Final Touch Construction celebrating 40 years in business

Chris Rugowski

Contributor

March 3, 2025

CRANDON – For four decades, Final Touch Construction in Crandon has been building rustic homes of distinction in the Northwoods, bringing nature inside the home.

According to Owner Bucky Dailey, to be the best at anything, you must love what you do.

And there is no denying that Dailey definitely loves what he does.

“Every home is unique,” he said.

At Final Touch Construction, Dailey said custom-built homes are built with passion, creativity and a great story – from concept to design to build.

The Final Touch story

Growing up, Dailey said he spent much of his time in the woods – spending his summers helping his father’s logging business.

When he turned 16 and was able to drive, he said he began working for a contractor and started to really take an interest in the carpentry world differently.

This interest, he said, extended into college – however, the carpenter he was working with at the time told him the shop was going out of business.

As a “broke college kid,” Dailey said his first thought went to what he would do next.

Thankfully, he said he didn’t have to think too long because the next day, the owner of the house he was working on called and asked if he could finish it.

With a little bit of confidence and a big leap of faith, Dailey said he responded, “I think so.”

Now 40 years later, he said he’s still building homes – and estimates Final Touch Construction has built around 20-30 homes, and assisted with many more projects over the span of that timeframe.

Though proudly reflecting on the company’s 40 years in business, Dailey said he didn’t originally intend on starting a construction company or being a business owner in general – actually going to school for political science and law.

“That didn’t pan out very well,” he laughed. “I was forced into being a business owner by necessity. I needed money, and it was right in front of me, so I wanted to keep it going, and it’s been good to me.”

Why rustic?

Dailey said looking back on his Northwoods life and his love for working in the woods – specializing in custom wood homes has always been a good fit for Final Touch Construction.

“You grow up seeing log homes, and I already had a connection to that from working, playing and building in the woods,” he said. “It just made sense.”

Dailey said a rustic home and design is characterized by natural, aged, organic and distressed elements – generally regarded as the opposite of modern or contemporary design.

Despite the definition, he said Final Touch builds contemporary homes with a rustic feel – complete with all the modern conveniences and functions of a contemporary house, “just bringing the outdoors inside.”

Final Touch, Dailey said, focuses on building one-of-a-kind rustic homes, one at a time.

Homes that blend in well with the environment, and always reflect the unique personality of the owner, are what the company prides itself on.

Dailey said one of his favorite things to do with new customers is to learn all about them, so they can add a distinct flavor and a personal touch to even the most routine aspects of a home – things like an oak table built into a log column, individually distressed floor planks, hand-scribed cedar railings or a rounded door frame.

“We’ve done very rustic homes and also very contemporary homes,” he said. “Homes where we create the bones of the home and then expose them. Adding touches of wood changes the feel. I think it’s fun when the framing becomes part of the finished work.”

Patience is key when going rustic

Dailey said Final Touch Construction is a one-stop shop for your dream rustic home build.

The company handles it all, he said, from clearing the lot, cutting, drying, sawing – and using those same trees to build the home, along with other local tree species.

In today’s world, Dailey said utilizing the wood on the property or elsewhere locally is an economically friendly aspect of building rather than importing all the wood.

The entire process for Final Touch – from start to finish – Dailey said, can take up to a year and half when you factor in clearing lots, cutting, sawing and drying.

He said air drying large timbers takes about a year – then you add in the building and detail work and the time adds up.

However, in the end, Dailey said the build is always worth it for the client.

As a small construction company, he said Final Touch only has up to 10 people working on the project at any given time.

“Many builders believe that the bigger the crew, the better and faster the home will be built,” he said. “On paper, it’s a nice concept. But in reality, the focus on speed can amount to missed opportunities, miscommunications and costly overages.”

Dailey said Final Touch typically works in close-knit crews of two to three, a size that enables the project to move efficiently, without losing the sense of creativity and cohesion.

In his 40 years as a builder, Dailey said he sees working with a smaller crew as a positive – making it easier for the owners to communicate and make changes, which allows unplanned challenges to become opportunities for surprising design elements.

More than just building homes

Surprisingly, Dailey said the housing market hasn’t affected Final Touch’s business too much. 

With the business being located in Crandon, he said there are a couple of big lakes nearby and knows the area is underdeveloped yet.

“Business is pretty strong here,” he said. “We can’t handle more than one house a year, but the phone doesn’t stop ringing.”

Building homes, however, Dailey said, isn’t all Final Touch does.

The company’s wood sales side of the business, he said, has grown massively since the COVID-19 pandemic.

Dailey said he bought the company’s first saw around 13 years ago and was cutting 20,000 to 40,000 board feet a year for Final Touch projects.

He said he would sell a mantle here, a bar top there and then at the beginning of COVID that blew up.

In the last year, Dailey said Final Touch has sold well more than 100,000 board feet, and anticipates that to continue.

This market, he said, has helped the company “build” more relationships with contractors along the way, too – something that has come in handy.

With Final Touch’s furniture pieces, Dailey said the company has been able to sell, ship and install it around the country, with one piece even going to California.

One of their most distinctive pieces, he said, was made from a 46-foot tree that was cut into eight different pieces, and had a glass piece set in the middle.

Originally, Dailey said this table was supposed to be crane lifted into the room, but as building progressed, this didn’t happen.

To get it up into the room, he said all eight individual pieces had to fit into an elevator and then fit seamlessly together in the meeting room.

Dailey said it was a massive project – and certainly one of his most memorable.

Keeping artistry alive

In a world of “internet expectations” and “reality TV shows,” Dailey said rustic has begun to take on a different meaning to everyone.

He said he takes pride in his building process and his small team, being able to work with the customer to create what their vision of “rustic” means.

Dailey said he looks at the shifts in the market over the years and the one thing that’s gotten better is the efficiency they can build into homes, while still having an artistic approach.

Building from an artistic approach, he said, also has come with its challenges over the years – especially with the rise of sensationalized trends available for everyone on social media.

“Cool costs money,” he said. “Everyone has a budget line, so that can be difficult to maintain and explain at times.”

Dailey said he knows that “different” doesn’t always mean “better” – because “better” is a relative term.

Additionally, he said because of the ubiquitous nature of these platforms – whether that’s the internet or TV shows – it can be difficult on the artistry side of the business to make something that’s “original” because someone might think they saw it online.

Dailey said it can also be difficult to sell the patience side of it, too, looking at the timeframe for which it takes to build.

One of the elements he said he’s tried to incorporate back into the artistic and functional side of things is simplicity.

“On the design side of things, I’ve tried to simplify the bones of the homes, because maintenance is a real issue as the homes age,” he said. “If they’re complex and have multiple roof lines, for example, that’s expensive when building, and also when maintaining, so you have to think about years down the line.”

In the end, Dailey said he knows he builds homes that are meant to last 100 years and multiple generations.

“We’re building a story,” he said, “and if you don’t leave people with a story, you don’t really have anything.”

Learn more about Final Touch Construction at finaltouchcon.com.