Kevin Estes, the founder and owner of Estes Builders, is dedicated to crafting great homes and great experiences for his customers.
His passion for quality craftsmanship was sparked early in his life when he helped his grandpa, a hardwood floor contractor in California, finish a floor in the entry dining room of a home in La Jolla, California when he was just six years old. A veteran of WWI, he taught Kevin the importance of hard work and never complaining when things got rough.
Kevin’s dad was a veteran as well; he fought in WWII. When he came back home after the war, he attended law school, graduated first in his class, and opened a private practice. As a lawyer, he represented a land developer who later started a single-family home construction company and hired Kevin’s dad to run the business. After a few years, he had the opportunity to start his own company, which he did, building several hundred homes in the San Diego area in the course of his career.
One of the most important lessons Kevin learned from his dad was to always treat people right. No matter what your situation is at home, as a business owner, it is your responsibility to pay your employees and contractors first. Not only is it the right thing to do, it’s the only way to get a quality product. Kevin truly took that advice to heart — in the last 23 years of business, he has never missed a pay period.
Kevin’s story
At age 15, Kevin got is first paycheck in the construction industry as a general laborer for his dad’s company. He recalls his first day on the job — a manhole had completely filled with dirt during construction. Kevin was charged with the duty of digging out the manhole with a shovel. It took two days and his hands were covered in blisters by the end, but he finished and continued working summers as a laborer.
After high school, Kevin attended college to learn about computers. Soon after graduation, he got a job managing a software store and later became a buyer for a high-tech company in California. He gained a lot of useful experience from those jobs, but he began to miss the tangible results of a high impact industry like construction.
In an effort to steer his career toward construction, Kevin took a job at a firm where he used his computer skills to setup spreadsheets and estimates for construction projects. It wasn’t long before he decided to take a leap and start his own home building business in Sequim.
Building Estes Builders from the ground up
Kevin originally came to Sequim to talk some sense into his dad. He thought he was crazy to move from California to retire on the Olympic Peninsula. But Kevin quickly fell in love with the natural beauty and quality of life of the area, and he decided to move there with his wife in the 1980s.
Kevin started Estes Builders in 1989 in his parent’s laundry room and spent the next five years working tirelessly to build the business from the ground up. From the beginning, Kevin has been dedicated to setting Estes Builders apart from its competition by focusing not only on crafting great homes but on creating a worry-free, pleasant experience for his customers.
To this day, Kevin’s passion for continual improvement has remained strong. He is constantly looking for new ways to improve the home building process and customer experience, and, as a result, the business has received
national recognition, including being named America’s Best Builder by
Builder Magazine.
But his proudest accomplishment of all is his daughter Hailey, who graduated valedictorian of her high school class and is currently attending Wake Forest University. He considers her his greatest legacy.
Outside of work Kevin enjoys family, travel, fun runs, scuba, surfing and industrial art in the form of the automobile.
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Estes Builders is an award-winning design build firm that specializes in custom homes in Western Washington. We have earned more than 130 customer testimonials and a reputation as Western Washington’s most trusted custom home builder. We build custom homes in Sequim, Port Angeles, Port Townsend, Port Ludlow, Bainbridge Island, Kingston, Silverdale, Port Orchard and surrounding areas. Contact us for a FREE Project Analysis to discuss your project.]]>
