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Home > Archive > Feb 14, 2008

Mad Dash to the Finish
By Cami Cox
Staff Writer
Many residents and visitors are familiar with the finished efforts of builders and designers that can be seen at the annual St. George Area Parade of Homes, which will take place Feb. 15-24 this year.
Lavish furnishings and accessories, innovative designs and, oftentimes, some very opulent features permeate the parade, including swimming pools, home theaters and even bowling alleys.
An unseen flurry of activity takes place in the weeks leading up to the Parade, as contractors, builders, decorators and designers scramble feverishly to get their homes ready for Parade time.
“It has been very crazy,” said Rick Richardson of Richardson Homes. “We were at the home from 6 o'clock in the morning until roughly somewhere between 1 and 3 o'clock in the morning the following day, every day.”
And Richardson and his crew aren't alone in their sometimes all-night efforts to get Parade homes ready in time.
“The amazing thing is right now, this is happening all over our county, because every Parade home out there is going through the same exact thing, and they'll all be done for the parade,” he said.
Richardson is one of the contractors for Fantasia, number six on this year's Parade of Homes route and the largest house, featuring 21,000 square feet of living space, with a swimming pool, multiple home theaters, an indoor spa, an arcade and even a bowling alley.
With a home that spacious, “an ocean of furniture” is required to fill the space, Richardson said; so as contractors were busily finishing up the building details at Fantasia, a design team from Boulevard Home Furnishings was speedily making sure the furniture, window treatments, accessories, hardware and other interior details were all squared away.
“Everybody pulls together and works really hard, because we've only had three days to do this 21,000 square-foot home,” said JoAnn Monson, an interior designer for Boulevard Home Furnishings. “Thank goodness we have a lot of friends!”
In all, literally hundreds of people collaborated to finish up Fantasia for her final inspection, Richardson said. For anyone seeing the home a week or two before the Parade, it was very hard to believe the workers would ever finish on time; but somehow, he said, they always do.
“People would say, 'Are you going to make it?' and we would always answer, 'We always make it,'” Richardson said.
Making it often means hard work right up until the end for a Parade builder, though.
Throughout the finish-up fever for Parade of Homes, most builders are adding final touches to their homes right up to the finish line, said Dan Steurer of Sunwest Development.
“No matter how long you think you've got to finish, it seems like there are always surprises, because of the deadline,” he said. “Like any piece of art, they're never totally done – you're always finding ways to tweak it or little things that you'd like to do better, so most of us are right up to the show doing things.”
Sunwest Development has been involved in the Parade of Homes since 1995, Steurer said, and Sunwest has featured a variety of homes in the Parade over the years, including some of the larger and more elaborate homes. This year, though, Sunwest's entry, The Cabana (number four on the parade route) is a little more on the practical side. But even a smaller, less-extravagant home requires many hours and many hands to ensure that everything is ready in time for the Parade.
“We pretty much work 24/7. We're just busy all the time,” said Gwen Rye of Tasteful Trends Interiors, the interior designer for The Cabana. “It gets really tense, you know, putting it all together, but it always seems to come together in the end.”
Verla Hammon, an interior designer for Designer Furniture Gallery, collaborated with Ence Homes on Paha Sapa, number 23 in the parade this year. She said working with her eyes on the prize is what helps her get through the stress of crunch time before the Parade of Homes.
“I always keep in mind what I want the end result to be as I deal with the daily stresses, but it always comes together, and everything falls into place,” she said.
Though putting a Parade home together can leave workers exhausted and depleted by the time it's all done, many of the builders, contractors and designers continue to return year after year for more parade action.
“You're tired, you're exhausted, your kids forget what you look like. Your wife is, hopefully, being patient – and my wife has been wonderful,” Richardson said. “(But) you just enjoy the ride. It's fun. From start to finish, it's just full-throttle, and then it's kind of crazy, but it's a lot of fun.”

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