Shoreline Business Spotlight: Irons Brothers Construction

By Jeremy Gross

As part of our ongoing series highlighting Shoreline’s small business community, I sat down with Joseph and Melissa Irons, owners of Irons Brothers Construction. 

Joseph and Melissa Irons. owners

This family-owned construction company has been a staple in the Shoreline area for over two decades! 

Joseph and Melissa are both deeply connected to Shoreline and our conversation covered everything from the early days of Irons Brothers Construction to their evolving role in the community and their advice for aspiring entrepreneurs.

• Note to Readers: If you have a favorite business that you’d like profiled in Shoreline Area News, please let Jeremy know!

[Melissa kicks off the interview with an important fact before I ask any questions!]

Melissa: We are married! Just in case that’s a question. We’re not brother and sister!

Jeremy: Haha :) Ok, tell me a bit about the beginnings of Irons Brothers Construction.

Joseph: I started the company in 1999. Initially, it was a partnership with my older brother, but after a couple of years, I became the sole owner. 

I think the initial spark came from working side-by-side with my dad. He passed away when I was just 15, but I helped him and my brother on lots of remodeling projects. I was steered towards this being a good profession.

I grew up in Ballard and actually went to Shoreline Community College for criminal justice, while also doing construction jobs. I decided to make it official and become a contractor. I didn’t realize it was going to be my career until a few years later, in 2003. I incorporated the business, got a lot more certifications, and a lot more education.

But what got me started is that I’ve enjoyed building things ever since I was a kid. Legos, erector sets, you name it! A lot of competitions for just trying to build a better toothpick bridge or whatever it was at the time, but I never thought I would be a business owner. It started out as a job and then sort of evolved into what it is today.

I care a lot about education. I got a lot of education to do what we do, and be the best at it. We became a member of the Master Builders around 2001. I learned that it’s not only swinging a hammer, but actually running a company. 

It was then that the transformation happened from working for wages to actually having a career, and then having a company. My wife was a surgery room nurse at the time. Our goal was to be able to take a vacation and still have a company running without us being there every day.

Example of 3rd story addition of home office
Photo courtesy IBC

Jeremy: Melissa, how did you get from the surgery room to Irons Brothers?

Melissa: I grew up in Ballard, went to Ingraham High School, and was a nurse in the operating room for 10 years at Evergreen Hospital. Over time, I realized I had been a part of this business for a while. Like, “Hey, I need feedback on the website” …or “Can you help with X, Y, or Z later today?” I was already part of the company in a way.

While I was pregnant and transitioning away from nursing, I found myself needing to figure out which path I wanted to spend my time. I chose the flexibility of being a business owner.

I joined full-time in 2008, and our daughter was only two weeks old at the time when we relocated to our current office space. We’ve been in this location for 16 years!

I'm our Marketing & Operations Manager. But I wear a lot of hats. I'm also the person in the office that people talk with about personal stuff or maybe what's not going well at work for them, the stress that they're having, they need to vent. We very much have a culture of family-comes-first at our company. That extends to our company values and our community involvement.

We are also trying to do things in the community that help children to understand there are career opportunities that don’t require a 4-year degree or college debt. We are definitely seeing a change of our workforce. It's going to take some time for the trades to be seen as an opportunity.

Jeremy: Tell me more about the shift you’re seeing.

Joseph: A lot of people are realizing that they go to school, get all this college debt and then they spend half their career paying that back and not necessarily enjoying what they do. 

We’ve hired all sorts of engineers, EMTs, a lot from the military. Many have changed careers or had professional degrees or some sort of college education. We’re happy to retrain them – I’m all for education.

Melissa: My answer is a little bit different. Recently, I had an opportunity with some schools in Edmonds to launch a career book that’s called The House That She Built. It's a book about women in the trades. 

Hopefully we’ll be bringing that program to Shoreline in the new year.

This is why I say the trades are becoming more prevalent. These are kids in kindergarten through 3rd grade. The more exposure that we can give, the more it's accepted.

While the book is focused on girls getting into the trades, so many kids are excited to hear that anybody can do anything in building and that there are opportunities beyond just swinging a hammer.

Jeremy: You’ve been in business almost 26 years! Tell me about the types of projects you focus on.

Melissa: We started with smaller builds. It was common for us to work with the same people on two, three, or even four projects as they saved up to take on new parts of their homes. But we’ve seen our business change a lot over the past 25 years.

We do a lot more project management now. We specialize in things like larger remodels, whole-house renovations, building new garages, and custom additions.

Joseph: For the first five to eight years, there was a mix of handyman projects, small renovations like kitchens and bath, multifamily, commercial, residential, anything to help build the business. This gave us a great knowledge base, troubleshooting, resources and networking. But we realized it was easier for us to be a design-build firm.

Example of award-winning kitchen remodel
Photo courtesy IBC

Jeremy: Do you have a favorite type of project?

Joseph: Typically, if there’s a 100-year-old house on the block, we’re the ones remodeling it. 100-year-old homes probably make up half of our work. We also do a lot of aging-in-place work as well. And many times, there’s an overlap where we’re remodeling the old house to be more aging-in-place. Someone may have lived there for 10 to 40 years, and it’s going to be their forever home.

They don’t want to to move, and they want to keep that historic craftsmanship, but they want modern amenities. Maybe we’re doing hardy siding in the historical architecture style, and composite materials, clad windows - things that require lower maintenance. Maybe it’s structural changes… gutting and rebuilding or adding a third floor.

So, I think anytime we're adding onto a home, it's always more of a favorite project because we're giving them more space to stay in that home for a longer time.

Melissa: Our target clients are going to live there in their forever home. A lot of them are retired and they may have saved financially to remodel and have a caregiver come in the house. For example, we've done basement detached units that are inside the home for their mother-in-law.

We do a lot of building for multi-generational living. This way it’s more affordable for people as their families grow and they need more space, or they need to take care of their parents.

It’s really rewarding to see the positive impact and the improved life transitions! I like working on older homes because they have more character, and we get to keep it that way!

This bathroom remodel is an example of aging in place design
Photo courtesy IBC

Jeremy: How do you manage client relationships during projects?

Melissa: We talk at the very beginning about expectations and we expect that there is an emotional roller coaster when you're going through a remodel. And we actually give them some education on when you're going have your high and when you're going into a low point and then when you go back up again. We survey our clients every week about the project progress.

Joseph: The survey covers how the project is going, how is communication, how is the work quality. We also have biweekly meetings with the client. We are very transparent and honest with our clients. But it's not just us being honest with them. If there's something they're not liking, they need to be honest with us so we can be aware and address what we can.

Jeremy: What advice would you give to somebody who's looking to start their own business?

Joseph: Write a business plan. Take some business management classes. Those first years I was just working and paying my taxes. I probably still could make more working for someone else! 

Just know what sacrifices you're making and what you want. I teach a lot of classes and often joke that business owners get to work half days… but you get to pick which 12 hours. It's a lot more time commitment than people think. The flexibility can be nice but you also have to be disciplined and put the work in. It can require long days and long hours.

Melissa: You don't know what you don't know. That's really my advice. I suggest that you join a business association for your business type. We're part of the Master Builders of King and Snohomish County because that's the local residential housing association here. 

It was specifically related to our business type. You meet with others and can get help with questions like, “How do I do something that I haven’t done before? What do you recommend? Who do I need to talk to?”

Jeremy: How do you manage being both business partners and spouses?

Joseph: Divide and conquer! And be disciplined on “that’s your area.”

Melissa: It's all about the two of us knowing our expectations of our roles. And when you first start working together, you need to establish a job for yourself as a business owner, what your duties are, what your duties aren't. 

We do spend some time debriefing every evening on a dog walk or over a glass of wine or whatever it is to talk it out… maybe there was something that didn't go right today at work, whether it's about work or it's about our communication. It’s less about balance, and more about controlled chaos.

Joseph: We're a well-oiled machine, but we always strive to do better. We support each other in each other’s area, but I don't expect her to climb on a roof and inspect something. And likewise, she’s in charge of marketing and operations.

Melissa: But it’s not really balance like when people talk about work life balance. It's more, “are you happy?” That's my goal. To have a positive mindset, be happy every day and enjoy what I do. 

And maybe it doesn't always make everybody happy, but at the end of the day, you have to be ok with saying, “that can wait until tomorrow” or “I'm going to take XYZ home with me and crunch it out before I go to bed."

New Shoreline location for Irons Bros Construction
14926 Aurora Ave N,  Shoreline WA 98133
Photo courtesy IBC

Jeremy: Tell me about your plans and process for your new Shoreline location on Aurora Ave.

Joseph: The plan is to start moving in December, when the permits get signed off. Our original date was last August! But permitting and the code/compliance side of bringing an older building up to code wasn’t a smooth process. It should have taken a few months to get the permit – but it took 9 months.

The building was in disrepair when we bought it. It had a lot of issues. It needed a new roof, siding, windows. The prior owner had it for 40 years and did nothing to keep it up.

But the more you put into a building, the more the city wants you to bring everything up to current code, including site improvements like sidewalks and landscaping and parking and ADA, which I totally get. 

But as a small business, you can only spend so much.

For me priority number one should be the safety of the building. But there’s a point when you start fixing things, and it triggers so many required capital improvements.

One example is that the city wanted ornamental iron fencing going all the way around the perimeter of the property. We’re not supposed to put up chain-link fencing, even though it’s used all over the city, and at the light rail stations, and at utilities. But we don’t need a fancy fence between us and the neighboring restaurant supply business.

There were also some parking design issues. A number of things that meant we had to pay more to redraw plans. Some people said to just do things and not put it all in the plans – but that’s not how we operate. We want to be transparent and follow everything.

We had to dip into our retirement to buy the building and then we had to get loans for the remodel. And now we are selling our existing building to pay for it, so we can balance all out. It would be really hard for a new business to be able to afford all of these requirements.

Jeremy: How do you see your business fitting in the community of Shoreline?

Joseph: I feel like we are a big part of Shoreline. It's rare that people don't know who we are. I often hear things like, “Oh yeah, we see your trucks all the time. And we did this birdhouse with you. You built a ramp for someone we know. You remodeled so and so's house.” When we were looking to relocate, we definitely wanted to stay in Shoreline.

When we bought the new building, we wanted to improve Shoreline as well. That property had a lot of illegal activity going on, like squatters and drug use. We wanted to improve the neighborhood.

Melissa: We've not just invested in a home in our neighborhood, but now our new building will be in the same neighborhood. Our kids went to Parkwood Elementary, and we’ve been in our house since 2000. So, we really do want to improve our community.

Joseph: We wanted to stay in Shoreline because we like the ethos of the neighborhoods, the people, the community and where the City Council wants to take it. 

I do think Shoreline has a unique opportunity to redefine some of the neighborhoods and districts with the light rail stations. We're one of the only stops that's residential. Other stops are a lot more commercial. As a growing city, the city needs to embrace and support more small businesses and hire local.

Jeremy: What's the best way for someone to reach you and your business?

Joseph: Our website is the best place - https://www.ironsbc.com/ or you can call 206-306-7767. You can also reach us on social media.

Melissa: With our time in business and experience, we know what is required to do great work and a great project. We know this type of investment is the largest investment most people will make in their lives. 

We really want them to have as good of an experience as possible – and we use a systemized approach and track our progress along the way – to make sure that level of experience happens.

Business Contact Details

You can visit https://www.ironsbc.com/ or you can call 206-306-7767. You can also find Irons Brothers Construction on social media.

Interviewer Details

Jeremy Gross is a personal & business finance and cash flow coach for small business owners. 

He loves learning about each business owner’s journey into entrepreneurship and helping others on their business adventures! 

You can reach him at jeremy@youpluscash.com or learn more at www.youpluscash.com.