Building a home in Alaska...
I’ve wasted $15,000 on contractors, architects, and structural engineers to try to get a house built on our land in Kodiak. Steep learning curve for me, so much so that I’ve started to call the endeavor, “Michelle’s Folly," (mostly proactively in order to beat my spouse to it). But as we all know, Seward’s Folly turned out to be one of the best investments in history. When the Secretary of State orchestrated the U.S. purchase of the territory of Alaska from Russia for $7.2 million (2 cents per acre), many Americans scoffed at his stupidity. Certainly, the Russians did. The territory was thought to be so far north as to be unusable and uninhabitable (though Alaska Natives knew better because it had been their land for centuries—even though no one recognized it as such). Now, 158 years later, Alaska has three mid-sized cities, decent infrastructure, and a population of more than 700,000. Beyond that, tourism generates more than $157 million in revenue for the state. Folly? I think not. But, back to the build in Kodiak.
After two years, we finally found “the guy” to get the house project underway, and now I can sleep at night. Jim was the first person recommended to us, but he seemed too busy, and we didn’t want to wait for him to fit our project into his schedule. Plus, he was just one guy. He used subcontractors, of course, but how quickly could he get anything done, especially on an island off mainland Alaska. So, we went with big companies, one in Vancouver even, trying to get a prefab done and barged over, only to find out that the structure we'd planned to build would never make it down the road to our lot. The "road" had a steep drop off and curve and no place to turn around at the bottom. After I got stuck with a rental car and had to be towed off my own property, I was ready to give up. Thankfully, my spouse, who had been against the project from the get go, surprised me and said I should think about it.
Fast forward a couple years. Unable to get anything accomplished, we met with Jim again, who not only had time for our project, but also took us fishing. Afterward, at a local pub, he sketched a few ideas on a napkin over a beer, and when we asked about a contract, he said he hadn’t done one of those for some time. He put out his hand and we shook it. He was officially our contractor. Turns out, he’s honest and fair and people around Kodiak know him as such. A good guy. The kind of guy who will build your house without any hassle, because he knows people at the city, and as a bonus, he'll regale you with epic stories about bears and whales, boats and tides. I also think there's something important to be said about his trust in us. He'd only met us once, and yet he never asked about our ability to pay for the project. He fronted most of the money on his own, invoicing us only when we reminded him to. That's faith, people. That's trust. That's doing business in Alaska, the old-fashioned way, with a handshake.
I found the land in October, 2020. We purchased it a year later. We finally broke ground on it in July, 2024. Today, the drywall is being installed. Our contractor sends us videos, often panning across the mountains and ocean and pointing out seals hauled out below. He seems as happy to have worked on our project as we were to have him do it. We can't wait to have him over for a beer when it's all done and compare the finished home with his napkin sketch from a couple years ago.
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