No Place Like Carr Home
From its headquarters in Bucks County, Carr Home takes a collaborative approach to helping homeowners reimagine their kitchens, bathrooms, and other essential living spaces.
Colby Carr was only 16 when he realized he wanted to build houses for a living.
He grew up with eight siblings in a three-bedroom house on a 50-acre farm. Despite the farm’s size, the kitchen measured only 8 feet by 6 feet, complete with 1960s grapefruit wallpaper. Each night his mother would make dinner for the family of 11, served around an old, wood table. Cramped quarters aside, Carr has nothing but fond memories of his childhood.
“We’re a very close family,” says Carr. “I used to imagine that I would build nine houses on the farm and we could all live together.”
As a sophomore at Hatboro-Horsham Senior High School, Carr purchased his first pickup truck and started performing odd jobs for family and friends—painting, spackling, and building small decks. He even did some home-improvement work for his teachers; he remembers walking into his English class during junior year and his teacher discussing the work Carr would be doing at the teacher’s house after school.
Inspired by the strong work ethic he inherited from his parents, Carr started his own company—Carr Home Improvements—only two months after graduating from the Eastern Center for Arts & Technology, a construction trade school in Upper Moreland.
A lot has changed since then. His Chalfont-based enterprise, now known as Carr Home, has been serving residential customers in Bucks and Montgomery counties since 2002. Carr and his wife, Jennie, lead a team that specializes in floor-to-ceiling remodels of kitchens, bathrooms, and first floors that allow homeowners to transform their living spaces.
At Carr Home’s grand showroom on Route 202, Carr’s team strives to make clients feel comfortable and confident as they plan out their projects, whether it’s an updated bathroom or the chef’s kitchen they have always wanted. With the guidance of his knowledgeable staff, homeowners can select cabinets, flooring, and fixtures from top brands such as Brizo, Hallmark Floors, Kohler, Mouser, Top Knobs, Toto, and Yorktowne.
“We will walk our clients through the entire job, from the start of demo to the final punch list,” he says.
Carr has completed many memorable renovations over the years, but one of the most distinctive jobs happened relatively early into his career—and it had a rather spooky feel. It was for the historic Leather Corner Post Hotel in Lowhill Township, Lehigh County, built in 1861 and since remade into a popular bar and restaurant. Carr recalls a few unsettling sightings around dark corners on the late nights he spent restoring the building’s spiral staircase and renovating the chef’s kitchen and bathrooms.
Even so, Carr says the most memorable part of the renovation was not a possible encounter with the hotel’s infamous ghost.
“Working on that job, I realized two things,” he adds. “First, kitchens and bathrooms haven’t changed much in a hundred years. Second, I wanted to focus my work on the spaces where people live their lives every day.”
Working in people’s homes does present some challenges, however. To begin with, the work can be disruptive, especially when it involves renovations of the kitchen and master bathroom. That’s why his company has adopted technology to streamline communication—namely, a smartphone app that facilitates messaging with homeowners and the other 30 members of the Carr Home crew.
“That allows us to tackle any issues promptly,” Carr says. “That’s a lesson I learned from my father: ‘If there’s an issue, address it right away.’ Sometimes, homeowners have the choice of leaving their homes while we’re doing the renovations, but other times we’re working while they’re in their homes. We want our clients to be as comfortable as possible while we turn their whole world around, and communication is key to that comfort.”
Carr is excited about innovations in home design that combine functionality with uncompromising aesthetics. He adds, “One of our recent projects was a kitchen with a walk-in pantry that was hidden behind cabinet drawers. I love that we can make spaces that are livable and beautiful.”
He acknowledges that each client has a specific goal, budget, and pace, which often means the company works with clients in stages. For example, he may start with a kitchen remodel and then come back later to complete updates to adjacent spaces or other parts of the home.
“A client may want to focus on the kitchen, but then the flooring runs into other rooms, and that can affect the aesthetic of the stairs, and on and on,” says Carr. “You have to take all that into consideration before you begin. An older remodeler told me that the best jobs are where you can’t tell where the new work started. My No. 1 goal is to make a new project look like it was here when the house was built.”
Going forward, Carr will continue offering expert remodeling services built around quality, comfort, and convenience. He also wants to give back more to the local community. As an example, Carr recently undertook remodeling of the 65-year-old rectory kitchen at Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church in Doylestown. “Projects like that make a real difference,” he says.
Although his father passed in 2017, Carr, now a father of four himself, remains close with his mother and siblings. Although he did not wind up building the nine houses he once envisioned, he has moved his mother out of the family home with the 8-by-6 kitchen and into a 7,200-square-foot dream house with two gourmet kitchens. One of his sisters now lives in the old family home, which Carr renovated nine years ago.
“It was emotional,” says Carr, recalling the demolition of the family kitchen’s worn cabinets and torn linoleum. “At the same time, it was good work. Because I was creating something that would go on to last, maybe even another 100 years. There’s something very special in that.”
Carr Home
196 E. Butler Ave., Store No. 1
Chalfont, PA 18914
(215) 822-0505
www.carrhome.com
196 E. Butler Ave., Store No. 1
Chalfont, PA 18914
(215) 822-0505
www.carrhome.com
Photo by Jody Robinson
Published (and copyrighted) in Suburban Life, October 2023.
