Fine Design Build LLC

Fine Design Build creates houses from drawing board to turn key and they are amazing. We have been so fortunate as to receive their help in work and in consultation for about ten years now, at our Mercer Island home which was built in the 1970s and features original Seattle cobblestone and barnwood. They are wonderful and we look forward to working with them again this summer. They're going to put a new roof on the house. They're well connected in the construction business and can get the right materials, like the really thick cedar shakes that are so hard to find now, which our house needs to maintain its character and the character of our private lane. They not only specializes in re-use but also can make necessary improvements that still look vintage. That is so important to us. We enthusiastically recommend Fine Design Build.

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.