ROCK-SOLID Merrick Construction’s ability to perform at the highest level has been a calling card since the company’s earliest days. Its one of the reasons the business never faltered in transitioning from restoration to high-end remodeling — Cross’ own standards are so high, he doesn’t balk when clients point out flaws. “Even if they’re being nit-picky, it’s something I should have seen anyway,” he says.
Cross is meticulous in his attention to detail, particularly trim, finishes, and flashing details. He demands trim joints so tight that they won’t catch a fingernail. And he has been known to tell an employee when an installation is not good enough.
“You shouldn’t ever be able to walk into a room and tell where the seam is,” he says. “Whether it’s trim or flashing, even if it means pulling something up and having to buy new materials, at which point, obviously, it’s coming out of my pocket. That’s what we’ll do to get it right.”
His crews never leave trim on the floor when it’s brought on site. Instead, they measure the wood’s moisture content, then dry it on racks to expose it to the room’s hottest air. “Then we test it again before it’s installed,” Cross says, “so we get any shrinkage out of the way so you don’t have any joints opening up.”
Cross brings that level of perfectionism to every project. One commercial remodel involved adding 3,000 square feet to a decades-old church and converting the whole space into an office building. The brick was an uncommon tan and textured style, but Cross made sure he matched it. He even matched the mortar, mixing his own batches until he got it exactly right. “It took 10 or 12 samples to match the consistency and color of the original,” he says. The slate, too, was an obsolete style of weathering slate that Cross had to search for countrywide. He finally tracked it down at a Vermont material salvage shop. The remodeler had the slate installed early to ensure that the discoloration process would be complete by the time the rest of the project was finished.
One of Merrick Construction’s more challenging projects, completed in 2003, called for laying a foundation in the bed of a running stream. Setting a house down on running water required Cross to take extreme measures to ensure the integrity of the structure.
“We had to do a 12-inch stone bed underneath the entire foundation and footings and then a pretty elaborate waterproofing system that wrapped the entire foundation, including the floor and slab, like a bathtub to keep the hydraulic pressure from pushing in,” he says.
To build projects like that, Cross says, quality must always take priority over speed. Though he sticks firmly to schedules, Cross, in true tortoise style, never rushes work, either. “I don’t give my crew time constraints,” he says. “I tell them what I want to do and I ask them, ‘How long do you think you will need?’”
David Zuckerman is a freelance writer based in New York.