Daniel and Georgene Hughes, Homeowners

We felt this would be the best means to thank, commend and recommend our homebuilder, Jim Helms, owner of Quality Built Homes and the craftsmen whose services he procured to build our new house. We've highlighted and commented on just a few of the local contractors Jim brought to this project.

Quality Built Homes - Jim Helms, General Contractor-Project Manager

Mr. Helms' 30 years of experience defines real meaning to the words quality, craftsmanship, design, customer service and communications for the design projects we've entrusted to him over the last ten years.

Carl Hoefler Septic and Excavation

We placed a new mobile on this land in October 1994. At that time, Carl Hoefler dug and graveled our 500'+ driveway and installed our septic mound system. Twelve years later, we relied on Carl and his company to do the site-foundation excavation and the septic connections for our 2006 project. Our personal thanks to the Hoefler (family) organization for their years of friendship, support and professional service.

Bill Wegner Drywall and Painting - Bill Wegner

It was tough to grab a picture of Bill and his crew. Many times they arrived onsite by 6:30 in the morning and sometimes worked on Saturdays and one Sunday. Their craftsman-like work ethics was extremely impressive. The quality of their work both in the plastering and painting was nicely done. In a process where Georgene and I worked personally with the contractors on design options, my daughters really enjoyed picking out the colors for their rooms. Thanks Bill to you and your crew for your professional efforts.

Hans Brothers Ready Mix Concrete

The high water table and a focus on single-floor accessible design, prompted me to design our home without a basement. An above ground storm-utility room is the core of house. The room is designed with 8" reinforced concrete walls with a steel entrance door. The home's heating, cooling, electrical, audio, satellite, video, security, computer network-Internet, gas, water and septic connections are safely housed in this room.

It required a concrete contractor that understood the construction details of incorporating this room into the rest of the wood frame structure. Each contractor; electrical, plumbing, heating/cooling, septic and framers collaborated with Jim Helms and Hans Brothers to define their openings and access points to this room prior to pouring the walls.

Zastrow Heating and Cooling - Fred Zastrow

Jim Helms designed a unique concrete floating slab joint at the foundation walls. The foundation walls are insulated on the inside face from the footing to the top of the wall. This minimizes the thermal transfer of cold from the exterior of the building into the floor slab.

Zastrow Heating designed a forced air heating/cooling system using 14" PVC tubes that run along the perimeter of the building. The tubes are wrapped with insulation and buried 4" below the top of the slab. The furnace sits on top of the main duct, thereby reducing the amount of floor space needed in the storm-utility room.

Sears of Watertown - Bob Kleinsteiber - Appliances

Our goal was to purchase appliances from a single vendor with a prime focus around equipment that provided energy and water savings. Our design guidelines featured unique, quality-built name-brand appliances that could be locally serviced. On a Saturday evening in November, we worked with Bob for a couple hours to place our order and setup a delivery schedule coordinated by Jim Helms' construction schedule. Our combined package pricing was less than any pricing we personally validated with any Madison or Milwaukee retailers.

Obviously we had additional contractors that worked several areas of the project that we haven't mentioned. Kitchen cabinets, electrical, lighting, siding, roofing, framing, etc. They are all part of the larger pool of talent that Jim has coordinated throughout the life of our project. Please contact him for those details.

The "untold story" is that Mr. Helms has worked with us more than two years to bring this design project to reality. He built a 3 car garage-workshop that I designed in 1996. (You can see it in the photos above) What impressed us then and still today is the precise detail he takes in laying out the entire building process. He provided us with options, worked to stay within our defined budget, maximized the value of our project using specific material upgrades and is finishing the project on schedule per our original contract.

While some people lament that their new home building project was their biggest nightmare, we've thoroughly enjoyed this and our past project working with Jim Helms and Quality Built Homes.