Tradition is a way of life at Dovetail Construction

Hand-split shakes crafted on a shaving horse, mortise and tenon joints joined by pegs, post and beam hand-carved to fit to perfection in homes sensibly designed to fit not only the land, but the conditions and climate using native stone and timber. These are just a few of the cornerstones of many the special touches that go into homes built by Chad Landrum, owner of Dovetail Construction, newly arrived in Bonners Ferry.

Chad and his wife, Regan Plumb, moved to Bonners Ferry on Labor Day, 2007. On December 5, they welcomed their second child, Silvi, and on December 10, Chad started work on their beautiful new home on Birch Street, which they moved into the first of June, the house about 90-percent finished.

It would have been completely finished, but he took time out to get his garden in.

Now he’s ready to get back to the work he loves; building beautiful custom homes.

Much of the work he does using hand tools; froes and mallets, draw-knives, chisels and handsaws.

The first step when he approaches any job, he said, is to get the ideas of his client, determine their budget and make them match.

“My goal is to make what you want happen,” he said, “and save you money as well.”

By handcrafting, he is able to use materials other builders are likely to overlook, such as a badly warped beam crafted into a unique and functional arched truss. In so doing, he is able to add a bit of artistry to the project, while saving the owner money.

He builds from the ground up, doing everything that doesn’t need a specific license, such as electrical and plumbing, which he contracts out. While his flourishes may appear simply artistic, he said, nothing is done for show.

“Everything has a purpose and is well thought out,” he said. “It’s ‘functional art.’”

He takes pride in the fact that the houses he builds appraise out well above the cost, an accomplishment he achieves not by cutting corners, but by making the best use of local materials and by taking advantage of deals he’s able to find. The entryway to his house is tiled in beautiful stone; a batch of rock he got at a discount because it wasn’t matched.

And while you might think that taking these kinds of hands-on pains would slow him down, that isn’t the case.

“My motto is a house in a hundred days,” he said. “I do the whole package, from bare ground to a turn-key home people can afford.”

While some might be tempted to call his style of building “green,” he said he doesn’t much care for the label, preferring instead to call what he does “sensible.”

Designing the home to make the best use of passive solar heat, using high efficiency appliances, on-demand water heaters, obtaining his materials locally to avoid high transportation costs, he said, isn’t so much to be environmentally friendly as it is to save the homeowner money, not just in construction, but for the lifetime they’ll spend in the home.

Chad spent his life around and in construction. Growing up in Arkansas, he was often at his builder dad’s side on construction projects. A love of western novels led him to the more traditional style he now employs.

“In all those great Louis L’Amour novels you read about pioneers building the one-week cabin using nothing but an axe,” he said. So, at age 18, he gave it a try. He went out to the “back forty,” and while it took him two weeks to chink and finish, he built a cabin, held together by hand-hewn dovetail joints. It took him another month to build the fireplace, and then he decided it needed some chairs, so he built those, too.

And found out they sold.

While in university to earn a degree in biology, he continued working construction, and also turned a tidy profit building those hand-crafted chairs. After earning his degree, his construction career was sidetracked by a stint as a government biologist. He met his wife, who holds a masters in biology, while working in Yosemite, and the two were married in 2000, the same year he quit government work to become a full-time contractor in Riggins, Idaho.

“I left biology because I felt like I was wasting taxpayer money, riding around in a truck,” he said. “I could also see a time when I’d be trapped behind a desk, staring at a computer, and I didn’t like that idea.”

Shortly after their wedding, not finding a home that met their needs, Chad told Regan he’d just build them a house himself.

When it was done, and she was delighted with the outcome, she confessed to him that she didn’t think he could actually do it.

After working in Riggins for several years, they decided to move closer to family, and Chad remembered North Idaho from a camping trip he’d taken on his way back from serving as a fisheries observer in Alaska.

“I love everything about construction, from planning to the actual building,” he said. “Knowing where every joist, every truss is. Having so many different types of work to do, rather than just doing the same thing over and over.”

To find out more about Dovetail Construction, call Chad at (208) 597-5020.

— Courtesy Photo

Chad Landrum, owner of Dovetail Construction, works on his shaving horse to create top-grade hand-split shakes.