Master of the Squares

“When I started, I learned just about every possible way to do it,” Mowry says. “When I was doing my research, I’d ask anybody I could talk to: the people at the counter, the people at the sales desk and the people in the parking lot.”

Click image to enlargeFor that reason, he calls himself self-taught “but in a good way, because I learned every way tile could be done, right and wrong, and it was up to me to choose the best.” Still, because of his lack of formal training, he says early on he began a habit of trying to over-perform on every job. It’s a practice that’s served him well over the years.

BROAD UNDERSTANDING

When Mowry finally made the move to Bellingham in 1979, he says one of the first things that people told him was that he’d have to branch out into installing carpet or linoleum.

He admits it was at a time when tile wasn’t that popular in Washington. Still, he chose to focus on tile and began getting work almost right away – and his background immediately proved to be a help.

“I gain the confidence of the customer because I understand how everything works,” Mowry says. “I can look at a job and tell how it went and what the person did. Not every application fits every situation and sometimes you have to think beyond the ordinary. I can tell what materials someone else used, why they worked, why they didn’t work and what can be done to make them work in a particular situation.”

As for his decision to stay away from carpet and linoleum: “There was a real need to have somebody who specialized in tile rather than someone who installed carpet and also did tile.”

It’s probably for that reason that Mowry early on began attracting what he describes as “fancy work,” or projects for higher-end residential clients.Click on photo to enlarge

“I cater to the jobs where everything matters,” he says. “Perhaps the design needs to be offset by a quarter-inch, or the layout is really important. I’m very detail-oriented and can focus on the small things that a lot of people can’t do, or don’t do well enough.”

That’s not to say he hasn’t done his share of production work over the years, too.

“I’ve certainly done apartments where I’d do five tub enclosures in a day or four entries and four fireplaces,” he says. “I like production work because you can get up to speed. It can be fun doing a high-paced production job.”

Mowry has also done commercial work, including some restaurants for companies such as Pizza Hut®, Little Caesars® Pizza, McDonald’s and Dairy Queen®, and he enjoys the high quality those jobs require. However, with the Dairy Queens, he got the jobs mainly because he had already worked for the restaurants’ owner.

“I’ve done the owner’s house several times over the years as he’s remodeled,” he explains. “The general contractor on that is very detail-oriented, and very focused on quality, and we’d worked with him on other jobs, so he hired us initially to do the owner’s house. We really went over the top on the Dairy Queens.”