To watch a video version of this podcast, click here: https://youtu.be/nu1GoDS3z-E
In this episode of the Structure Talk podcast, hosts Reuben Saltzman and Tessa Murry welcome Nate Mielke, a general contractor and remodeler. They discuss Nate’s journey in the construction industry, the differences between design-build and general contracting, and the importance of building performance in remodeling projects. The conversation also touches on unique business practices that set Nate apart from other contractors, as well as valuable lessons learned from past experiences.
Here’s the link to Inspector Empire Builder: https://www.iebcoaching.com/events
You can check Nate’s website here: www.skapar.net
Takeaways
Nate Mielke has been in the construction industry since 1997.
The design-build approach allows for better collaboration and project outcomes.
Pre-construction planning is crucial for successful remodeling projects.
Building performance considerations can impact client satisfaction and comfort.
Nate emphasizes the importance of understanding client budgets from the start.
Mistakes in contracts can lead to significant issues, including lawsuits.
Value engineering helps clients achieve their desired outcomes within budget.
Nate’s company focuses on high-end remodeling projects, typically ranging from $200,000 to $600,000.
The use of technology and AI tools is becoming increasingly important in the construction industry.
Nate’s experience highlights the need for good contracts and legal protections in contracting.
Chapters
00:00 Introduction and Personal Updates
07:17 Nate Mielke’s Journey in Contracting
18:20 Understanding Design-Build vs. General Contracting
22:57 Project Scope and Examples
25:48 Cost Insights for Bathroom and Kitchen Remodels
26:48 Optimizing Space: Plumbing and Layout Considerations
27:49 Integrating Building Performance in Remodeling
30:16 Addressing Ventilation and Comfort in Remodels
32:41 Client Concerns: Health and Indoor Environment
34:16 Identifying Mold Issues in Older Homes
37:35 The Impact of Building Codes on Home Performance
38:21 Pre-Construction Planning: Setting Projects Up for Success
41:28 Leveraging Technology: AI in Construction Management
44:23 Learning from Mistakes: The Importance of Contracts
TRANSCRIPTION
The following is an AI-generated transcription from an audio recording. Although the transcription is mostly accurate, it will contain some errors due to inaudible passages or transcription errors.
Reuben Saltzman: Welcome to my house. Welcome to the Structure Talk podcast, a production of Structure Tech Home Inspections. My name is Reuben Saltzman. I’m your host alongside building science geek, Tessa Murry. We help home inspectors up their game through education, and we help homeowners to be better stewards of their houses. We’ve been keeping it real on this podcast since 2019, and we are also the number one home inspection podcast in the world, according to my mom.
Reuben Saltzman (00:01.332)
Welcome to the show. Welcome back to the Structure Talk podcast. Tessa, wonderful to see you today. How is every little thing in your world?
Tessa Murry (00:11.789)
Hey Ruben, I’m doing well. It’s good to see your face too. Things are going well. I’m in the middle of a move right now, so it’s a little chaotic. Running back and forth between the old place and the new place and trying to move things. So next week I will be recording from a different location. But yeah, I see your face Ruben and I hear your voice. How are you doing? You sound like you’re not doing so hot.
Reuben Saltzman (00:28.94)
Reuben Saltzman (00:36.206)
Yeah, I got the the glassy looking eyes. I’ve got a cold. I’m not. I’m just miserable right now. I was telling I was I’ve been sneezing all day. So if I like mid sentence, I got to stop talking. I’ll try to jump off the camera. I’ve been sneezing just nonstop. I don’t know what it is. It’s not possibly allergies. We’ve talked on the show about how my HRV slash ERV. I think that was causing problems.
Tessa, I’m such a slacker. I haven’t done anything about it. I didn’t want to cut into my ceiling. I’ve just been putting off Nate. Hold on. See, I can’t even think straight. Okay. We need to bring our guest on. We have a guest. have, yes, we have Nate Milky with Skapar. I’m saying it right, right? Skapar Design Build. Nate is a general contractor remodeler that I have known for a long time.
Tessa Murry (01:06.19)
Yes.
Tessa Murry (01:16.259)
saw this in the Fed. We have a guest, yes.
Nate Mielke (01:24.622)
Yes. Yep.
Reuben Saltzman (01:32.75)
given his name out to a lot of people. We have been in a network group together for when did you join the group, Nate?
Nate Mielke (01:39.884)
Um, I think it was like the month before COVID shutdown. So I think it was like February, like right before that. So then we went right to zoom after that. was great for the first year. My attendance was perfect. Yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (01:47.514)
gosh.
Reuben Saltzman (01:53.097)
what a miserable time to join. Yeah. And for the listeners, this is not a B &I chapter, B &I group. I’ve done my share of it. Nothing against B &I, but I’ve never joined a B &I group and I’ve never cared for B &I exactly. And I’ll keep my my reasons to myself, but it’s like a B &I group where
Tessa Murry (01:56.857)
Thank
Nate Mielke (02:22.464)
Much better.
Reuben Saltzman (02:22.614)
You meet, yeah, yeah, we meet with a bunch of professionals and these are professionals. There’s no home-based businesses selling Melaleuca and candles and things like that. It’s a lot of professionals who meet together, but we get to really know each other and it’s been fantastic getting to know so many different people over the last years I’ve been in that group, Long time, man, long time.
Nate Mielke (02:47.665)
wow.
Tessa Murry (02:48.074)
Wow. Wow. Wow.
Reuben Saltzman (02:52.044)
So Nate’s, Nate’s, mean, he’s been in there for like, what, five, six years. He’s still a noob as far as I’m concerned. No, just kidding. but, but Nate, you’ll, you’ll appreciate this. I’m just going into story time. got a, I got a HRV in my basement and I swear it’s making me sick because I I’m almost positive that the intake duct is disconnected.
Nate Mielke (02:59.083)
I still feel now. I still feel now.
Reuben Saltzman (03:18.742)
in the floor space between my basement and first floor. Cause there’s this gigantic cold spot on my floor and I’ve chased it down. I’m positive that’s it. And I’m sure every time my HRV turns on, it’s sucking all of the dust and dirt within my ceiling space and distributing that throughout the rest of the house. And I talked about this last year on the podcast. said, I’m going to cut that open. I’m going to deal with it. But then I just turned off my HRV and the weather got nice and I never dealt with it again.
And I never really thought much about it. I mean, it crossed my mind here and there, but now all of a sudden it’s cold and I need to turn my HRV back on. And I don’t want to do it because I thought I’m going to get, I’m going to get all these allergy symptoms or whatever. Cause I am allergic to dust mites. I know that I’ve been tested. but now here I’ve got a cold and I haven’t even turned on my HRV. So I should just go for a broken turn on anyway, cause it’s cold here in Minnesota right now. mean, we went from.
Tessa Murry (04:04.981)
Mm-hmm.
Reuben Saltzman (04:18.518)
I mean, it was, was nice that I was out maybe in shorts two weeks ago. And now today it’s a high of zero or something. And we’ve got seven inches of snow on the ground and it feels like we just went bam right into dead of winter. And I’ve got condensation on all my windows and I’m looking around going, my HRV should really be running right now. I need to fix this.
Tessa Murry (04:30.966)
my gosh
Reuben Saltzman (04:44.886)
And I’m only sharing this with Nate because I know he understands building science and he gets it.
Tessa Murry (04:50.199)
Peace.
Nate Mielke (04:51.005)
Your humidity level is wrong in your house right now, Ruben.
Reuben Saltzman (04:53.856)
It is, it’s too high Nate, it’s too high. So wait, Nate, you’re telling me, yeah, yeah, every time I sneeze the humidity level goes up just a little, yeah. All right, so Nate, I wanna talk all about you and your business, but before we do that, just a couple of small housekeeping things to get into. Number one, email from one of our listeners, this is from Andy Nash, he has.
Nate Mielke (04:55.668)
It is.
Tessa Murry (04:57.58)
You’re sneezing too much, Reuben. You’re off-gassing too much moisture.
Tessa Murry (05:05.356)
out.
Reuben Saltzman (05:22.612)
emailed into us in the past and he says he’s hooked on the YouTube channel. He loves learning about houses and he was saying that he wrote into us a while ago. He was thinking about getting a new roof and he was thinking this might help with his insurance premiums and we kind of went back and forth about that. He said he got his roof done in July and the insurance company wouldn’t update his policy
until it renewed, but then his broker ended up getting him some new quotes and he got some new insurance and he’s saving $1,500 a year having a new roof and going with someone else for the exact same thing. So he was very excited to have a new roof and be able to shop for new insurance policies with this huge savings. So thank you, Andy, for sharing your personal story.
Tessa Murry (06:06.456)
Bye.
Tessa Murry (06:15.65)
Hmm.
Reuben Saltzman (06:18.754)
You know, so often we talk about all these different things and it’s like, does anybody listen? Does anybody care? I mean, we never know. So we love the feedback. Thank you for writing in, Andy. And then the other thing I wanted to share is a shout out to our sponsors, IEB, Inspector Empire Builder. It’s a, well, it’s a business building group for home inspectors. We’ve been members since pre-COVID, just a little pre-COVID.
Tessa Murry (06:24.472)
you
Reuben Saltzman (06:48.366)
and gotten so much value out of it. What we’re talking about right now is the IEB Unite Conference. It’s the big conference that Unite has every year. It’s happening March 4th through the 6th, and they are offering early bird registration right now. So if you register now or soon, you get some special pricing. So check it out. I will have a link to IEB.
in our show notes. And with that, no further ado, Nate, big welcome to the show. Nate, if you would please tell me and Tessa a little bit about yourself. How did you get into contracting and remodeling and exactly what type of remodeling and contracting do you do? Cause I mean, I know, but I mean, tell us about all the high end stuff you’re working on.
Nate Mielke (07:24.777)
Well, thank you very much.
Nate Mielke (07:44.748)
That sounds great. No, want to first thank you for always being available for me and being able to bounce ideas off of things I’ve run into a few times where you’ve either, I’ve either given you a call personally to give you, get some insight, whether it’s like frost or mold inside some plastic in a basement, unfinished basement, or we have like heat loss in a house and we’re trying to figure out where the ice dam is.
You’ve sent guys out for that. And then also you’ve helped my son out with his duplex that we purchased last year. And it was amazing because there was only one red flag item on the entire duplex, which is like amazing from what I can understand.
Reuben Saltzman (08:28.878)
That is a really, really good duplex. Yes. Yes.
Nate Mielke (08:31.627)
Right, it’s very good to do books. So I appreciate your help. So I figured I’d give you a plug here first before I get into what we’re doing. So. Oh, no, so do I. So yeah, so kind of my background, I probably in was it 2000? Oh, actually was 97. I got into the building industry out in Jackson Hole, Wyoming as a laborer.
Reuben Saltzman (08:37.139)
thanks. You know, I love talking houses. Yeah.
Tessa Murry (08:40.728)
you
Tessa Murry (08:58.424)
Thank
Nate Mielke (08:59.455)
I fell in love with it. It was like we were building these huge log shacks for some important person that I don’t remember who, I pretty much just shoveled snow, but it was the best experience in my life. and I realized that that’s what I wanted to do with what, cause I always liked to create things. played with Legos as a kid, kind of always wanted to do stuff like that. actually went to henna came back to Minnesota, went to henna and tech for two years.
Kind of got my diploma over there. think now it’s a certificate now. You a question?
Reuben Saltzman (09:33.614)
Okay. In what? Yeah. Okay. Okay. All right.
Nate Mielke (09:35.816)
At Hennepin Tech in Carpenter in Carpenter. Yeah. Yeah. So they had a Carpenter program over there. And then I worked with my uncles that were doing remodels from like our own foundations to framing to roofing to siding windows tile work. We had our own floor. We did our own cabinetry shop. It was a really great experience to get the
Tessa Murry (09:39.672)
and
Nate Mielke (10:03.839)
the hands-on experience to understand how things go together. And now I can sit at my desk and estimate a project or talk to somebody and kind of can see through the wall from behind my desk. I can know what people are talking about based on the age of the house, where is it located in the city? I can understand the layout of it without even really going to take a look at it. And it’s been very helpful from a very
basic level. And then was it 2000, 2009 I got laid off when our work kind of just like slowed down and just finishing up a large project and one of my uncles was dying at that time. So we kind of just the whole company kind of split apart at that point in time. And I started doing like what I knew how to do was like handyman work.
You know, like I knew how to do drywall work and you had to do painting and you had to do anything because we’re basically handyman hands on experience. And then I. Start picking up larger projects and kind of, you know, pick up a bathroom or two and we start picking up kitchens. This has been a real slow growth through this whole period of time for the last 15 years and I’m almost going to be 16 here come in March. So it’s been a it’s been a bumpy road.
Tessa Murry (11:24.44)
Bye.
Nate Mielke (11:28.747)
as ownership can be. And then over the last few years, we’ve been really dialing in our pre-construction phases of things and making sure that we get everything right. This year, I brought on my first project manager and it’s been one of those experiences where I wish I would have done it five years ago, but we were at the right place at the right time.
Reuben Saltzman (11:51.758)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (11:52.264)
Thank
Nate Mielke (11:57.11)
took me probably five months to interview different individuals. I had a recruiter help me kind of find the right thing with doing assessments of, because I was looking for somebody very specific for what I was needing. And then Peter came on board and Peter has been a huge, huge asset for me. He loves numbers, which is something I don’t like. So it kind of fills in a big gap for me.
Right now I’ve got about 100 % of all production off of my plate. So I don’t have to deal with any project management, any sort of technical things. I don’t have to drop off trailers anymore. I don’t have to bring materials. It’s already been taken care of through Peter and Ethan, my Dropsite super. So I know it’s been, it’s taken me since I’ve decided about eight years ago, I decided that I was going to,
Reuben Saltzman (12:42.35)
So high five. is fantastic.
Nate Mielke (12:52.639)
be the owner. So it’s taken me about eight years to get out of like the technical side of things, out of project management and being, you know, essentially the visionary for the company and doing sales, marketing and visionary type roles.
Reuben Saltzman (13:05.966)
So what happened eight years ago?
Tessa Murry (13:06.827)
What a journey.
Nate Mielke (13:09.327)
well, I had, I had very poor contracts, at that point in time, not knowing what I didn’t know. I had a, I had a lawsuit on my hands where somebody stopped paying me. and I was in a hard spot. Like this, just not a good spot for being, but usually out of hard times, good things come, you know, so.
Reuben Saltzman (13:34.915)
Yeah.
Nate Mielke (13:35.724)
I hired a consultant who was a retiring contractor. Basically taught me how to do a sales process, how to do job costing, how to get my bookkeeping right, how to get my estimates right, how to manage budgets, just kind of teach me how to be an owner. Which was the business side of things. Because I mean, when you’re in the field, you’re like, oh, I know how to do all this. But it’s a whole other beast.
Reuben Saltzman (13:53.592)
Yeah, well the business side of this.
Tessa Murry (13:56.278)
Thank
Nate Mielke (14:05.353)
So Terry Strike was Silvermark Builders or Remodellers at that point in time doing design build, basically taught me the design build process and kind of showed me how to get people signed up under a feasibility agreement to see if it’s a good fit, you know, and then work through pre-construction where we’d make all the selections and make sure that we get everything right before we start.
Reuben Saltzman (14:05.475)
Yeah.
Nate Mielke (14:33.675)
then basically production should go relatively smoothly if you could do all your stuff up front. I’d like to say that, you know, we know what all the bombs are going to go off in the construction process. We might also diffuse as many as we can before we get into it, because there’s always something that’s going to go wrong. So, you know, you can plan for all those things to go right. Then when things don’t go right, it’s a lot easier to adjust instead of putting hurdles in our place, in our way.
Tessa Murry (14:39.286)
and
Reuben Saltzman (14:50.851)
Yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (15:02.796)
Yeah. Yeah. No, Nate, I got to ask, have you ever read the book, The E-Myth? Okay. All right. It sounds like, yeah, it just sounds like you’re, you could be a case study for that book. I mean, it just sounds so perfect. Tessa, have you read that one? Okay. Well, it’s, it’s the E stands for entrepreneur in the E-Myth and the myth is that if you are a good
Nate Mielke (15:07.807)
Yep. Yep. You kind of caught some of those inferences.
Tessa Murry (15:21.855)
No, I haven’t. What’s it about?
Reuben Saltzman (15:32.609)
And I mean, I’m being specific to Nate’s case, but the myth is that if you’re a good carpenter, you will be a good general contractor and a good business owner. I mean, if you know how to make this bathroom beautiful, you should go into business on your own and you should do it yourself. That’s the myth. That’s the great American myth. If you’re really good at something, you should go out on your own and do it. it, it, well, it’s, it’s a myth. It doesn’t mean you’re going to be a good business owner.
Tessa Murry (15:41.656)
you
Tessa Murry (15:49.122)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (15:59.959)
Very different skills. Yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (16:01.526)
It’s a totally different thing to be a good business owner. And it follows this woman along her story of where she’s a great baker. And then she opens a bakery shop and all the heartaches she goes through. And she ends up getting all these systems in place to actually turn it into a good business where she’s not working 16 hours a day and pulling her hair out. And it sounds like that was almost exactly Nate’s journey too.
Tessa Murry (16:12.376)
you
Tessa Murry (16:16.822)
Mm-hmm.
Tessa Murry (16:23.266)
Okay.
Tessa Murry (16:27.788)
Yeah.
Nate Mielke (16:31.753)
Right. I went back and forth, you know, the story goes, sometimes you have somebody there, it’s going to help you kind of advance and that person steps away. So you get to step back into the role of the technician and doing the thing. just kind of in this bump, bump. And then as we make the steps to kind of fill in the spots where, you know, having the right people around you does, yep.
Tessa Murry (16:43.605)
Mm-hmm.
Tessa Murry (16:51.96)
So crucial.
Reuben Saltzman (16:57.014)
So the name of your company, let’s just cover that real quickly. Scott bar design build. Where does that come from? I always want to call you Nate Scott bar. I always want to say, I always correct myself in my head. it seems like that should be your last name. Tell us what is it?
Nate Mielke (17:00.416)
yeah.
Tessa Murry (17:07.646)
Thank you.
Nate Mielke (17:07.723)
Cause that’s what’s in the phone. No. so as we were like rebranding, I don’t know, eight or nine years ago, we were talking about kind of like, how do we find a unique name that kind of like encapsulates what we’re doing? So we were looking through Swedish names and different words and different things like this and some Norwegian names that kind of like translate together. we had come up with Scopper craft.
But it became really long and it just became hard for people to get their mind around it. So it meant to create. But Scopper means creative. So it turned from a verb to an adverb or adjective or whatever the technical grammar terms are. Yeah, I’m not a grammar person. So it means creative instead of to create. Yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (17:57.529)
Whatever you tell me, I’ll believe you.
Tessa Murry (17:59.673)
Thank
Reuben Saltzman (18:06.006)
Okay, okay, got it. where do you end up, or where does one end up changing from calling themselves a general contractor to a design build contractor? What’s the differentiation there?
Nate Mielke (18:21.899)
Yeah, that’s a question. so, um, you know, contractor, um, will sometimes, you know, take like, okay, here’s like, maybe why don’t we just talk about the avenue of the client, you know? So sometimes the client will go directly to an architect or a designer to get a design and then take their design to multiple different contractors to, uh, bid on that project.
To kind of figure out like what the project would cost they’re trying to determine trust They’re trying to figure out who they want to work with I find that you know, sometimes that works for well for some people We’ve classified this as a design build contractor or us as a design build contractor Because I feel like the clients get the best out of everything because
We show up as a team. since I’m the general contractor, my project manager knows numbers, my designers or architects get involved with us right off the bat. So we have our initial site visit with all parties involved. so the conversation doesn’t have to be repeated back to somebody. If somebody picks up on a different like,
minutia of what somebody said, we can all be there to hear what the client has to say so that we can give them the best results. We often talk about like what their wishes are, kind of what their level of investment would be, so that we’re not designing something that isn’t obtainable. You know, because a lot of times that if an architect comes in without themselves, they don’t necessarily understand.
Reuben Saltzman (19:57.838)
Okay.
Nate Mielke (20:16.655)
all of the level of investment or the budgets that these projects are going to come in at. So they could, you know, design a million dollar project and they want to spend $600,000. So having the general contractor involved early to understand what the numbers are, what the budgets are, the level of investment is. Then we can design around that budget. And if it can flex or a little bit, then maybe, hey, if you wanted to go this level, we could add this in.
If we decided, hey, that’s a little bit too far, we could take this piece out. And then it’s a real collaborative effort from the get-go. And I feel like there’s a couple of reasons that we like to do it is that essentially I can be in control of how the whole process goes, which is great. But then we combine the best value for people is really what it comes down to. It’s like, you know.
Reuben Saltzman (21:04.204)
Yeah.
Nate Mielke (21:12.327)
If we did this, this means this. If we didn’t do this, we could do this instead. And it still gives you the same effect that if we went to this next level. So we do a lot of value engineering for contractor or for clients as well. you know, it, yeah. Yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (21:29.336)
Can you, can you, can we just pause on that for a quick second? Can give me, give me an example.
Nate Mielke (21:34.613)
Right, okay, so for example, so say we’re doing a kitchen and they wanna take this wall out and blow it out into the rest of the space. But if we take the wall out, excuse me, to the floor or to the ceiling, that means we have to get into the entire ceiling and patch in, or if we have to get into the floor, then we have to do the entire floor. So if we just said, hey, what if we just cut an opening in the wall?
then we don’t have to deal with these two other pieces and that may save you 20 or $30,000. So, or if you took your existing space and move this wall to this spot and you didn’t have to add on to the house, maybe you get what you want without having to put an addition on.
Reuben Saltzman (22:09.847)
sure. Okay. Gotcha.
Tessa Murry (22:11.33)
Mm-hmm.
Reuben Saltzman (22:23.586)
Sure, sure.
Nate Mielke (22:24.502)
So there’s a lot of different ways that we can add to that. Like could be equipment, could be on-demand water heaters, or say what if we don’t do this for now and then you can put this into the future, you could add this 75 gallon water heater in later, those types of things.
Reuben Saltzman (22:42.84)
Gotcha. Gotcha. Now you’re talking about like replacing water heaters. What, how big of a job do you do? I mean, what’s, what’s the scope of your work when it comes to a huge remodel? Like what’s the biggest, what, let me change my question. What’s the biggest remodel you’ve ever done, Nate?
Nate Mielke (22:58.796)
Yeah. We finished up one this summer that we started last fall that was in Rosemount. That would hovered like right around 1.4 million. It was. So they were what the scenario on that one was is they were trying to it. There’s they’ve got about three or four acres, three and a half acres out in Rosemount and the neighborhood.
Tessa Murry (23:00.696)
Thank
Reuben Saltzman (23:14.126)
That’s a big one.
Nate Mielke (23:29.116)
has houses that are in the area that are probably similar in acreages At like 4,500 square feet their home was at 3,300 square feet so they wanted to increase their square footages to kind of be in that same category. So we needed to increase Well, I mean so to get the comps in the neighborhood to match up with what the neighbors were doing.
Reuben Saltzman (23:45.304)
Keep up with the neighbors, yeah.
Nate Mielke (23:53.207)
They needed to increase square footages. So we added on two additions or one over an existing area and then bumped out the back of the house for a new kitchen and such, you know, they’re on suite in the basement. And then we remodeled the entire house as we were there. yep. That’s that was kind of a, it’s, it’s. We like a couple of those a year, but that’s not our bread and butter. Our bread and butter is.
Reuben Saltzman (24:11.054)
Wow. Okay. Yeah. Yeah.
Nate Mielke (24:21.804)
in the ranges of like 200 to $600,000 projects. They, you know, essentially kitchens, multi-level projects, maybe an addition in there too as well. But they kind of, I like them because there’s daylight at the end of them. You know, it’s like, okay, we can plan this. It’s four months. We can get through this. You know, it’s a little more straightforward than a larger project, but.
Reuben Saltzman (24:35.31)
Okay. All right.
Reuben Saltzman (24:47.736)
Sure, sure. And then what about on the other end of the spectrum? What’s the smallest project you’d consider doing today? Like a bathroom remodel?
Nate Mielke (24:56.468)
Right. Yeah, we will do bathroom models for individuals. Generally, they’re primary en suites, you know, so it’s usually like a primary bathroom plus the closet plus the bedroom. And then maybe some stuff in the hallway, you know, kind of that’s kind of generally where we go with those bathrooms. In and out bathrooms are trying to getting hard for us to do at a price point that people can accept.
Reuben Saltzman (25:17.271)
Okay.
Nate Mielke (25:26.986)
there, by the time we get every trade in and we have our, project management fees and our markup on things, bathrooms become pretty expensive for people. Like, mean,
Reuben Saltzman (25:39.576)
Sure, sure.
Tessa Murry (25:40.792)
What’s the average cost for a bathroom remodel these days for standard bathroom?
Nate Mielke (25:47.04)
Well, that’s it. Well, yeah.
Tessa Murry (25:47.626)
and kitchens too, I’m curious. I mean, know you’re kind of doing higher end and…
Reuben Saltzman (25:50.904)
But let’s say let’s say range what’s an average range.
Nate Mielke (25:55.789)
Right. mean, so I think, you know, if you were to find somebody that could do your entire bathroom, basically a one man show that could demo it, take it out, put it back together, you should be able to find somebody that’s probably in the 30 to 35 range, maybe 40 range. I would say for us starting the bathroom, we’re probably like 60,000 is probably, but generally we’re picking higher finishes and then we have a great tile of time.
Reuben Saltzman (26:13.047)
Okay.
Tessa Murry (26:20.13)
Mm.
Nate Mielke (26:25.58)
contractor, have a great painter, you’re doing a custom cabinetry. we’re, right. Primary bathrooms or primary en suites are kind of in that 125 to 175 range, depending on what people do.
Tessa Murry (26:26.984)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (26:33.272)
high end.
Reuben Saltzman (26:34.926)
You get in a plumber in there to do all the plumbing fixtures and electrician to do all that stuff. get in all the different trades versus one person doing everything.
Tessa Murry (26:38.284)
Mm-hmm.
Tessa Murry (26:45.506)
Thank
Reuben Saltzman (26:52.833)
Okay.
Tessa Murry (26:52.866)
cost.
Nate Mielke (26:55.574)
They do a closet system or if they do custom closets or the tile work, they’re moving some plumbing, they’re changing the layout of the plumbing stuff. It’s kind of like we find the best layout that works well for the space. Maybe take into consideration where the toilet flange is and maybe incorporate, instead of moving all that stuff, maybe we keep it there. Or if it just makes sense to move it all around, then we can do that too as well.
Tessa Murry (26:59.98)
Sir.
Tessa Murry (27:09.282)
Mm-hmm.
Tessa Murry (27:13.496)
Thank you.
Tessa Murry (27:21.749)
Mm-hmm.
Reuben Saltzman (27:25.41)
Sure. Okay.
Tessa Murry (27:27.768)
Now, you mentioned a few things earlier that you’ve called Rubin about, like determining why a house has ice dams and how to fix it and some other building performance things. it sounds like you’re a little bit different than your standard contractor or design build firm because you’re thinking about these other building performance issues. So I’m just curious if you could talk a little bit more about that and how building performance is integrated into your business and if it is at all.
Nate Mielke (27:56.173)
Sure, sure. I mean, I did watch one of your other previous podcasts with the, was it last week? I think it was with the guy out in Colorado that was doing these high tech homes or, and like net zero homes or something like that, trying to get to net zero homes. We don’t.
Tessa Murry (28:13.304)
We had Gene Myers on. He’s a contractor in Colorado. Maybe it was him. Okay.
Nate Mielke (28:17.356)
That’s who it was. Yeah. We’re not doing much like that, but we are taking into consideration, like, how do we… I mean, we do a lot of remodels. So some of it’s like the building envelope is only like a portion of what we do because we’re only touching part of the house. What we’ve been doing, you know, a lot of spray foam, you know, in older houses, because we have two by four walls. We want to get our value up higher without adding
Tessa Murry (28:34.68)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (28:46.04)
you
Nate Mielke (28:47.444)
you know, or shrinking the room size down, we’ll just spray foam the exterior walls to kind of keep the space that we’re working in contained. Also, you know, if we’re doing basements or if we’re doing like, you know, even a kitchen, we’re we’re basically tearing everything out of the kitchen so that we can spray foam the rim so that the floor system isn’t cold. My electrician likes it anyway, because I get he gets to do whatever he wants and he doesn’t punch holes. So he loves me. Yeah.
Tessa Murry (28:54.2)
Sure.
Tessa Murry (29:07.042)
Hmm.
Reuben Saltzman (29:09.39)
Mm-hmm.
Tessa Murry (29:09.83)
Mm-hmm.
Reuben Saltzman (29:15.681)
Of course.
Nate Mielke (29:17.142)
So I think the added benefit to what we do is the spray foaming applications for exterior walls and then also energy walls in the basement. So we’re spray foaming the exterior block walls down to either the drain tile or the plate. And we try to encapsulate the whole outside perimeter, what we’re doing in the basements. And it’s not technically a thing, but
spray foam does keep water from coming through it so it does push it to the drain tile if there’s a drain tile down there so it’s kind of an added benefit that kind of keeps the moisture out of the walls as well.
Tessa Murry (29:49.784)
Mm.
Reuben Saltzman (29:55.256)
Sure.
Tessa Murry (29:55.275)
Mm-hmm. So do you ever look, do you ever have any situations with clients, you know, if you come in, you do a big remodel and you open up walls and, and, you know, let’s say you do kitchens and bathrooms and maybe now 50 % of the house is, is more airtight and better insulated and it changes kind of how the, how the house behaves and maybe they’re noticing like more moisture in their home than they used to before or
of air. Do you look at, do you think about those things when you’re remodeling and do you talk about ventilation and mechanical ventilation and things like that when you’re dealing with big remodels?
Nate Mielke (30:38.644)
Yeah, sometimes, yeah, it comes into play. mean, most of the time, if we’re doing a large remodel, most of the systems are getting replaced at that point in time. Recently, we had a project in Golden Valley that they had the basement zoned and differently, and it was all these goofy like…
Tessa Murry (30:49.238)
Mm-hmm.
Nate Mielke (31:01.996)
goofy soffits and all these things that were going on with it. And the temperature lower and upper were totally wrong. was like the upstairs was cold, the basement was hot. So basically what we did is we switched it all back to a single zone and used a nest thermostat, think it was, and they could set the fan to run.
Tessa Murry (31:19.768)
Hmm.
Nate Mielke (31:27.904)
more regularly or like on a timer so it wouldn’t go off right away. The zone or the fan would stay on for a period of time to regulate the temperature between the upstairs and the downstairs. So it would still suck in the cold air and the warm air from the basement and it would mix it all together. So simple little solution by just having like a fan run for another, you know, 25 % or 30%. And they kind of dialed that back and forth and that really
Reuben Saltzman (31:40.866)
Mm-hmm.
Tessa Murry (31:41.592)
Mm-hmm.
Tessa Murry (31:47.372)
Mm-hmm.
Tessa Murry (31:54.923)
Mm-hmm.
Nate Mielke (31:57.951)
made their house a whole lot more comfortable. So from a comfort level, yeah.
Tessa Murry (32:01.416)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, I’m kind of curious too. Do you get clients that are concerned about the health, their indoor environment as well, or mold? What are some of the big concerns you get from people about their house when you do it? Or are they solely focused on just the cosmetics and the updating?
Nate Mielke (32:25.932)
Yeah, I would say most of my clients don’t bring that up. mean, I think, you we, we fix a lot of the issues. I mean, obviously there’s mold in the house. deal with the mold. I um, yeah. Yeah. I don’t, I mean, it’s mostly it’s, we’re usually trying to solve a problem. A lot of it’s aesthetics, a lot of it’s layout along the way we come across issues that we deal with. Um, you know, say, uh,
Tessa Murry (32:35.842)
Yeah.
or comfort like you were saying where there’s all these different temperatures.
Tessa Murry (32:49.752)
Mm-hmm.
Nate Mielke (32:55.852)
basement block wall on the corner didn’t have the downspout on it for the last 20 years and it’s just kind of dribbling in for a period of time and that you know, we we take care of those issues. So most of the time I Mean, I’ve got a pretty good nose for mold and mildew in a house Like I can as soon as I walk into a house I can tell if there’s no do in the house I get the tingly in the back of my sinuses almost immediately so I can tell something’s going on like that
Tessa Murry (33:04.685)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (33:08.888)
Yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (33:17.869)
Mm.
Tessa Murry (33:21.708)
Yeah.
Nate Mielke (33:24.116)
And most of the time when we take it all out and put it all back, we solve the issue.
Reuben Saltzman (33:30.114)
Sure.
Tessa Murry (33:30.44)
Yeah, yeah. Where do you see the worst mold issues in these houses that you’re working in the Twin Cities and what vintage and where?
Nate Mielke (33:40.013)
I would probably say in houses that are in the built in the 80s, 90s and early 2000s. mean, my I’ve got a 1920s house and I’ve got no concern about molding my house. Like it breeze, it’s a little bit drafty. It’s not very energy efficient, but I’m not worried about molding my house.
Tessa Murry (33:47.192)
Okay.
Reuben Saltzman (34:00.468)
It’s durable. Yes.
Tessa Murry (34:02.142)
Yeah. Yes. Yep.
Nate Mielke (34:05.088)
So yeah, anytime, there was that whole period of time where the building envelope was button it up, button it up, button it up when, you know, we had, I mean, I’ve built them, you know, we had a vapor barrier on the block wall and then we put our insulation and then we put a vapor barrier on the inside and it’s like, well, you have two layers of plastic surrounding insulation and you can’t keep moisture out of that space because you’re punching holes in it and you got electrical.
Reuben Saltzman (34:20.622)
Mmm.
Tessa Murry (34:20.909)
you
Tessa Murry (34:31.992)
Yeah.
Nate Mielke (34:34.324)
Like it’s just filled with grossness. So I would say those houses are in need of some work.
Reuben Saltzman (34:40.75)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (34:41.186)
Definitely. I was just talking with a client the other day who basically he’s a real estate agent and he’s helping sell a house of someone who lives in a suburb in the Twin Cities area. And it’s an older house and it’s Tudor style. It’s got steep roofs and it’s got a lot of like kind of side attic spaces and inaccessible slants and that sort of thing with kind of your typical store and a half. And when they went to sell it,
The city inspector required that they put a vapor barrier on the the backside of the insulation in the side attic space. So if you can picture it, it’s like, you know, they lath and plaster or drywall and then insulation and then polyvapor barrier, which in a cold climate like Minnesota, we don’t we should not be putting vapor barriers on the cold side of the wall because it can trap moisture.
Reuben Saltzman (35:36.184)
They… What? What?
Tessa Murry (35:38.105)
Yes. this is a city inspector requiring this. And so anyways, this winter, as you know, it’s already gotten cold, as you mentioned, Ruben, it’s gotten down to zero degrees. This homeowner has had a new problem show up that they’ve never had before where they’re starting to have, after a long cold spell and then it warmed up, all this water started dripping through their ceiling that had never been there before.
Nate Mielke (35:39.177)
strange.
Reuben Saltzman (36:04.876)
Yeah. Thanks city inspector, man.
Tessa Murry (36:08.127)
Right, right.
Nate Mielke (36:08.416)
All I have to say is code book, code book. Like where does that say it?
Tessa Murry (36:13.6)
Yeah. Yeah, but it’s interesting. They upgraded the insulation in that side attic space. They took out the old thin paper-backed stuff that had been there for a long time and put new thicker fiberglass, and then they put the polyvapor barrier over it. And so I think the combination of higher R value equals colder attic space plus a polyvapor barrier.
Reuben Saltzman (36:37.602)
Well.
Tessa Murry (36:39.336)
on the outside is any moisture that does get through or air that does leak through is now condensing and then getting trapped and dripping down. it’s like you try to.
Reuben Saltzman (36:48.482)
Yeah, you say any of the, I’m going to correct you and say all of the, cause we know it’s going to be a lot. Yeah.
Tessa Murry (36:53.456)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So the darn thing is like they’re trying to do what they need to do to sell the house and to make it better, you know, by adding more insulation and doing these things, but they’ve now created other problems. So
Reuben Saltzman (37:10.476)
Yeah. Yeah. What a mess.
Nate Mielke (37:12.3)
Inspectors don’t know all the answers.
Tessa Murry (37:15.51)
Yeah, well, to your point, these newer houses are the ones that you typically see the mold issues in, like the 1990s, the 80s, 2000s, because we’re trying to build them more airtight. But the same thing can happen when you take an old house that, like you said, breeze just fine. It’s durable because we’ve got this heat and air moving through the wall assembly, drying things out, and it’s durable materials. But as soon as you start taking that old house and changing it and adding spray foam or
adding vapor barriers, then you really change the variables and the dynamics and increase potential risk for moisture.
Nate Mielke (37:51.2)
Right, right.
Reuben Saltzman (37:52.687)
Yeah. So Nate, my gosh, I just looked at the time. Holy cow. Where does it go? I want to ask you, are you doing that’s unique? What sets you apart? What kind of cool stuff are you personally doing with your business that most other contractors aren’t?
Nate Mielke (38:12.588)
Right. So I think what happens a lot of times is contractors need to get projects started because they need the cash flow or to keep guys going or keep things moving along. Especially in our medium or smaller projects, we’ve decided that or a lot contractors have just enough to start, you know, so they have like, okay, the general idea, let’s get into this and we’ll figure this out.
It’s basically reacting through the whole entire project. What we like to do is we like to call it nail the handoff. So from our pre-construction period of time where we do a lot of our heavy lifting, almost all of the planning, everything goes into pre-construction. So that may take two months, that may take six months, that might take eight months, maybe even a year to get through all of those upfront things so that when
we do get into production, our production just goes straight through and our schedule stays on track, our budget stayed in par with what we had originally agreed to. And it’s basically clients are very happy with how things go. It might be a little bit more expensive than somebody else, but client satisfaction is much greater for what we do. from a standpoint of processes, I think we do things better than
the majority, and I think the bar is pretty low for a lot of contractors. I mean, there’s a lot of good contractors out there and I’m cutting anybody down. I think there’s, but the bar is pretty low for contractors, generally speaking. And I think, you know, we’re set apart from a good portion of those because we just spend a lot of time in our pre-construction phase, making sure, understanding what the client wants, giving some value engineering. And then I want to know every paint color before we start. You know, I want to know.
hardware, want to know what we’re doing so that we can put a final number to it so that they know what they’re going to get. We know what we’re going to charge. We know we’re going to make on it. And we can put a schedule together based on any pinch points that we might’ve found along the way of like, okay, well, we can’t get this material until now. We’ll design the schedule around that contractor, that delivery, you know, all those types of things. So that when we get into production, we’re, it’s basically smooth sailing through the project.
Tessa Murry (40:32.568)
you
Reuben Saltzman (40:39.758)
Sure, Okay. All right. I mean…
Nate Mielke (40:40.662)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (40:42.328)
There’s so much planning involved in that. Just as you’re talking and thinking about these multimillion-dollar remodels, just how the level of detail that you have to keep track of. It’s overwhelming.
Nate Mielke (40:49.651)
right.
Nate Mielke (40:53.26)
Right, right.
Reuben Saltzman (40:55.438)
Yeah. So it sounds like it just, it’s a, it’s a lot more planning that goes into it. I mean, that’s, that’s the biggest thing and making sure that people don’t have these surprises and it gets done on time. I mean, I’ve heard that’s, one of the biggest complaints people have with general contractors is unexpected additional costs and projects going way over time. mean, over budget and over time that, that. Yeah.
Tessa Murry (41:16.994)
Hmm.
Nate Mielke (41:18.602)
Right, right. Nobody likes that. Nobody likes having that at the end of a project going, okay, well you owe me $40,000 more and I’m already late on the deliverables. It’s like, it’s not a very good place to be in.
Tessa Murry (41:19.714)
Mm-hmm.
Reuben Saltzman (41:31.075)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (41:32.554)
It seems like a great opportunity for AI to step in and help make things more efficient and figure out all these little details. Is that something you see being integrated in your business? Sort of scheduling tools, management tools, estimating?
Nate Mielke (41:44.756)
Yeah.
Right. Right. There’s a few tools we’re using right now. I mean, obviously we have our digital note taker that’s on just about every Zoom call we do. So the clients get a recap. You know, I think we use Fathom for that. Works really well. I it gets about 95 % of the time right. It’s amazing how that tool works. It gathers all the conversations and puts it together succinctly within seconds.
Reuben Saltzman (42:06.082)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (42:08.354)
Hmm.
Nate Mielke (42:15.468)
There, we are still using a software program that we’re hanging onto for the moment, but we’re waiting for the next opportunity for AI to kind of pick up where we need to be at a price point that we want to move over to. Right now we do, we have a tool called company cam that we’re using for our team members to be on. Very helpful. It gives like AI walkthrough, know it’s, you know, you can take photos.
Tessa Murry (42:29.299)
Mm-hmm.
Nate Mielke (42:43.67)
kind of keeps track of everything so that, you know, everybody’s on the same page. So a job super can take, you know, a conversation, plug in the notes, take a photo, you know, project manager can see what that is. My marketing team can use it for marketing. So we’re in the soft, the software program is the next piece of this, but we’re waiting for the next kind of the, the dropdown and prides and getting it kind of like in the right spot for us.
Tessa Murry (42:46.36)
Thanks.
Thank
Tessa Murry (42:58.316)
Bye.
Tessa Murry (43:07.281)
Next.
Tessa Murry (43:13.976)
I’d say in the next year or two probably it sounds like because it’s changing so quickly. Yeah, that’s incredible and a little scary, but exciting too.
Nate Mielke (43:19.082)
Right. Right.
Nate Mielke (43:25.292)
Yeah, think, I mean, we’re anxiously waiting for the next, like, finding the right one for us. think we’re, we’ve got a system right now that works really well. So it’s like hard to, I mean, we can hit click, hit template, hit paste, you know, change a few words and there we go. it, it was working for us well now, but I think there’s a next opportunity coming up here in the next year that I think will probably make the switch. But changing systems takes a lot of effort.
Tessa Murry (43:31.448)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (43:39.736)
Yep.
Tessa Murry (43:48.002)
Thank you.
Reuben Saltzman (43:52.655)
Sure. Yeah. Nate, we’re almost out of time, but I did want to ask you if you’re comfortable answering this one. I’ve shared, you know, probably dozens of super stupid things that I’ve done over the past couple of decades. Some of the biggest mistakes that I’ve made. You know, and the whole point is for other people to learn from it and not make the same mistakes. I tell all my guys in training, you’re welcome to make new mistakes, but just don’t
Tessa Murry (43:53.656)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (44:08.248)
Thank you.
Nate Mielke (44:08.652)
.
Reuben Saltzman (44:21.846)
make the same ones that I’ve made, learn from my mistakes. Wondering if there’s any, like if there’s a big one that you’ve made and you know, we could even rephrase it, not say a mistake, just a great learning experience that you’ve had where you said, I’m gonna do things totally different this way. Wonder if there’s one that comes to mind that you’d wanna share with us.
Tessa Murry (44:34.07)
learning moment.
Nate Mielke (44:44.076)
Though a hundred percent, a hundred percent. think I’ve already alluded to this. Um, I had a lawsuit in 2016 that took me about a year and a half and took up a ton of my time. And I would say that my contracts were just terrible. my, my, the attorney that I had hired to help me didn’t look at my, um, lean, my lien waiver at the beginning or my lien notice at the beginning. It was the old lien notice.
from the state of Minnesota. So having the right lien waiver notice on your contracts and getting your contracts dialed in, I would say is probably the biggest thing that came out of that bad experience. So getting that dialed in, finding a good lawyer to help you write that up, I think is protects yourself from the what if. mean, I was going on pretty much handshake deals and for a long period of time and that really just had to stop.
Tessa Murry (45:26.626)
Mm-hmm.
Tessa Murry (45:35.01)
Thank you.
Tessa Murry (45:43.33)
Hmm.
Nate Mielke (45:43.476)
You know, the Lord gave me the opportunity to get that fixed.
Reuben Saltzman (45:47.758)
That’s a good way of putting it. Love it. Well, Nate, if people want to get a hold of you, how can they reach out to you?
Tessa Murry (45:48.024)
It’s good way looking at it.
Nate Mielke (45:52.267)
Right, right.
Nate Mielke (45:59.757)
That’s great. No, you can either reach out to me either through the website at www.skapar.net. It’s S-K-A-P-A-R.net. And then you can either get a hold of me at my… That’s probably the best place to get a hold of me at.
Reuben Saltzman (46:06.434)
and spell that for us.
Reuben Saltzman (46:11.16)
Okay.
Reuben Saltzman (46:18.028)
Okay. All right. You got the contact us now button and you actually see the stuff that comes in. I’m always leery of those contact now buttons. I’m like, where’s this going?
Nate Mielke (46:28.076)
Yeah, it goes to my notifications and I get a notification that something came in. So if somebody wants to reach out to my phone, that’d be fine too at 952-250-2300. And we’d to have a conversation.
Tessa Murry (46:28.376)
Thank
Reuben Saltzman (46:32.512)
Okay. Okay, cool.
Tessa Murry (46:33.666)
Yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (46:42.872)
Cool. And is there anything I forgot to ask you about, anything you wanted to talk about before we wrap today?
Nate Mielke (46:48.564)
No, it sounds great. No, I appreciate your time, Tessa and Ruben. It’s always great. mean, 45 minutes or 15 minutes goes by pretty quick, doesn’t it?
Reuben Saltzman (46:56.032)
It does. It’s crazy. Tessa, anything else you wanted to cover that I forgot to bring up?
Tessa Murry (46:57.41)
too fast.
I don’t think so. Ruben, you did well on all those cold meds. Congratulations. You made it through the podcast.
Reuben Saltzman (47:09.174)
Yeah, I think I’m to go, I’m going to hit the end and podcasts. I’m to go take a nap. think we’ll see. All right. Well, Nate, thank you so much for coming on about time. had you on the show. Tessa, great to see you. And for the listeners, if you’ve got questions for me or Tessa, please reach out. We read all the emails. We’d love to hear from you. It’s podcast at structure tech.com and we will catch you next time. Thank you so much. Take care.
Tessa Murry (47:15.916)
That sounds good.
Nate Mielke (47:16.044)
You
Nate Mielke (47:37.325)
Thank you.