Waterfront custom homes for the shoreline of one of the largest, deepest lakes in the West — built by a company that has spent twenty years building on Washington waterfront and island lots.
Dihedral Builders spent most of two decades based in Anacortes, Washington, building custom homes on waterfront and island lots — the sites other contractors pass on. Chad Gailey's crews have put foundations on low-bank beaches, benched them into bluffs, and barged materials to islands. That résumé is the most directly relevant preparation there is for building on Lake Pend Oreille.
The move to North Idaho is permanent: roots in Sandpoint since 2020, an office at 213 Hard Pack Lane, and Idaho contractor registration 4181115. Our completed waterfront homes are in Washington — we're honest about that — and our first Idaho project, the Selle Valley Custom near Sandpoint, is under construction now. What we're offering lake clients is the craft we're bringing: twenty years of building well at the water's edge.
Every home runs design-build through a single point of contact, with preferred independent designers, architects, and engineers, personally vetted trades, and a reputation for finishing on time and on budget with 5.0-star reviews.
Waterfront custom homes designed around the water — main spaces and glazing oriented to the lake, durable envelopes detailed for wind-driven weather off open water, and outdoor living that actually gets used from spring through fall.
Many of the best home sites on Lake Pend Oreille fall steeply to the shoreline. We engineer foundations into the slope, manage drainage toward the lake responsibly, and plan setbacks and site work around the realities of building near the water.
A lakefront project touches designers, engineers, permitting, and a long list of trades. We coordinate all of it under one contract so you deal with one builder from lot walk to move-in.
Lake Pend Oreille is one of the largest and deepest lakes in the West, and its shoreline is long and varied — the Sagle peninsulas, Garfield Bay, Bottle Bay, the Hope shoreline on the northeast side. Each pocket of the lake has its own exposure, its own grade, and its own access questions, and a lakefront home should be designed for its specific stretch of water, not for a generic idea of waterfront.
Building near the water comes with rules, and rightly so. Shoreline setbacks shape where the house can sit, and work near or over the water — docks and other shoreline improvements — runs through Idaho's encroachment permitting. We don't pretend the process away; we plan for it, sequence around it, and make sure the design that gets drawn is a design that can be permitted and built.
Then the lake itself weighs in. Moisture and weather coming off that much open water are hard on buildings, so flashing, siding, drainage, and ventilation all get detailed to a higher standard than an inland house needs. Foundations on sloped shoreline lots demand the same engineering discipline. This is precisely the kind of building Dihedral Builders did for twenty years on Washington's waterfront, and it's why lakefront work is where we expect to do our best building in Idaho.
I can't say enough good about Chad Gailey and the Dihedral team. I designed my home on a sketch pad and presented Chad with all kinds of ideas and challenges. Chad met each idea with enthusiasm and counseled me beautifully on exactly how to achieve what I was after. With expertise and know-how, Chad turned my lifelong ideas to reality and did so with an eagle eye for efficiency, timing, cost and budget. Throughout the process Chad was a great partner and teacher. Even though we were in the middle of COVID and started mid-winter, Chad turned my dream home into reality, within the timeframe and budget I asked for. Always good natured, always supportive and always honest, I couldn't have asked for more.
Rane MacDonough · Google review
I highly recommend Chad and Dihedral Builders. Their quality of work and attention to detail is far above any contractor I have ever worked with. Chad is easy to work with and communicates well. I give them an A+.
RR · Google review
Expect more than an inland lot: shoreline setbacks affect where the home can sit, and any work near or over the water — a dock, for instance — goes through Idaho's encroachment permitting. Dihedral Builders builds those realities into the design and schedule from the start rather than discovering them mid-project, and we coordinate the process alongside the county requirements that apply to any build.
Open water amplifies wind and moisture, so the envelope has to be detailed for it: rainscreen-minded siding assemblies, careful flashing, generous drainage, and ventilation that keeps the structure dry. Dihedral Builders spent twenty years building on Washington waterfront where those details decide whether a house ages well, and we build to that standard on Lake Pend Oreille.
Because waterfront construction is its own trade. Foundations on sloped shorelines, weather exposure off open water, working within setback and shoreline rules, staging on tight lake lots — we've solved those problems for two decades on Puget Sound and island sites. The address changes; the physics and the discipline don't.
Yes. Steep shoreline lots are common around Lake Pend Oreille and they're the sites we actively want — Dihedral Builders' history is building where other contractors pass. We engineer the foundation into the grade, plan access and staging before breaking ground, and design the house to earn the view the slope provides.
Let's walk the shoreline lot together and talk honestly about what it will take. Call (208) 714-0250 — our office is in Sandpoint, minutes from the water.
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