25 Years Ago

A 25th Anniversary Memory

Here are some fun facts about 1984:

• Michael Jackson was at the top with his album “Thriller”
• Popular movies:  Terms of Endearment and Ghostbusters
• Popular TV shows:  Dynasty and Magnum PI
• Vanessa Williams wins then looses the title of Miss America
• Apple introduced the Macintosh
• The Soviets boycotted the Los Angeles Olympics
• The Space Shuttle Discovery had its maiden voyage
• $.20 was the price of a first class stamp

Our Beginning:  In 1984, Duane Hartman started Hartland Homes with just 3 employees, including himself.  Duane was the salesperson, Jim Kuper was in charge of construction and the 3rd employee was an administrative person. 

Our Employees:  Our construction and office staff have a combined 166 years working at Hartland Homes.  That is an average of 15 years per employee!   The experience and loyalty of our employees has made Hartland Homes successful.  Thank you employees!

Our Locations: The office for the company was in the model home on Briar Rosa Drive.  Eventually, Hartland Homes moved out of the model home and into an office.  This office was located at 10th and Van Dorn right next to Oak Creek flowers.  Both have been torn down and now that area is slated for commercial development.  Hartland Homes moved to its current location in May 1992.

Our improvements: 

• Central  Air, dishwashers and space saver microwaves weren’t always standard
• We switched to cement board siding around 1997 because of all the class action suits on the old siding.  We love the cement board siding.
• Started out with one framing crew and at our peak we had 9 framing crews!
• upgraded to 92% efficient furnaces  (from 80%) , saving our buyers money on utility bills! 
• Added the 20 year dry basement guarantee in the last 2 years.  This system works!! 
• Computerized
  • - blue prints  (we used to draw them ….it took a long time to make changes!
  • Sales contracts (used to write these by hand and some people’s handwriting made it difficult to interpret what the customer wanted!)
  • Scheduling and Warranty (our Builder Trend program makes it easy for customers to see what phase their home is scheduled for next, see current pictures of the home and also. after closing, allows the customer to input warranty requests and let us know when the work is done and if the work is satisfactory.
  • 15 years ago we started using oak woodwork standard in all our homes.  Prior to that we used a softer wood like pine and poplar.  The oak is beautiful and it holds up much better to kids, pets and other abuses.
  • We have updated all our fronts… the homes used to have vertical siding and trim boards.  See picture:

Here is the updated look:  Notice this one has lap siding and no trim boards giving it a cleaner more modern look.

Every year we add new designs and improve our homes, above is just a few of those ways.   We are constantly striving to improve our homes either by updating the plans, inventing new plans or upgrading  products that don’t meet our standards.  This is one of the many reasons we are Lincoln’s Largest Home Builder and plan to be around for another 25 years serving the Lincoln community.