who we are

McBride Housewrights is a full service carpentry, woodworking and contracting company, based in Chicago’s Logan Square neighborhood and serving the greater Chicagoland area.

Our extensive background in traditional construction techniques is balanced by our penchant for constantly improving our methods of work when new materials and equipment make it possible. This has enabled us to specialize in the care and improvement of vintage homes.

Dedication to craftsmanship and a conscientious attention to detail run deep in our work, and in the character of our company. While we are always looking for ways to improve the quality, durability and timeliness of our work, we are also looking for ways to reduce our impact on the environment—and reduce the disruption that home projects can impose on your household.

Scroll down for a sampling of past work, and please contact us when you’d like to discuss the repair, remodeling or restoration of your own home: nathan@mcbridehousewrights.com

Two Questions:

Whether we are repairing a rotted front porch, remodeling a bathroom, or designing and building custom furniture to suit your home, we remain focused on these two questions:

1. What does the customer want? There’s no substitute for listening carefully…by the time we enter the “design” phase of a design/build project, we have a thorough understanding of the form and function you’re looking for. Then it’s our turn to talk: we will recommend elements of our past projects that may interest you, and help you place your project into the aesthetic and historical context of your home.

2. What does the house want? Thorough study, and years of field experience with classic American homes in New England, the Pacific Northwest—and now Chicagoland—has helped us learn how to make instinctive decisions about what’s right for a given home, instead of applying a cookie-cutter approach that winds up looking, and working, wrong. And when instinct alone isn’t enough, we hit the books. We have those kind of books.

Bringing “Green” Down To Earth

It’s easy to see how roof-mounted wind turbines and solar panels help reduce a home’s environmental impact…

An elaborate geothermal heating and cooling system, while less visible, makes its “green” case just as eloquently once you’ve had it pointed out to you…

But what about low-impact, environmentally sound building for the rest of us, who aren’t ready or able to make these kinds of investments in order to keep it green?

Here are ten ways we at McBride Housewrights are working to connect our best green intentions with the daily reality of repair, remodeling and restoration in vintage homes, working with real-world budgets:

1. Build Efficiently: we design and select materials for projects that will add energy efficiency: windows, doors and insulation are among the more visible examples, and construction details like insulated exterior corner framing are the kind of small components that add up to a more efficient building envelope.

2. Build to Last: in the quest for cost savings, it can be tempting to forsake the 100-year view of a building project. We work on older homes that have steadfastly—even gracefully—borne the rigors of time. Our goal is to ensure that our contributions to these homes will prove just as lasting and durable as the original structure.

3. No Plastic Bags: We use non-disposable bags to haul garbage, debris, etc. from our work areas, zero “contractor bags” are consumed and sent to the landfill. When purchasing small materials, we bring our own canvas bags along, just like you do when you go to market.

4. Limit unnecessary driving: whenever possible, we use one truck per job, and frequently travel to meetings, site visits, etc. by bicycle or CTA.

5. Use Biofuel: our primary work truck runs on the highest available blend of biodiesel we can find; our goal is to achieve a 100% Biodiesel fuel for summer use, and at least 30% Biodiesel in winter. Engine idling is limited whenever possible.

6. Reduce waste: since the advent of cheaper building materials and faster construction in post-WWII years, the industry has grown used to a shocking amount of waste production. We strive to reduce waste at every stage of construction, and reuse materials whenever possible. Resharpening blades, and repairing even the lowliest broken tools are other ways we try to send less waste to the landfill.

1. Choose green materials: we select materials that will have the lowest impact on the environment, while still performing as well or better than the industry standard. Examples can be as romantic as urban forested hardwood lumber from the Chicagoland area, or as prosaic as shims made of compressed sawdust and resins, instead of Red Cedar.

2. Recycle: anything we remove from a project—glass, metal, wood, or plastic—is evaluated and sorted for possible recycling. Currently, the harsh truth is that this only allows about a 50% rate of recycling…though the infrastructure for used building material recycling is still in its infancy, we look forward to a time when little or none of the debris and waste produced on a jobsite need be thrown away.

3. Use Computers: we are constantly refining our administrative systems to rely less and less on paper, more on computers and handheld electronics; slowly we are encouraging our suppliers and fellow contractors to rely less on the ubiquitous fax machine…

4. Ask Why: from design to execution, construction presents a series of problems to solve. We enjoy problem solving—and every time we face one, we ask ourselves, “why is it always done this way”? Very often the answer is, “because it works”, and that’s fine. But when the answer is, “because it’s easier”, or “there’s another way?” we try to delve deeper. Many of our industry’s bad habits are kept in place by an unwillingness to find new solutions.

Please join us in trying to reduce the environmental impact of every project you undertake in your home, no matter how small. We can’t all have a hydrogen fuel cell in the basement—but we can all ask more of ourselves, and our builders, when it comes to keeping it green.