Dihedral Builders is a small custom home company with a deep bench. We've spent twenty years building homes and remodels across Southcentral Alaska and the Pacific Northwest — with Anacortes, Skagit County, and the islands as home ground.
The builds are the story. Every project we take on is one we want to stand behind in ten years, not ten months.
Chad met each idea with enthusiasm and counseled me beautifully on exactly how to achieve what I was after.
Rane MacDonough · Google review
We've been building in Southcentral Alaska, Skagit County, Fidalgo and Whidbey Islands for twenty years — custom waterfront homes, historic additions in Coupeville, remodels that touched every wall. The work built the reputation, and the reputation built the business.
Every lesson got folded back in: how to site a house for PNW weather, how to specify products that suit our client's needs best, how to run a trade partnership for a decade instead of a project, how to say no to work that won't end well, how to direct collaboration between designers, engineers, clients, and craftsmen.
Anacortes and Whidbey Island are home ground, not just a service area. Twenty years here have taught us that the best houses on these islands aren't decorated to fit the setting — they're engineered from it. The pitch of a roofline that sheds a Pacific storm without a fight. Glazing oriented to pull in low winter light off the water instead of losing heat to it. A material palette that weathers the way driftwood and cedar shakes weather, gracefully, instead of fighting the marine air and losing. Good design here starts with physics, not mood boards.
That's the lens we build through. We read a bluff above Rosario Strait and a low lot behind the trees as two different structural and aesthetic problems, each with its own answer for how the building envelope, the sightlines, and the light should work together. We know which shoreline conditions call for a different foundation system, which orientations earn a wall of glass and which ones call for something more restrained. The science — wind loads, moisture management, solar orientation — isn't separate from the design. It's what makes the design honest.
We know Anacortes, Oak Harbor, Coupeville, and Langley well enough to move a permit through cleanly, and we know the trades on this side of the water who execute detail work with the precision it deserves. A lot of what gets built here is meant to outlast the person who built it — a home for a family to keep returning to for generations. That's why our pre-construction process is unhurried and exacting: every material, assembly, and sightline is specified with intention before the first stud goes up, so the finished house is as sound in its engineering as it is beautiful to live in.
Details matter. It's the little extra steps and the better forethought — the ones no one but us may ever notice — that make for a better product and, ultimately, a better home.
We're small by design. That means you work with the principal on every project, the trades on site are ones we've personally vetted, and decisions don't get lost in layers of project management. We're good at hard sites, careful budgets, and the long conversations that make a house feel like a home when it's done. We cherish the opportunity to partner with you in creating an heirloom that you can be proud of and feel part of.
We care as much about the experience of building as we do about the finished home. A project that ends in a beautiful house but a strained relationship isn't a project we'd count as a success — so clear communication, honest numbers, and a calm job site get the same attention as the millwork. We have respect for our client's time and budgets, and view our role as educators and facilitators, helping you make the right decisions for your project.
Nearly every review on this site names one person: Chad. Here's his story, in his own words.
Chad Gailey — founder and president of Dihedral — grew up tagging along to job sites with his father, a plumber, general contractor, and business owner with uncompromising standards. Chad watched him review not just his own crew's work but every trade's, point out the deficiencies, and often fix them on the spot. His father was known to strip all the plumbing out of a new build and start over if the workmanship didn't meet his bar. That, though Chad didn't know it yet, was where a passion for building with excellence took hold.
Construction wasn't the original plan. After high school, Chad spent five years in the Coast Guard patrolling the icy waters of Alaska, then studied biology and occupational therapy through college and graduate school. He started his first company during grad school — remodels and small builds around Anchorage — and soon realized he liked building more than rehab, and that a naturally analytical mind was a welcome thing in the trade.
He brought that home to Washington in 2011 and started the current Dihedral Builders in 2012. Growth has been slow and steady ever since, and the values haven't wavered — plenty of chances to grow faster have come along, always with a trade-off he wasn't willing to make. That background is also why he reads a house as an integrated system, specified with intention: beautiful where you see it, better where you don't.
There is a fast way to build a home and a correct way, and we have never seen the two get along. Every project runs through the same six deliberate phases, worked out before any hammer swings — so you always know what happens next.
An industry-leading three-year craftsmanship warranty, on top of the manufacturers' warranties, plus scheduled inspections at one month and again at eleven months — timed just before your product warranties lapse, so anything covered stays covered.
We schedule follow-up visits because standing behind our work is not only part of the process — it is central to who we are.
“We are now a few weeks past our three-year occupancy permit anniversary… The house is spectacular and is performing beautifully. This is in contrast to several of our neighbors whose custom homes by ‘high end’ local builders have been beset by various significant problems.”
Gene Scott
Oak Harbor, WA · three-plus years after completion
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