House Literally Marries Work, Home
It can’t be proven, but Brenda and Bill Nichols might just have the shortest telecommute in the whole, wide, virtual world - 19 stairs. That’s the distance from the Pentium-powered computer that squats on the kitchen counter of their two-bedroom apartment to their spiffy offices located one story below. So close are the spaces that business meetings in their corporate conference room are occasionally accompanied by a soundtrack of overhead thumps provided by their two frolicking kids.
Don’t misunderstand. The couple doesn’t descend to the type of funky basement offices many of us maintain in order to work at home a couple of days a week. Theirs is the real deal: 9,000 square feet housing two companies co-founded by Brenda Nichols, not to mention 10 full-time employees. The three-story, shingled structure - top-floor apartment included - was built by a local developer last year specifically to fit the Nicholses’ personal and professional needs. Especially Brenda’s.
“I really wanted to be close to my children,” says the 35-year-old mother, referring to 4-year-old Abbey and 18-month-old Kippy. “I decided that if I was going to sacrifice my life to business, I was going to make it as sane as possible for everybody.”
For 36-year-old Bill Nichols, a soft-spoken certified public accountant who is the chief financial officer for both his wife’s companies, the melding of work with the rest of his life wasn’t as critical. Still, he allows as how it seems to be working just fine, at least for the first couple of months. “We’re both so strapped for time that anything that can provide us with extra time is valuable,” he says.
The home/work link isn’t just physical, of course. The new wood-frame structure has been officially dubbed Internet House, in homage to the nearly four miles of cable that have been laid to run both of Brenda Nichols’ businesses. (One is a public relations agency catering to high-tech clients, the other a company that assists businesses in marketing on the World Wide Web segment of the Internet.) This means the family’s 1,500-square-foot apartment has no fewer than six direct connections, including the one in the kitchen, to the firms’ computer network. The result: The couple can quickly, and without using a modem and a telephone line, access files, financial records, e-mail and whatever else their digital hearts desire. Meanwhile, they can save 19 steps in the process.
“I’m a bit of a workaholic,” Brenda Nichols understates.
And so, while computers are creating hundreds of thousands of “virtual employees” whose professional presence is on line rather than at a desk, this particular high-tech entrepreneur feels she can’t afford to be one of them despite her thoroughly wired existence. Cyberspace or not, she wants to show up for work in the traditional way. “She’s the queen bee,” says her business partner, Steven Parker. “If she’s out of the hive, it doesn’t work.”
Despite its high-tech motif, Internet House developer Kevin Hurley would agree that the building is at least partly rooted in the past. And he’s not just talking about its columns, gables and dormers. “People might think this is futuristic living, but in one way it isn’t,” Hurley points out. “It’s really like an old country store where Mom and Pop lived upstairs.”
But living above the office is clearly not for everyone, particularly if you’re someone who minds, say, your coworkers dropping by for a doughnut while you’re still in your pajamas. “People say, ‘You have no privacy,’ but to me it’s the most natural thing in the world,” Brenda Nichols says. “We even bring clients up for lunch.”
The street runs two ways, but not always. Four-year-old Abbey is welcome downstairs, but there are rules. “She’s learned not to come into the big room (read: conference room) when there are people there,” her mother says.
Before moving into Internet House in December, the family owned a house in nearby Acton while Brenda and Bill commuted to a different office in Concord. One problem: The three-mile trip wasn’t long enough. “The office was so close to home that I kept going back and forth during the day,” Brenda Nichols recalls. “This is obviously much easier. And Abbey said to me, ‘I love living here, because you’re here all the time.”’
But it may not stay that way. At least not entirely. The couple admits they are looking for a weekend house. Something big, something on the ocean, something perhaps in Maine. In other words, a getaway place? Brenda Nichols nods. “That,” she says, “will be my way of getting out.”
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