Bio - Steve Hughes
Steve Hughes enjoys his collection of antique carpentry tools, many of which were his Dad's or Grandfather's personal hand tools.
Hello, and welcome to the CATALYST website. I'd like to share little about my background and myself. I come from a family tradition of builders. Dad and Grandpa both bent nails from the early 1900's building houses and barns and anything else that people would let them build in North Dakota and Seattle. After WWII, Dad and his brother Russ developed a number of housing developments in south Seattle and Kent. When I was only seven years old, I started working on his jobs, learning an old-school work ethic, tricks-of-the-trade, and a depression-era appreciation for the value of materials.
I worked on his jobs summers and vacations until I graduated from Washington State University. While looking for my first post college job, one of my Dad's previous clients asked me to remodel her house and the career was born. Within one year, I was asked to build my first 4,000 square foot custom home. For the next three decades I worked hard developing my skills of management, observation, negotiation and design.
I have been honored to have been recognized by many of my peers for this hard work by being asked to give seminars and other presentations to a variety of builder groups and trade associations. My companies and projects have been published in a number of publications and have won quite a few awards I'm pretty proud of. I've put all these accomplishments in a Curriculum Vitae, and will be happy to send you a copy upon request.
Thanks for visiting. I hope we have the opportunity to work together soon.
Steve's dad (left rear in the photo) and his brother Russell as teenagers on Steve's grandfather's (center) jobs in North Dakota.
