Our final Summer of Trends entry for July (like we said, we’ll probably continue the column into August) is about color. Specifically, which color is the “Color of the Year” according to the experts at the Pantone Color Institute. (It should be noted that Pantone is a global authority on color and provider of professional color standards for all sorts of industries.)

After much deliberation, the experts at Pantone named honeysuckle as the 2011 Color of the Year, a declaration they claim will cross over into color choices in everything from fashion to interior design. Here’s what Pantone Color Institute Executive Director Leatrice Eiseman had to say about the hue:

“In times of stress, we need something to lift our spirits. Honeysuckle is a captivating, stimulating color that gets the adrenaline going – perfect to ward off the blues. Honeysuckle derives its positive qualities from a powerful bond to its mother color, red, the most physical, viscerally alive hue in the spectrum.”

A Pantone press release offers ideas for how to incorporate the color into your next interior makeover, although we’ll admit the image above takes the trend a little too far:

“Add a lively flair to interior spaces with honeysuckle patterned pillows, bedspreads, small appliances and tabletop accessories. Looking for an inexpensive way to perk up your home? Paint a wall in honeysuckle for a dynamic burst of energy in the family room, kitchen or hallway.”

We realize “honeysuckle” is just a fancy word for “pink,” and we’re not likely to see the trend incorporated into too many man caves (the 2010 Color of the Year – turquoise – might make an appearance), but the power of honeysuckle can’t be ignored as a potential accent in interior design.

There are a lot of people who work at Excel Homes, and while not all of them carry a hammer or have a near-scientific knowledge of the physical properties of drywall, they all help “build” – in one way or another – the homes we create on a daily basis. This recurring blog entry will introduce you to some of those people and the tools they use to do their important jobs.

Today’s entry is about Kerri Kondisko. Kerri is a sales rep, but she recently had the opportunity to work with home buyers and builders to help rebuild some of the homes damaged in the recent tornados that struck western and central Massachusetts.

NAME: Kerri Kondisko

POSITION: Account Executive for Massachusetts, Vermont and New Hampshire

DESCRIBE YOUR TYPICAL DAY AT EXCEL HOMES:

The best (and sometimes the worst) thing about working as a sales representative is that there is no typical day. If I am working from my home office, I usually start my day quite early and try to get paperwork out of the way before the phone starts ringing. After that, I start returning calls and emails that have accumulated during the evening (since a lot of my builder partners spend their days at the jobsite, they spend the wee hours of the day catching up on their paperwork). I may receive requests to research and request pricing for new building products for a builder or retailer, help with a floor plan design, and cost estimates. Prospective buyers may also inquire about floor plans, information on modular construction, or contact information for a local builder.

If I am on the road, I will travel to Massachusetts, Vermont or New Hampshire to meet with several different builders a day. During those meetings, I may help them “fine-tune” a plan or discuss what’s new with Excel. If it’s a builder who’s a prospect, I’ll show them why they should be doing business with Excel Homes. I have also met with customers and their builder to assist in the color selection/options process – which can sometimes be very daunting to a new home buyer. Sometimes I’ll get to attend a home set. It’s a great experience to go to a site where there is only a foundation, and by the end of the day, there’s a new home. It’s really cool.

WHAT DO YOU LIKE MOST ABOUT YOUR JOB?

Though I’m fond of working on the design of floor plans and elevations, by far the biggest reason I’ve been with Excel for so long is the people I work with. Excel has some great people on staff who really care about providing the best home possible to the end user – from the office staff who take care of the builders’ needs to the folks in order processing, quality control, purchasing and engineering, who look at the home with a fresh set of eyes and make suggestions that really help to improve the homes we build.

I have told this story many times, but I will never forget the day I got a call from a guy who was installing the outlets in a bathroom of a home I had online. He said that the position of one of the outlets would really be inconvenient for the homeowner, and that if it were his home, he would move it to a different location, and even suggested where it should ideally go. To me, it was great that a guy working on the line was thinking of that home as if it were his own. That makes all the difference in the world to the product we are building.

WHAT’S THE MOST IMPORTANT SKILL SOMEONE WOULD NEED TO SUCCEED IN YOUR POSITION?

You have to be a good communicator. We have a diverse group in the sales department, and they all come to the table with a different set of skills; you learn to make your skills work to your builder’s advantage. But, if you don’t have good communication skills, you’re sunk. You have to be able to listen to the builder in the various forms that they use to communicate – phone, text, email – compile the information they are passing along, translate it into terms the company can work with, pass it along to the appropriate staffers, and then follow up. I work on this every day. Sometimes I’m successful, sometimes I drop the ball. But most importantly, I keep trying!

YOU’VE RECENTLY BEEN INVOLVED IN HELPING HOME BUYERS AND BUILDERS WHOSE HOMES WERE DAMAGED IN THE MASSACHUSETTS TORNADOES. WHAT HAS THAT EXPERIENCE BEEN LIKE?

It has been eye-opening. First, who would ever think of a tornado being so damaging in Massachusetts? We just don’t think of those things up north. I was at a builder’s open house in the tornado-damaged area and met a gentleman whose home collapsed into his basement while he was sleeping. He was miraculously thrown from the house onto a neighbor’s lawn. His chimney collapsed one foot to his left, a large section of the porch was one foot to the right, and he only had a scratch on his arm. Even his dog was blown free of the destruction and was unharmed. Though he lost everything, he didn’t lose sight of how lucky he was. We sat together for a few hours designing a new home for him.

I’ve also been working with another woman whose home, though not destroyed, was so damaged that it can’t be salvaged. She was telling me of a recent trip to the supermarket. Somehow, the other folks in the checkout line discovered she had lost her home in the tornado. A little boy came up to her, handed her a bunch of flowers and a twenty dollar bill. He said his daddy wanted her to have the flowers, and that the money would cover the expense. When she got near the front of the line, she was told that the family in front of her was going to pay for her order. Though it’s sad to see the destruction, it’s heartwarming to hear how people will pull together when faced with a challenge like this. I’m very honored to be able to witness it and hopefully help some people rebuild their lives.

WHAT ADVICE DO YOU HAVE FOR HOMEOWNERS WHO HAVE EXPERIENCED DAMAGE TO THEIR HOMES FROM A NATURAL DISASTER?

Don’t be afraid to ask for help. There are so many people who would like to do something—they’re just looking for the opportunity. And like the gentlemen who lost his home, don’t just focus on what was lost; be thankful for what you have. Material things can always be replaced. Friends, family, neighbors and communities are priceless.

WHAT ARE YOU EXCITED ABOUT – PROFESSIONALLY AND PERSONALLY – IN 2011?

I’m looking forward to seeing a little more consumer confidence as we start to come out of the financial downturn, and I look forward to doing my part to help my coworkers have a successful 2011.

“We appreciate the fact that our Excel salesperson actually comes up to visit – that means a lot. I also love the fact that, as a builder partner, they welcome our input and collaboration.”

- Bob Dion (Value Homes of New England, Nashua, NH)

Another week means another trend in our Summer of Trends on Modular Musings. We’ve already talked about the rise of larger, more functional kitchens and how today’s homeowners are looking to save on flooring without skimping on quality. Today’s entry takes a look at homes as a whole with a trend that should come as no surprise to anyone – that homeowners are scaling back on sprawling, luxury homes in favor of more sensibly designed plans.

Yes, we know, the downsizing of homes and the slow death of the so-called “McMansion” is nothing new. In fact, we’ve talked about it here on Modular Musings in the past. But this trend is about more than just the size of the home. It’s also about the movement away from glitzy options and toward, as Builder Senior Editor Jenny Sullivan explains, “interior spaces with natural finishes, clean lines and few frivolous embellishments.”

Sullivan uses the term “portion control” to describe homeowners’ preference for smaller, more sensible design options, similar to Excel’s Amelia, Bainbridge or Brockway plans. Portion control is a good way to describe the trend because in home design, as in dining, cutting back on the main course means more room for dessert – like a bigger garage, a boat, an in-ground pool, or a 1,700-square-foot wraparound deck.

Our design team is constantly working hard to improve our existing designs and add new ones to the Excel Homes catalog. One example of that hard work is our new American Lifestyle series. We’ll let the floor plan guide describe the line-up for you:

From architectural details to open floor plans, you’ll love these classic designs with a modern flair. But remember that these plans are just the beginning. As the nation’s largest custom modular home manufacturer, we offer hundreds of custom options and upgrades for maximum flexibility and style. Make our house your home by choosing everything from the layout and design to countertops and faucets from a variety of well-known national brands. We work with you to design the home of your dreams.

The American Lifestyle series includes five ranch designs, five Cape designs, and four two-story options, a sampling of which are provided below. To view these or any other American Lifestyle homes, check out the model browser tool on the Excel Homes website.

It’s July, which means the 2011 building season is well under way and, according to your votes in last month’s poll, off to a better-than-last-year start (which isn’t hard to do, we’ll admit). Now that the season is in full swing, we’ve decided to use July to kick off our “Summer of Trends” here on Modular Musings.

Each Friday, we’ll feature a different home building or home design trend. If all goes well, we’ll extend the Summer of Trends to include entries in August as well. Among the topics you can expect to see this month are trends in flooring (July 8), how glitz and glamour are giving way to simpler home designs (July 15), the rise in multigenerational households (July 22) and the 2011 “Color of the Year” (July 29). We kick off the Summer of Trends today, and we’ll start in the hub of almost any home: the kitchen.

The size of homes may be shrinking (more on that on July 15), but kitchens aren’t. That’s because, for many family, the kitchen represents a central gathering place. It’s more than a space to prepare meals. It’s a space used to dine, unwind and relax with friends and family. For that reason, we’re seeing more homeowners downsizing other areas of the house – living rooms, bedrooms, even bathrooms – in order to upsize the kitchen.

In addition to making the kitchen bigger, homeowners are making the most of the space they have by choosing multifunctional appliances and fixtures that can do more and take up less space. Kitchen carts, for example, provide workspace, storage space, and can be moved, if needed, to make room for whatever it is homeowners might need to make room for. And in today’s kitchen, that could be just about anything.

We’ve featured many of the pages and tools on the Excel Homes website here on the blog, but one page we haven’t featured is our Project Photos page.

This page is particularly useful for builders and homeowners alike, because it’s a collection of photos, taken by Excel’s builder partners, of Excel homes in all their completed and move-in-ready glory. What makes the page especially interesting is that the photos are taken by the builders themselves, which means we see the finished product from their perspective.

The page is currently home to work by 23 of our builder partners, but three of the most recent additions are homes constructed by Built Rite, Inc. (Clarksville, VA, the builders of the home featured above), Virginia Building Solutions (Staunton, VA), and Zarilli Homes (Brick, NJ). All three are companies we’re proud to be associated with, and we encourage you to check out their handiwork on the Project Photos page.