Testimonials

Bob and Cris Polk

Where and how does one begin to express the unbelievable pleasure and privilege of working with Jess Chapman? Homebuilding is supposed to be one of the most stressful events in a person’s life. All I can say is that it was a delight.

We are so grateful for Jess and the entire team that was brought together to build our home in New Meadows from. We wake up every day in our beautiful home in its beautiful mountainside setting with grateful hearts.

The beginning of our venture started with our architect Claire Remsberg.  She was was eager to help us incorporate ideas proposed in Sarah Susanka’s book The Not So Big House.  The author’s driving philosophy for creating a home is that it should be focussed on quality and not quantity of size, beauty, comfort, and conserving of valuable resources. In additions, our own personal desires were to build the most efficient and environmentally sound home possible.

It was our architect who suggested Jess Chapman of Chapman Construction. And he was entirely on board with our desires to build in this way.

From the very first meeting together, we knew that Jess was going to be the one to build our home. He listened, was enthusiastic, organized, concerned with quality, able to make recommendations, amiable and totally absent of the ego that can make working together impossible. We were impressed with his financial and budgeting skills: accuracy, tracking, adjusting, and handling of surprises. He was always anticipating next steps when it came to our own responsibilities… and was a good sounding board for decisions concerning everything from flooring to paint. Best of all, he was supportive while also advising about “out of the box suggestions”.

His crew was amazing: Luke, Jesse, Ethan,  I wanted to adopt them all! They were so accomplished, friendly, considerate, and consummately capable. Jess’ subcontractors were a pleasure to work with also.

We were committed to building using Passivhaus standards for low-level energy consumption building. It is a German technology that aims to achieve the lowest levels of energy usage and highest level of comfort using complex algorithms for airtightness, air exchange and heat loss. Our consultant, Skylar Swinford of ESCO worked closely with Jess and helped us achieve PHIUS (Passive House Institute U.S.) certification, something about which we are enormously proud, especially in this age when conservation is so greatly needed. We primarily heat with wood and have used only 1.2-1.4 cords of wood per winter in our 2900 sq. ft. home!

It has been two plus years now. The windows are marvelous and efficient. The walls have no cracks, the floors are straight, the trim work is impeccable. Our front entry door that Jess created to surround our custom leaded glass panel from our original home delights us every time we pass through it. Everything is just the way it was the day Jess and his crew were finished. We love being here every single day. We think that is a great testament to Jess and the team, and is most praiseworthy.

What we most admire about Jess is his personal integrity, skill and knowledge. We could not recommend him and his company enough.