Hammer and a Helping Hand
Oregon Tradeswomen rang in the New Year setting up our new home in the Rockwood neighborhood, a feat accomplished with the help of our generous supporters. To say thank you, we are shining a light on some of our business partners who made this move possible. Starting with our friends at Hammer & Hand, a local general contractor started by two Reed College graduates, Sam Hagerman and Daniel Thomas, who began their carpentry careers by remodeling historic Portland homes. Hammer & Hand has since expanded to include new home-building, commercial construction, handmade windows and doors, and executing traditional and modern designs created by the Pacific Northwest’s top architectural firms.
Because the founders developed their skills as carpenters through remodeling beautiful historic buildings, they are guided by an ethic of quality, durability, and beauty in all of their projects. Hammer & Hand has made a name for themself as a national leader in high-performance and quality-assured durability having authored two editions of their Best Practices Manual, a compendium of their field-tested construction details, many informed by their experience in high-performance passive building. A third edition of this guidebook is slated for this summer.
Hammer & Hand is a company of carpenters, and they don’t operate like a typical single-source “design-build” firm. Instead, their process involves partnering with an independent architect and getting the design team, the general contractor, and client together in a dynamic collaborative process that ensures a well-rounded approach to the project to satisfy budget, aesthetics, and buildability. Hammer & Hand’s goal is to makes each clients’ dreams a reality while building to last.
Their commitment to great work doesn’t end here. Hammer & Hand is dedicated to empowering their employees. Because of their commitment to workforce happiness, Hammer & Hand sees very little employee turnover and has team members who have been with the company for a long time, including career carpenters who have celebrated 15 and 20 year anniversaries over the past few years. Hammer & Hand is also committed to workplace diversity and actively hires women – including a few Oregon Tradeswomen graduates!
Hammer & Hand demonstrates their commitment to Oregon Tradeswomen’s mission not only by giving our graduates an exceptional place to grow in their careers as carpenters, but they made an incredibly generous donation to helping us acquire a training space of our own. Oregon Tradeswomen’s new headquarters in Rockwood, complete with classroom and workshop, allows us the capacity to expand our training to serve more women in more ways. We are grateful for Hammer & Hand’s investment in our growth as an organization and we look forward to the bright future we are building together.