Miracle Homes builder Tom Hignite pretty much had to prove his company’s name in designing a place for his parents and grandmother.
They say he did it when he built a house cozy for one but accommodating 30, seemingly one-story but virtually two, with double kitchens and dining rooms, and plenty of communal space but enough nooks to provide solitude.
It’s a house peculiar to their needs but broadly marketable on resale.
It’s just perfect, the Hignite family agreed, for their first holiday meals in their new home, where 10 were expected for Thanksgiving and many more during the Christmas season.
The house has 1,900 square feet on the first floor, 3,500 feet when you include the exposed basement’s guest suite and theater. With its one and a half-acre wooded lot, Tom Hignite estimates its value at about $300,000.
“It was a lot of fun things and a lot of difficult things,” said Hignite, 39, a former home designer who started his Richfield construction firm seven years ago after realizing, as his own home was being built, that he’d rather be a builder.
He and his wife, Jacquie, “parted amicably with the contractor we hired after driving him crazy the first month because we were so detail-oriented. Since that time, I’ve learned that if I see a customer like me, to run fast in the other direction,” Hignite joked.
But, of course, he couldn’t do that with his own family.
“Mom and Dad had a big six-bedroom house in Menomonee Falls where we lived since I was in sixth grade. They moved out as the kids left and were living in Kewaskum the last couple years, waiting for the right property. It was a terribly small apartment with stairs my Grandma could hardly go up. Trying to have a meal there was a real ordeal,” he said.
Sixty-somethings Bette K. and Walter Hignite and Bette Hignite’s mother, Florence Juedes, 92, scouted for months for just the right country-style lot and two-houses-in-one design, the builder said.
“My mother, who runs a gift shop in Door County, loves to entertain and cook when she’s here; my grandmother is heavily into crafts and used to have her own kilns. My dad, who has his own company and works long hours, wanted a certain area where he could relax and watch TV. They wanted a laundry area that could double as a wet bar when they had company.
“Every time I’d build a house, they’d look at it, talk about what they liked and didn’t like. Meanwhile, my dad kept on shopping for the right piece of land,” he said.
Walter Hignite, a professional soil tester who runs Foundation Solutions in Menomonee Falls, found a charming but troublesome piece of land last year.
“The lot was peculiar in that there was just one little area you could build on. Tom designed the house just perfect to fit,” he said. “Our whole family’s inventive we all do things differently but Tom’s the natural artist.”
Inventiveness was definitely required on this job, the younger Hignite said.
“What they needed was very specific: They had two hutches, different styles, they wanted to keep. They both had dining sets, which neither (generation) wanted to give up. They wanted two stoves in the kitchen, since my mom cooks one way and my grandma another, and there’s sometimes disagreement over how much of something to put in.
“I designed the walls for a double dining room effect, hiding things so you couldn’t see them from one angle or another. I gave them a two-person kitchen, with a silverware drawer outside the kitchen so if one person was setting the table, he or she was not in the way of the cook or cooks.
“They wanted a ranch house. They wanted togetherness, but some privacy, too. So I designed master suites on both ends of the house, with the living area in between. My mom does lots of Christmas decorations, so we put outlets in all the windows, on one switch concealed in a front closet that also controls the outside lights.
“My dad wanted a heated garage. My grandmother is at the age where she needs a different temperature, so I gave them separate heating systems. Her thermostat has very large numbers for easier reading.
“They wanted lots of storage space.”
There were things Tom Hignite believed his elders should have: bathrooms accessible for wheelchairs or walkers, a commercial grade staircase to accommodate a chair lift and a garage with ramped access, built-in fire extinguishers, phone jacks on both sides of the beds, multiple-access lighting, and a lower-level guest suite with a home theater.
To maximize natural lighting, he installed 26 windows.
“They wanted low-maintenance, so I gave them a central vacuum system, natural landscaping and non-maintenance amenities from windows to gutters to siding, right down to deck materials,” he said.
“They wanted to keep the house small,” he said, “but with all this, it was impossible.”
The family moved in 11 months ago.
“It works out so well,” said Bette Hignite. “We’re a close family and we have our time together we plan and do meals together, do crafts but we definitely have our private time, too. And we kind of pick our territories.”
Florence Juedes said: “It’s working out very nicely. I go with my daughter to all her crafts shows and we do crafts together at home. We use my table as our crafts table. Hers is the one we use when people come to visit. If it’s a lot of people, we use them both.
“I enjoy being with people, and you don’t like to eat alone. But I have my own room, with a TV and chair, when I know they want to be alone.”
Walter Hignite said, “I could get by with less, but my wife is so excited about the opportunity to entertain and cook and she’s very good at it.”
