Staying stoked: Terry Wardell likes the action both on the jobsite and off - Custom Builder of the Year - Cover Story

Custom Home, Jan-Feb, 2004 by Bruce D. Snider

When Terry Wardell wants to see the Pacific Ocean, he seldom has to do more than raise his eyes. His company's office, in Solana Beach, Calif., 20 miles north of San Diego, is less than a mile from the beach. His home, a few blocks away, offers distant views of the water. And many of the custom homes his company builds, in San Diego, Solana Beach, and the upscale shorefront towns of La Jolla and Del Mar, command broad vistas of beach and breakers. It is a fitting circumstance, because it was breaking waves that first drew Wardell to this stretch of Southern California coast.

At 50, he combines the restless energy and casual attitude of the surfer he once was. And while his seagoing vessel of choice is now a catamaran rather than a surfboard, he still sometimes sounds like a surfer dude. His crew members "stay pretty stoked." A finely crafted detail is "bitchin'." A cell phone call ends with "Groove on, Big Daddy."

"My goal was to move down to Leucadia [a nearby beach town] so I could surf," says Wardell, who grew up north of here, in Los Angeles. After settling in Solana Beach, he and his wife, Tracy Weiss, fell into a pattern common among their 20-something friends: "She went to school, and I pounded nails." Carpentry made sense for a surfer, because it paid the bills and left time at the end of the day to hit the beach. Besides, Wardell says, as a paying gig, "This is all I've ever done." Starting as a laborer at 14, he made a tour of the business, moving up through the ranks to framing carpenter, finish carpenter, job superintendent, estimator/salesman, project manager, and operations manager.

Somewhere along the line, though, building became more than a support system for his sport. He was good at it. He had the craftsman's insistent urge to get things right. And the deeper he went into the task of bringing an architect's vision to life, the more satisfaction he found. By the time he got the opportunity to run his own company (he took over an existing firm when the boss moved to Colorado), building custom homes had become a passion. Of the core group that became Wardell Builders, he says, "More than anything, we're a bunch of finish carpenters who got together to keep building houses." Today Wardell's passion encompasses not only building the best houses he can--and his are among the finest we've seen anywhere--but also the constant development and improvement of his company. One need not spend much time with Wardell to see that this is what gets him out of bed in the morning. Running a business in an extraordinarily demanding market, with powerful clients to one side and a sheer wall of regulatory oversight to the other, this ex-surfer is riding a wave of challenge, excitement, and risk that rivals anything he's seen on the water.

That's certainly the way it looks on this sunny late-summer day, as Wardell hits the road to visit his projects under construction. First stop is San Diego's Mission Hills district, where one of his crews is finishing off a striking limestone-clad modernist home on a compact infill lot. "I'm just dropping by to make sure we're still on target for our move-in date," Wardell says. From the outside, the project looks like a busy construction site. But inside, the house recalls that scene in a James Bond movie when the false bookcase opens to reveal a bustling secret laboratory. This place is crawling with workers. One bay of the garage holds a jobsite operations center with desktop computer, printer, fax machine, and phone. Inside the house, finish carpenters are installing hardwood paneling and flush baseboards; granite subs are setting countertops while more carpenters hang wall cabinets above; electricians are installing ceiling fixtures; plumbers are fiddling with the steam unit for the master bath shower; on a scaffold outside the second floor, a window crew is caulking aluminum mullion trim between large panels of fixed glass. Around every corner one must step over another subcontractor bent into an uncomfortable position. It begins to seem like a spoof of "This Old House." But Wardell is in his element here, smiling, schmoozing, and feeding on the buzz of activity.

And far from "just dropping by," he is instantly the center of attention, taking updates on glitches in the process, asking questions, offering solutions. The recessed cans arrived with the wrong trim rings, but the electrician promises his supplier will fix the mistake: "They have to send it overnight, air freight. They're paying for it. They dropped the ball." Wardell insists that there be more hands on the job when the parts come in. "Let's get the electricians in here to knock this out, cause it's going to screw up my painters." Job superintendent Bob Goode is having trouble with another supplier, and Wardell coaches him to push for a solution. Wardell knows the guy, and says that if he's peppered with enough options, he'll eventually come across. "Don't let a 'No' stop you." Another subcontractor is playing hard to get, and Wardell suggests a different approach. "I'm willing to negotiate," he says. "We've got to keep his mind on the job, not running off someplace else to make money." Inside of 20 minutes, Wardell has taken in all he needs to see and offered everything his team needs to know. He has spoken with I perhaps a dozen men, and before he leaves he has thanked each one.