Our house rebuild journey started in 2017.
In 2017 Santa Rosa experienced a natural catastrophe, with overnight wildfires destroying thousands of homes across Northern California counties in a matter of days. The Tubbs wildfire event was a devastating shock for everyone affected, and a singular and immediate call to action by our Founders and Managing Partners, Keith & Brenda Christopherson. Almost immediately, Keith & Brenda Christopherson’s phones started ringing.
Keith & Brenda’s prior company, Christopherson Homes Inc., had originally built the communities in which hundreds of homes that were lost. These homes were well-loved and well-built, therefore it was a natural cadence of things for Christopherson homeowners to reach out when starting to wrap their minds around the logistics of rebuilding. Keith & Brenda decided right away that they needed to help their community rebuild, and in order to do that they needed to form Christopherson Builders. “It was not only a deep desire to help people going through such awful circumstances”, says Brenda Christopherson, “but we felt it was our responsibility. There are only so many home builders in our area who have accumulated as much local experience and working knowledge as we have, and not sharing our experience would have been irresponsible to our past home buyers and to our community.”
Within weeks Keith and Brenda were starting the process of creating a homebuilding company dedicated to rebuilding and focused on expediting house rebuild efforts.
The evolution of our Plan Library
When rebuilding, “…not many people decided to rebuild exactly what they had before”, says Co-Founder & Managing Partner, Brenda Christopherson. Some did, but most people took advantage of the opportunity to make some changes.
The evolution of our plan library started with a singular focus on making the rebuild effort as quick and efficient as possible. There was a lot of urgency to get fire rebuilds started within a certain time frame, largely due to pressing insurance requirements. Creating the pre-engineered plan library helped to make deciding on architecture – one of the hardest and potentially very time-consuming period of pre-construction – much easier for our rebuild clients.
In the beginning, our architects designed 22 new plans, both 2-story and single level, for a variety of lot sizes and home sizes, and frequently integrated options for the architecture. That way, were are able to have many rebuild plans ready to that would both fit the “building envelope” and meet a variety of homeowner needs. The first group of house plans were developed with some of the hardest hit areas in mind – specifically, Coffey Park. Coffey Park is an area of lots that are about 0.15 acres in size on average, therefore many of our earliest plans are under 2,600 square feet and are designed for level lots.
As the rebuild effort continued and expanded, we began to rebuild larger homes, homes on country property with septic systems and wells and some rebuild homes were located on challenging hillsides. A property with a slope can be a challenge at times, however they often command incredible views. Some of the more recent plans in the Christopherson plan library were developed in order to provide a solution for those more challenging sloped rebuild properties. In developing these plans, we made sure to keep multi-generational living top of mind, placing everything that the homeowner would need for day-to-day living on the main, garage level. The sloped plans also frequently offer dual primary suites, optional kitchenettes or attached ADUs.
Recently, we developed a smaller collection of plans have optional attached garages, which can be ideal for areas where land area is limited and garages are not a building requirement. In consistently designing new architecture to serve a variety of home sites, home sizes with up-to-date design elements, the library of plans reflects how people prefer to live today. We now have over 60 modern home floor plans available, an assortment of which are on our website for you to review. If we have professional photos or video of a home built using a certain plan, we have placed links within the plan pages so that you can get a better idea of how our plans feel and live.
Why value-engineering matters in your House Rebuild
Our plans are also value-engineered from a builder’s perspective. What that means is, they have been designed in such a way as to remove unnecessary and costly over-engineering. Value engineering doesn’t mean building cheap, it means building smart. Thoughtful changes to plans can save tens of thousands of dollars that don’t need to be spent. Then you, our home building client, can place those monies where you prefer to.
The plans that we offer have all been value-engineered, providing as much cost benefit as possible while retaining the livability and desirability that a Christopherson-built home is known for. Building “cheap” is not the Christopherson way – your home is one of your most important investments and likely the most cherished, so we don’t cut corners on your house rebuild quality. We do however encourage making design decisions that are a wise use of our clients’ hard-earned resources.
If we are looking at a situation where we are rebuilding at scale, similar to a community development, there can be cost benefits to our house rebuild clients when we have the ability to build several of the same plan or plan grouping at the same time.
We want to bring you home as soon as possible
When rebuilding your home, we want to help to bring you back as soon as we can. Selecting a one of our home designs is the first way to expedite the pre-construction process. The second way we make your house rebuild as quick as we can is by offering you an all-inclusive, in-house design experience. Our Design Center is packed with hundreds of options so your house rebuild can be tailored to your lifestyle. While the choices are vast, the selection process is streamlined and efficient. We have put together many designer-selected material boards, from roof to tile and more.
In order to keep your house rebuild going on track and on time, you will be guided to make the most time-sensitive interior design decisions sooner than later. We have run into specific manufacturer and supply chain delays in the past, but we can help to mitigate delays by thinking ahead and being proactive with selections.
Fast forward almost 10 years, Christopherson Builders has now rebuilt homes all over Northern California.
Be sure to read our article with important first steps to rebuild after fire.
