My wife and I are talking of moving our family of 4 to Wyoming or Montana from Michigan. I am currently self-employed and I’m thinking of selling off my business and relocating. My Wife would be looking for a new job as well. Are there any recommendations anybody has for good towns our kids are big and into sports 4-H looking for more of a conservative feel with good church options.
Plenty of prior posts on where to live with a little searching, but it should be said you need to carefully consider locations because construction in rural towns is very different from town to town, and work is very much like salmon runs, when there’s work life is good and when it dries up there’s not a single fish in the stream.
Work on the houses of residents in city limits and you’re competing with every guy with a pickup and skillsaw who will work for dirt cheap. Much more money is in vacation homes, but it’s not as easy as just showing up. Local subs will work against you as a favor for their regular contractors. Locals won’t trust you, and many jobs have architects out of the area so courting them is not always easy. Suppliers will rent you their crappiest equipment, deliver their worst lumber, drag their feet as much as possible on concrete pour days, and over bid your jobs. Even carpenters don’t like guys who show up from the east coast and don’t adjust to the way we do things. We don’t care how you nail off trim in areas with big humidity swings, what you do for termites, or how much you like strapping ceilings prior to Sheetrock.
The guys who make it in smaller areas go to work for the best contractor in town to learn how things are done, make contacts, get to know suppliers/subs, and understand where the niche is they want to explore on their own. Without this kind of local information and starting a building business you're rowing upstream.
The other out of state small contractors that have made it seem to start very small with whatever they can get, and are very good at making friends with local architects, suppliers and subs, so even without any other local support, they get a stream of small projects from recommendations until they have enough time and local work under their belt to be taken seriously for bigger stuff.
The best carpenters that you would like to hire, aren’t interested unless you have good projects and lots of hours. Even when you have good work for the summer, the more established guys have planned for a big house to be dried in by late fall so work can be done all winter inside for the carpenters they like and have been with them all summer. Many guys are used to traveling across the state for the best paid work, so you might be in an active building area and can’t find anyone local that will swing a hammer for you, or know for a fact a large number of carpenters live in an area and can’t get any of them to call you back.
As the poster child for moving to Wyoming, a small general contractor with a great reputation for high quality stain grade finish work moved to town, called up every contractor and was willing to work for cheap to get his foot in the door. He showed up on a job I was on running trim and we chatted a bit. Later the owner of the company asked how he was doing and chatted about the nice looking trim and how he could never hire the guy as an employee because all the extra nailing made him too slow, and as a sub his bids would be too expensive per foot for knotty alder or pine trim that gets used all over the place. I could tell the guy was sharp, capable, likeable, professional, good work ethic, could be fast enough if he could give up his old habits, had a pile of projects back east, but struggled for two seasons as a sub and moved back home.
Many western carpenters and subs for the best paying remote vacation homes are jack of all trades and the guys who stay the busiest are not only the best at what they do, but are flexible and well rounded. A cabinet maker who can also frame interior walls, tile the backsplash, has a brother who will do the granite, can install or site build cabinets, install appliances and isn’t afraid of running the exhaust duct through the roof is much more valuable than a guy building custom cabinets for 20 years in a shop.