About
Our owners are still on the buildings.
KAEHAM CONSTRUCTION has been working on Minnesota buildings since 2003, with crews across the metro and the equipment to run several properties at once. James Hamilton and Dusty Kaefring own it, and both of them still run work rather than watching it from an office.
- Active since
- 2003
- Ownership
- Owner operated
- Experience
- 30 years each
- Based in
- Burnsville, MN
Ownership
Who you are actually hiring.
James Hamilton and Dusty Kaefring each have 30 years in construction trades and they own the company together. They came up doing the work, they still do it, and they built a crew and an equipment list that lets us run multiple properties in a season.
That has a practical consequence for a customer. The person deciding what goes in your estimate has personally seen the assembly fail, on a real building, in this climate. Estimators who have never opened a wall price what they can see. Somebody who has opened a few hundred of them prices what is behind it.
It also means the two people whose names are on the company are the two people who have to live with the result. Work on a building lasts a long time and the customer lives with it every day. That tends to concentrate the mind.
Method
What we do differently.
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Diagnosis
We read the building before we price it
Water gets in one place and shows up somewhere else. Chasing the path takes longer than bidding the stain and it is the only approach that ends the problem.
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Installation
Manufacturer instructions, not code minimum
Code is a floor. Manufacturers publish stricter installation requirements, and those are what a warranty is actually written against. We install to the printed instructions.
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Estimating
The whole cost, said out loud
We tell customers the true all-in cost even when it makes us the high bid and loses us the job. A number that leaves out the framing repair becomes a change order in month two.
Low bids should come with a warning label, because usually something was missed. Some outfits lead with a low number on purpose, then nickel and dime the job to well past the expected investment.
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Range
One contractor for the whole exterior
A storm takes the roof, the gutters, and part of the deck. Three trades, one general contract. The variety is the reason we can hold the schedule instead of coordinating around three other companies' calendars.
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Service
A 1950s idea of what service means
The customer is somebody you expect to see again, in a town you both live in. That is the standard the company runs on and it is the reason a Sunday call still gets returned.
Credentials
What we can put in writing.
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License
Minnesota residential building contractor BC708826
Verifiable through the Minnesota Department of Labor and Industry.
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Warranty
Ten year workmanship warranty
On top of whatever the manufacturer warrants on the material.
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Memberships
CAM and BAM
The Contractors Association of Minnesota and the Builders Association of Minnesota. Advocacy and standards organizations for Minnesota contractors and builders, where we keep current on codes, practices, and what is coming out of the Capitol.
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Specialists
We bring in the experts a project calls for
Engineers, insurance professionals, legal teams, industrial hygienists, whoever the building actually needs. We bring them in when the project warrants it and we tell you why before we do.
Where to find us.
1505 Southcross Dr, Burnsville, MN 55306. The office is by appointment, 8 to 5 Monday through Friday, because on most days everyone is out on buildings. The crew is in the field seven days a week, and calls are returned promptly.