Most building contractors can build shouses, but it’s probably not their specialty. Your best bet for finding someone to build a shouse is by asking for recommendations from other people who have had shouses built. Most people will tell your their honest opinion on whether or not they liked their shouse contractor.
The following companies all claim to specialize in post-frame, post and beam, pole barn homes, pole sheds, pole building, pre-engineered structures or shouses. Some of the companies will even help you draw up shouse plans, while others may direct you to go to a lumber company to have your shouse plans drawn up.
We personally do not endorse any one of these shouse builders over the other (thus in alphabetical order), so we recommend that you get quotes from a few different contractors and see which ones mesh with you. I have made personal comments about my experiences with a few of them.
- Cleary Building
- EPS Buildings – We met with an EPS representative who basically talked me out of my original two-story shouse idea saying it would cost too much. They drew up some plans for me but I didn’t like any of them (probably because it wasn’t the original idea I had), and then they kept wanting me to come into the office to make changes which was quite a distance to drive. I’m a busy girl and prefer to work via email. They were maybe a too old school for me, and I feel bad that we both wasted so much time.
- Lester Buildings – I like the local contractor for Lester Buildings and know they do good work as I’ve seen several of the buildings he’s done, but unfortunately, his bid was a little too high for me. Someone had told me you “pay for the name” in this case.
- Morton Buildings – When I called our local Morton builder, the receptionist was quite rude making sure I knew that “shouses are very expensive to build” and I shouldn’t waste their time if I couldn’t afford one. She took my name and number, and I got a call a few weeks (if not months) later. The guy calling was nice enough and said to email him what project number I liked off their website, which I did. He called a week later saying he couldn’t find that project number, so I responded to my first email with the exact URL of the website where that project was listed. He never responded nor called me again.
- Wick Buildings
