McLaughlin Design & Construction LLC

McLaughlin Design and Construction (MDC) designed and built for us a new home of 2150 square feet, with attached fully-finished garage in the rural part of White Salmon, Washington. We broke ground 28-Aug-23, moved in 3-May-2024.

Our overall experience with MDC could not have been better. Breff and Lisa listen to clients extremely well. They communicate (email, text, phone, in person) frequently, responsively, and clearly. Mainly, they make the whole process, design and construction, as stress-free as possible, efficient, and a pleasure. They do great work and they do it promptly. MDC is a design-build firm: They handle both. This greatly reduces the chance of miscommunication.

The old saying about projects is: The key things on a project are: Cost, schedule, and performance (or quality); you get to choose two of those. On this house project with MDC, we got all three. We are thrilled with the quality of the design, materials, and construction. We came in $20,000 under budget (Breff and Lisa are diligent and careful with your money). And we moved in 8 months after we broke ground (which is very fast for this area).

Design Phase: Breff very intelligently started the design with a baseline design that he knew would be close to what we wanted (we had seen a house that he had designed and built and liked it); but was somewhat smaller than he knew our final size would be. This was smart because making a design larger is much easier than making it smaller. He worked closely with us to refine the design and make it match our dreams. This went on through several iterations of the design. Breff and Lisa came to our home to review and revise the design. Especially helpful was the fly-through (or walk-through) feature of the software he uses, which helps people visualize the design who are not as familiar with design drawings. He made changes in real time to the design and the software would update the design instantly and we could see the effect of the changes.

We had to work to keep the design within our budget. We did this through several rounds of changes to reduce the overall cost, before we began construction. His strong knowledge of the cost of materials and construction techniques was critical to this process. Breff was clear and forthcoming with his advice on the design: He told us his opinion and then always cheerfully made any changes we wanted.

The construction phase went very smoothly and rapidly. We were impressed with the quality, diligence, and work ethic of all of the subcontractors that MDC used. It was clear that they had good relationships with high quality subcontractors and knew how to get the most out of them. In addition, MDC clearly has good relationships with the county inspectors and other county officials. Inspections were performed very promptly and issues with county offices were resolved easily and quickly. Breff and Lisa were diligent to look after little things such as keeping the work site cleaned up. And, perhaps most importantly, they were present, in person on the work site, for every important activity, at least at its start, to ensure that the work was being done correctly per the design and at the expected quality level and to answer any questions that the subcontractors had. The importance of this personal attention would be hard to overemphasize.

One of the challenges in building a house, especially for first-timers like us, is selecting all the materials that go into it, like flooring, fixtures, and paint. Lisa made this as easy as possible with a spreadsheet that included the need dates for each selection. This allowed us to prioritize our choices. MDC was also very helpful in providing good sources for the materials.

Breff also provided periodic reviews of the budget and accounting which was helpful for us to confirm that we were staying within (under!) our budget.

Overall, a wonderful experience building our dream home with Breff and Lisa. We cannot recommend McLaughlin Design and Construction highly enough.

They are a 10! I could not have imagined doing this project with anyone other then McLaughlin Design & Construction. Breff (and his project manager Lisa!) took a vision and dream and turned it into reality. They actually listen to the customer. The project turned out perfect. Provides out standing service and communication for an incredible value.
What a treat to go from an original 1960's kitchen to a new modern version.

We built a different type of house than the now common (IMO) modern box design/flat roof style. The end result came out amazing and it shows how Breff McLaughlin can handle any unique situation you throw at him.