So if anybody wants to get involved?

Curtis Green: [00:32:41] They can go on on Facebook, you can look up Sleep in Heavenly Peace in Fort Worth, or you can look up Sleep in Heavenly Peace Dallas, either one of those two chapters in this area. There is one in Waco, so there is a chapter in Waco. There's chapters in Brownwood. They're starting to pop up all over, there's San Antonio and Houston, of course. There are lots of chapters popping up in in Texas. Dallas-Fort Worth is going to be staying at two chapters. We've got it pretty well covered, it's just a matter of getting get more volunteers and having the opportunity.

Chelsi Frazier: [00:33:17] That's great! What a what a way to end it, so definitely check that out if you're interested in getting involved. Curtis, thank you so much.

Curtis Green: [00:33:25] Thank you all so much for having me. I've been looking forward to this for a long time.

Whitney Pryor: [00:33:29] Curtis is our biggest fan!

Curtis Green: [00:33:31] Well I have watched or listened to every episode.

Whitney Pryor: [00:33:33] Okay, question, are you going to listen to your own episode?

Curtis Green: [00:33:36] I've been debating but I'm definitely going to promote it. Let's just see if you have a spike in membership, because of my Facebook followers.

Chelsi Frazier: [00:33:44] I'm sure we will. You have you have a big following.

Whitney Pryor: [00:33:48] Well, thank you, Curtis. Thank you listeners, for joining us today on the Welcome Home Podcast episode. We will put a link to more information about Sleep in Heavenly Peace in the show notes, as well as, some information about some of those online tools that you can use to help yourself find your brand new John Houston Home. Thank you again for listening and we look forward to having you on the next episode of the Welcome Home Podcast.

Chelsi Frazier and Whitney Pryor: [00:34:17] Welcome Home.