Personality Plus

Building Up
Pete and Deb Mergens also found their builder, McDonald Construction of Apple Valley, while visiting the Parade of Homes^SM. The Mergens family had already zeroed in on Northfield as their next place to live, so they looked at a variety of homes by a number of different builders. “We looked at models, and what an amazing difference,” Pete Mergens says. “The prices were the same, but McDonald had a high-end finish.”

The Mergenses’ home in the Charles Ridge development in Northfield is the third home Pete and Deb have built and the second home McDonald has built for them. Each time they traded up. Pete says that now that he has lived in two McDonald-built homes, he knows that quality is a driving force in the firm’s building methods. “For instance, McDonald uses finger-jointed construction lumber,” Pete says. “It makes for a very strong and straight wall.” And, as Pete notes, the walls provide the foundation for everything else, even personality.

How McDonald and its subcontractors handled adversity was a pleasant surprise for the Mergenses. “I understand new construction is not a perfect process,” Pete says. “We didn’t have a lot of issues, but when something was missed or not done as we had wanted, the subcontractors just said ‘OK’ and did it. There was never a question about whose responsibility it was. Those conversations never took place.” Pete believes that McDonald’s longstanding relationship with its subcontractors is the reason the process progressed so smoothly.

The first home McDonald built for the Mergens family was a custom rambler. “We loved it, but once we were in it, we wondered if we had looked at all the options,” Pete says. “The second time, we literally started from scratch.” The family’s second McDonald home is a modified two-story with a main-floor owners’ suite. “We took the best from the first home we ever built and the rambler, and we started drawing a house plan on a blank sheet of paper. It was awesome,” Pete says. Because they started the building process from scratch, Pete says, “I now walk into my home and think, ‘I’ve never seen this exact house anywhere else.’ I’m a realtor, and I’ve seen many homes.”

The great room’s unique triangular design, which includes a two-story fireplace and two-story windows, fits the family perfectly. “You can sit in each room—kitchen, dining area, family room—and have a feeling of privacy, yet it is very open,” Pete says. “We love to cook. We love to entertain, and we love to spend a lot of time at home. We wanted a place to hang out. It’s nice to be home.”

Building a relationship is as important as building a home, says Bill Winter, production manager on both of the Mergenses’ homes. “The relationship the homeowners built with the company was critical, and it’s the reason they came back a second time,” Winter says. Listening is an essential part of that process. Not only does it help build the relationship, but it also helps ensure that the homeowners’ personalities will match that of their new home.