We understand that our clients lead demanding lives with competing priorities, and that their Lindal Experiences must make efficient use of their time.

We also understand that designing and building a new home is a highly personal process, the success of which is highly dependent on your being comfortable and our being responsive.

Meet Christina Lindal, Lindal Client Concierge, one of founder Sir Walter’s three grandchildren who work at Lindal HQ in Seattle. Christina provides prospective clients with information, answers process and product questions, explains the different design approaches available to clients, and helps guide them caringly through their initial Lindal exploration.  An expert in her own right (trained from birth) she also consults Lindal staff and dealers as resources while personally responding to dozens of calls and emails each week. (more…)

The last several years have been challenging for anyone planning a new home. A major commitment of time and financial resources, balanced against continually changing economic conditions, requires a highly personal decision. We now see conditions stabilizing and new clients, who have “waited long enough,” proceeding.

FUNDAMENTAL CHANGES IN HOUSING

I have been involved in my family’s business for nearly 50 years and recall many market downturns after which all returned to normal. In contrast, this emerging recovery is into a fundamentally changed world with new long-term priorities in housing: (more…)

Our simple yet elegant booth setup.

Last weekend’s Dwell show was a huge success, with over 12,000 attendees over the course of 3 days.  Our booth was near the back in the CB2 Outdoor Café, which was where all of the “outdoor” products were gathered: sheds, patio furniture, houses, landscaping, even barbeques. Across from our booth was a gleaming Airstream trailer, which I think would match nicely with the steel accents siding on the Lindal TD3 2100 plan!

The TD3 2100 - Can you see this with the matching Airstream out front?

The response to Lindal’s Turkel plans was overwhelmingly positive.  We had over 700 people pick up an invitation to the next live webinars by Joel Turkel this summer, and several people met at length with our dealers at the booth. Speaking of which… a big thank you to area dealers Gary Myers of Santa Barbara Cedar Homes, Frank Vingiano of San Diego Custom Homes, and Dennis Sanford of Rainbow Valley Cedar Homes for taking three long days away from their offices and staffing the booth! I think they’ll agree that the response was overwhelmingly positive!

Okay, enough words… Pictures!

See these photos and more on the Lindal Cedar Homes PhotoStream on Flickr.

After a 4am wakeup call and plane ride to LA, I met several area Lindal dealers, company president Michael Harris, chairman Robert Lindal (my dad), and west coast area manager Kaveh Khatibloo at the Figueroa hotel for a SoCal Regional Meeting before heading over to the convention center to set up for the DODLA09 show.

These regional meetings are always productive, and I really enjoy being able to talk to our dealers face to face at these twice yearly events… they give us great insight on the local home building climate, which helps us in Seattle stay current on what people want in a Lindal home in different areas of the country (and around the world). I think the biggest accomplishment today was “nailing” down the California Fire Specification for Lindal home packages, and how we can spread the word that we have a system in place to help people rebuild after losing their homes to wildfire. (If you would like to know more about the fire spec building system that conforms to building code requirements in fire-prone areas such as southern California, leave a comment on this post and I’ll put you in touch with a local Lindal dealer who can help you get started.)

Pre-convention Impressions

Walking in to the Los Angeles Convention Center this evening was like walking into the pages of dwell magazine! Our booth is in the Dwell Outdoor section, surrounded by Wolf barbecue “ranges,” patio furniture that brings to mind Bucky Tubes (I’ll snag a photo tomorrow), and modern sheds – with butterfly roofs above corrugated metal siding and clerestory windows, a far cry from the big-box-store aluminum sheds stuck in the corners of suburban backyards around the country!

Right next door to us is Marmol Radziner Prefab, who is also featured in this year’s Dwell Homes Collection. As I entered the building I said a brief “hello” to Michela O’Connor Abrams, the publisher of dwell… now there’s one busy person this week! (She spoke at our Annual Dealer Meeting last January to help us kick off Lindal’s “warm, modern” home plans by Turkel Designs.)

I’ll post what’s noteworthy later this weekend, as well as photos of our booth, once everything is set up completely. My impression this evening was punctuated by little electric forklifts buzzing around, and I’m sure there will be folks continuing their elaborate setups until the wee hours!

I will also be posting LOTS of photos from the show on the Lindal Cedar Homes Flickr PhotoStream. This promises to be an exciting weekend, so make sure you’ve subscribed to updates using one of the tools on the top right corner of this blog!

On a completely unrelated note, after today’s news about Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett I’m wondering what sort of impromptu gatherings might occur here in LA this weekend, as our convention is being held right next door to the Grammy Museum at Staples Center.

There is so much going on at Lindal Cedar Homes on any given day that sometimes it is hard to keep track of it all! Despite the current economic climate—or, perhaps because of it—Lindal has been releasing new home plans, fabulous online and offline home planning events, and some of the best promotions in our nearly 65 years of business at a rate that can be confusing even to those of us who are closest to the heart of it all here in Seattle.

People, perhaps you, who just want to know what Lindal is all about before making the decision to build a custom home have come across confusing and even troubling information on the internet, and the face of Lindal might be seen as cold and impersonal when the only information available is the Lindal corporate web site and a couple of complaints from people looking for “dissatisfied Lindal customers or dealers” (the proverbial “flies in the ointment”).

This blog is meant to put an end to all of that. You can expect to find down-to-earth commentary about daily business here at Lindal. There will also be information about events, new plans, even non-Lindal-specific topics (“Stuff We Like“) that are closely related to the process of custom home building, such as articles about green building standards. You can participate by adding your own comments at the end of every post.

We here at Lindal invite you to follow our blog also in the hopes that you will learn about the people that make up this family business: our worldwide network of independent dealers, backed up by a support staff in Seattle & Burlington in Washington state (that’s in the Pacific Northwest, home of Western Red Cedar and geoducks – the latter is not included in our house packages.).

Let’s start with me: I’m Trina Lindal, and I’m family in every sense of the word. My grandfather, Sir Walter Lindal, started this company nearly 65 years ago, and as a third-generation member of this family business, I am proud to be working with people who have been with this company since before I was born! I also have a sister and a cousin who work with me, and of course my father, aunt, and uncles are here in the office almost every day. No, I personally do not live in a Lindal cedar home, but grew up in several in Washington and Hawaii, and my office is in a Lindal home, overlooking I-5—which is a huge testament to the efficiency of Lindal homes, when I can work next to a major freeway for 40+ hours a week and barely notice the noise!

As the primary author as well as the administrator of blog.Lindal.com I’ll try not to take it personally if you don’t like what I say, and I promise not to let the trolls in. (If you don’t know what trolls are, consider yourself lucky. If you do know what they are, then you can help me identify them when they appear. Finally, if you are a troll, go away.)

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