From House To Home

When it was time for Sally Steffes to relocate to the Saginaw Valley for a new job, she could have reasonably chosen to make her home anywhere in Saginaw, Bay, or Midland County.

Steffes and her family have lived in Dallas, Omaha, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, and New Jersey. This time she decided on Saginaw Township based on the high-quality condominium she found paired with the type of community environment that’s right for her.

“It reminds me of a little Connecticut neighborhood,” she observes of her Caterino Builders Tuscany Villas subdivision.

Her condominium includes all the amenities she enjoyed in her elite New Jersey home, but on a smaller scale. It measures 1,340 square feet on the main floor, plus a two-car garage and full basement, approximately 600 square feet of which Steffes had finished.

“This is really just about the same amount of space I was actually living in,” she shares. “This condominium has everything I had in my previous home.”

Caterino Builders president Dennis Dittenber notes that his company purposefully set out to create a condominium with strategically placed amenities to help set its product apart from the rest.

“We always try to put ourselves in the shoes of the customer,” he offers. “There are some very nice condominiums in Saginaw County. The Tuscany Villas condominiums are relatively inexpensive but still done nicely.”

“It reminds me of a little Connecticut neighborhood.” --Sally Steffes

Attention to details such as Corian countertops, semi-custom cabinets, solid-core doors, drop spaces by private entry doors from finished garages, dedicated laundry rooms, deluxe trim packages, and customized fireplaces help Caterino differentiate its condominium product, Dittenber suggests.

“The whole thing is upgraded a little bit so you get a better feeling when you walk in the door that it’s put together right,” he explains.

Steffes, a corporate executive and behavioral scientist, included her own handiwork in appointing her home by creating its draperies. Since it was time for her to scale down, she was able to pick and choose her favorite pieces from her previous home’s furniture collection to furnish her new condominium.

She decorates her walls with cherished family images, inspirational quotes, and her own handmade, spiritually themed needlepoint creations.

Her handmade dolls, helping adorn the master suite, represent another Steffes original with faces and hands of cast and hand-painted porcelain and highly detailed handmade outfits.

Steffes brings her eye for detail to appreciate the personal attention she received from the builder.

“I was living here about a month when I found a box by the front door,” she relates. “Inside was a terry-cloth robe with my monogram on it. It came from the builder’s office.”

And one can’t forget about the ultimate perk of owning a condominium and its associated membership, as Steffes notes: “There’s no yard work.”