Your thinking about building a custom home, your interviewing general contractors, here’s a simple question that you should be asking them. Do you employ master craftsmen or master carpenters?
If you are having a custom home built you will want a master carpenter working on it. Master carpenters excel at all things within the building of homes especially working with wood and the interior finishes that go along with them.
If you want a house to look like an extremely rich and well put together place, then your general contractor better have master carpenters on your job site. Without them there is no way anyone can guarantee that the work will be of an extremely high quality and finished in an efficient and timely manner.
Master carpenters are hard to find into today’s construction industry, not all general contractors are able to find a master carpenter and they usually have a harder time keeping them. As a general contractor you have to pay them enough to keep them around and you also have to generate enough work to constantly keep them busy year after year. If your general contractor isn't able to do these things then his master carpenter will go to the competition.
The only way to become a master carpentry is to be in the construction industry for decades working on high end work in all manner of homes and buildings. As the population gets older there is a glaring number of high end carpenters that are retiring from the industry or stepping back into a more handyman role where it is easier on their aging bodies, allowing them lighter workloads and more flexible hours.
There is a generation gap in the construction industry, for year’s parents and guidance councillors have been steering boys and girls away from working in the trades, they were told if you’re smart enough you should be going to College or University. They were told this was the only way to be guaranteed a good paying long term job. What has happened is that a whole generation of people have realized that going to College or University doesn’t guarantee you a well paying job anymore. One of the few places left to secure that job is in the trades.
Because of that way of thinking a whole generation of young people did not seek employment in the trades and have left a gaping hole, this makes it even harder to find master carpenters and also carpenters in general. There is a younger generation coming up through the system training to be carpenters but they are decades away from being ready to take on the role of a master carpenter.
If you are interviewing a general contractor and he doesn’t employ his own carpenters but subs out the finishing’s I would consider that a red flag. You want your general contractor to be able to control the fit and finish of the home and the only way to do that is to have at least one master carpenter employed and onsite all the time as your custom home is being constructed.
The more questions you ask of your potential general contractors the more information you will have when you go to choose one. You can never know enough about your general contractor.
Rob Abbott
Operations Manager
Village Builders Inc.
