A home built around how you actually live
Grounded in Integrity. Built with Intention.
Custom homes on your lot or ours across the Des Moines metro — Ankeny, Waukee, Johnston, Grimes, Norwalk, and the acreages in between. Real selections, real numbers, and one builder who answers the phone.
Building in Iowa is specific work. We build for it.
Freeze-thaw soil, 100° Julys and −10° Januarys, and a metro where lot supply changes block to block. Those realities shape how we frame, insulate, and schedule every home we build.
Priced before you commit
You get a line-item budget with real allowances — cabinets, windows, flooring, site work — not a per-square-foot guess that moves $60,000 once framing starts.
Built for Iowa weather
Properly drained footings, a conditioned crawl or full basement, and an envelope detailed for a climate that swings 110 degrees a year. Mechanicals sized by load calculation, not rule of thumb.
One point of contact
The person who walks your lot is the person who runs your build. No handoff to a project coordinator you have never met after the contract is signed.
Custom homes, on your lot or ours
Some clients bring us a plan and a lot in an Ankeny or Waukee development. Others bring five acres outside Polk City and a rough sketch on graph paper. Both are our kind of project.
- Full custom design-build — drawn from scratch around your site, budget and daily routine
- Build on your lot — metro infill, new development, or rural acreage with well and septic
- Modified plan builds — start from a proven layout and change what matters to you
- Acreage and walkout builds — grading, drainage and driveway handled as part of the scope
An acreage build with a walkout
A vaulted great room on an acreage west of the metro. The prow window wall was drawn around the view before the floor plan was finished, not fitted to it afterward — which is the whole argument for building custom instead of buying built.
Quarried stone to the mantel, a solid timber beam across it, built-ins and floating shelves either side, and a walkout lower level underneath that opens to the field.
Finishes that hold up, details that earn their keep
Every home below was built and finished by our crews and long-standing Central Iowa trade partners.
Five steps from first conversation to keys
Sit down
Budget, lot, timeline and what you actually need the house to do. Free, no obligation.
Plan & price
Drawings and a line-item budget you can hand to a lender.
Select
Every finish chosen before we break ground, so the number holds.
Build
Weekly updates, site walks at framing, mechanical and drywall.
A finished house, lived in
Most builder websites stop at the empty room. This is a house we finished, lived in by the family who hired us — furniture in, rug down, fire on, sliders open on a summer night.
The drywall, the schedule and the line-item budget all have to be right to get here, but none of them are the point. The house working on an ordinary Tuesday is.
The finish work
Millwork, tile and built-ins are where the extra week goes, and where the difference is still visible in year thirty.
Where we build in Central Iowa
Most of our work sits inside a 45-minute drive of the Des Moines metro. If your lot is a little further out, ask — we travel for the right project.
What does it cost to build in Central Iowa right now?
It is the first question everyone has and the one most builders dodge. We publish what we are actually seeing on Central Iowa jobs — per-square-foot ranges by finish level, what site work runs on an acreage versus a platted lot, and the five line items that blow up budgets.
Dangers of dirt
Three things wreck more Central Iowa budgets than anything else, and all three are decided before you break ground:
- Unexpected utility costs — especially on acreages
- Abnormal soil conditions — engineered footings are not cheap
- Poor site planning — grade and drainage you cannot undo later