About Us
We're not trying to build decks. We're trying to build something you'll live on for the next twenty years.
I grew up in North County San Diego – a small agricultural community where everyone knew everyone. You knew your mailman by name, your neighbors, your grocer. Reputation wasn’t an abstraction. It was the only currency that mattered, and I understood that early.
I started in construction at fourteen, working for a general contractor. I quit before the summer was over. He told me to toss excavated dirt over a fence onto a neighbor’s property. I did it because I didn’t know better. When the HOA president showed up, the contractor had to move every bit of it. I couldn’t stand the feeling of having done something wrong. I left and didn’t come back to construction for years.
From Beverly Hills construction to a lakefront shop in Flathead Valley.
After college I came back to the trades – this time at a different level. I worked in high-end real estate investment on the West Coast, overseeing construction on projects in Los Angeles and Beverly Hills where standards were exacting and margin for error was zero. That work taught me to think many levels below the surface: not just what a material looks like, but how it behaves over time – thermal expansion, moisture movement, what happens at the ledger connection after ten Montana winters.
I ran a general contracting division for a few years. The work was good. The problem was the cycle – two to three years per project, managing architects and engineers and clients through cost spikes and delays that were completely outside my control. Clients frustrated. Me frustrated. I was good at the work but couldn’t feel good about the experience.
What I realized was that my real strength was in what you might call finished carpentry at an exterior scale. Custom decks and railings: clear scope, fixed bid, weeks not years, and a client who knew exactly what they were getting before we started. I moved my family to the Flathead Valley five years ago – we have five kids and wanted to raise them here – and built the business around what I was actually best at.
Every decision we make is something we'd have to live with.
I don’t know exactly why quality matters so much to me. Some of it is just how I’m built. Some of it is that I’ve spent enough time in this work to see what happens when it’s done wrong. A deck attached to a house without proper flashing at the ledger isn’t just a deck problem – it’s a water intrusion problem that quietly destroys the rim joist, the wall framing, the subfloor. That damage happens invisibly over years. By the time anyone notices, it’s a major repair. The most important part of a deck is what you never see.
The other part of it is simpler: this is a small community. Similar in some ways to where I grew up. Everyone knows everyone, everyone talks. I support my family with this work. My name is on every project. That’s enough reason to do it right.
We were outsourcing our railings.
My brother-in-law runs a fabrication shop. When I saw his laser welder in action – rail sections pre-cut from a SolidWorks file, everything tabbed and ready, assembled with a precision that looked almost effortless – I understood immediately what it would change. We could go from design to a finished, installed railing in days. Not months. No waiting on subcontractors. No powder coat delays. No reinstalling sections that came back scratched from the shop.
We’re now the only deck builder in the Flathead Valley with this capability in-house. We weld aluminum, stainless, and steel. Every joint is a full-penetration weld – the laser punches all the way through the metal rather than depositing material on the surface. It’s stronger, cleaner, and faster. We finish with epoxy primer and paint rather than powder coat, which means a scratch can be touched up in the field. That’s not a detail most homeowners ever think about. But it matters.
We hire for conscientiousness and kindness. Everything else we can train.
The longest-tenured person on our crew has been with me for seven years. Our newest member joined two months ago. When I bring someone on, I’m not necessarily looking for someone who already knows how to build a deck. Most of my best people didn’t. What I’m looking for is someone I’d be comfortable having at my dinner table – someone attentive, respectful, and coachable. When I redirect them on something, they take it as useful information, not personal criticism.
We train internally for specific competencies: one person becomes the lead on railings, another on framing, another on planks and finish work. Every element of a project has someone who genuinely owns it. My wife is co-owner of the business. We have an outside bookkeeper, which helps both the marriage and the books. Occasionally the family comes by a job site. It keeps me grounded on why I’m doing this – which is the same reason most of our clients hire us. They care about what they’re building for their family. So do I.
We're going to cost more than the cheapest option. Here's why that's the right call.
We are not the least expensive deck builder in the Flathead Valley. We’re also not Trex certified – which means we’re not obligated to push any one product. We recommend what’s actually right for the project, whether that’s cedar, composite, PVC, or the engineered stone tile systems we’re starting to work with. Our clients are typically quality-sensitive more than price-sensitive. They want to get it done once and have it last.
If you’ve had a bad experience with a contractor, here’s my honest advice: talk to references, look at real finished work, and pay attention to how someone communicates during the estimate. A contractor who is vague about scope, slow to respond, or hard to read during the estimate is going to be that way during the build. We’re specific. We’re responsive. I pick up the phone.