Just a few weeks ago, Tesla’s Elon Musk made headlines again, but not with his electric car or one of his SpaceX rockets. The attention was on a new home battery, the Powerwall Home Battery that can power your entire home. Not long ago, that would have been viewed as an “interesting” idea that was kind of on the fringe. But what’s really interesting is that mere days after the announcement, Musk shared that his company had 38,000 reservations for the Powerwall. According to curbed.com that means the game-changing home battery is sold out until 2016. And while the batteries won’t ship until later this summer, Tesla may be looking at $800 million in revenue! 

As soon as you start thinking about building a custom home—and begin digging around for information—you start noticing articles, blogs, and whole websites devoted to the latest trends in homebuilding. 

When Kalahari Resorts & Conventions open their new Poconos resort this summer, it will be the largest indoor waterpark in the country. And while bigger is nice, they don’t plan to stop there. The resort is already working on the second phase of construction, which they say will make it “the best indoor waterpark in the world.” Bigger and better is a nice combination!

Here’s some of what the new resort will have to offer:

Starting out with a great kitchen floor plan is essential if you want a kitchen where you’ll enjoy working and entertaining. What makes it a great floor plan is if it fits your specific lifestyle and the flow of traffic in your house. Our floor plans offer you a wide variety of options when it comes to kitchens: from “eat-in” kitchens to kitchens that flow into your dining room or Great Room. You can see them for yourself here. 

Technology for the home continues to develop at an amazing pace. What’s interesting (at least in our mind) is that the trends have moved beyond “gadgets” that are interesting and maybe kind of fun to play with, to things that really make our lives easier and more comfortable on a daily basis. 

If you’ve ever watched any of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies, you’ll know that there is often a fair amount of discussion about “The Pirate Code.”  And you may recall that Captain Jack Sparrow and the others often claim that the Code is: “really more a set of guidelines . . .” 

Whether you’re building a new custom home or remodeling an existing home in the Poconos, one of the most important rooms to plan is your living room or family room. Next to the kitchen, it may be one of the most-used rooms in your home. And with today’s emphasis on open designed floor plans, whatever you do with this room will be visible to anyone entering your home. 

There are some new names surfacing when people talk about homebuilding today—and they’re not the kind of names we’ve associated with homebuilding in the past. When the names of Apple and Tesla have surfaced, most of us have thought in terms of computers, smart phones, and electric cars.  My how things have changed! 

Every business wants to stand apart from the competition. They want potential clients to look at them as something special. Custom homebuilders are no different. We want to stand out from the crowd. But how do you do that in a field where there are a lot of skilled craftsman who use many of the same materials to build what seems to be (at least on the surface) the same thing: a home?