Fine Design Build

In 2008 my husband retired from Microsoft and we moved from Bellevue to Mercer Island where our son was attending CHILD, that awesome special needs school so dear to many. We bought a wonderful home from a counselor/minister who after raising her family in it, ran it as a Bed & Breakfast (The Treehouse Mercer Island) and she performed weddings and other ceremonies here. She had it built in 1976 but designed it to resemble a 100 year old farm house, with big beams and much barnwood. As the years went by it needed upkeep but we wanted to maintain it in as vintage condition as possible. I don’t think we could have done that without Jason Chabot. He thinks in terms of reusing materials which was just what we wanted. Jason is smart and he is inspired. Anyone who knows about autism knows safety comes first and he thinks safe as well as beautiful and in keeping with the original plan. Many thanks now and I am sure in the future as we continue on.

The people at Fine Design Build are part craftsman, part artist, part magician. I learned the hard way, courtesy of my previous builder, that you need all three qualities in your contractor. Most builders, quite frankly, operate with only one or two of those qualities—and then only in varying degrees of goodness. Like a two-legged stool, it shows in the results. If you want it done right—and not only right, but beyond what you might ask or imagine—I can’t imagine a better choice than Fine Design Build. As I write this review, we’re finishing up the remedial work on what passes for “industry standard” (right! Industry standard is a code term for shoddy workmanship, inferior materials, crooked walls, bad ergonomic design, squeaky subfloors, poor paint work, bad excavation, and so on), and I am amazed that they have made some pretty challenging projects look like they were done right the first time—as originally intended! Considering what they had to work with (so-called industry standard), it’s Incredible really. That’s where the magician part comes in. With future big projects planned (a shop/barn and a timber frame home), it is comforting to know I have found a builder for life. I only wish I knew Fine Design Build before I got started on this cottage—you know, the one built to industry standards. If this review sounds a bit over the top, it’s only because the results are over the top—results that have swung me from utterly frustrated to completely overjoyed.