A plywood sailboat brought Andy Mueller to Washington.

“I built a 26-foot Thunderbird sailboat and raced it in San Francisco Bay,” said Mueller. “We made it to the world championships the year they were held in Seattle. I fell in love with the area and stayed.”

Mueller, a native of the San Francisco Bay area, is a third-generation contractor.

“My father was a building contractor and my grandfather was a plaster contractor,” he said. “It’s kind of in my genes.”

Before going into construction full-time, Mueller was a graphic arts photographer at Lockheed Missiles and Space, working the night shift while he was in school. He went to work for his father during the days one summer and realized that he made more money doing construction that one summer than he had working the night shift all year.

“Construction started to seem like a good idea again,” Mueller said.

Mueller owned a construction company in the San Francisco area before moving to Bainbridge Island in 1975. He then worked in partnership with several other contractors before founding Mueller Construction in 1981. The firm oversees custom and spec development for residential construction, as well as some light commercial and land development throughout Kitsap County. The company offers supervisory and management services, sub-contracting out the majority of the labor.

“We do very little actual building on our own anymore,” said Mueller. “In the last few years we’ve been developing our own designs and building those. We’ve had strong market acceptance and I think it’s a definite growth area.”

Over the years Mueller Construction has completed more than 150 construction projects and has built a reputation for building high-end architectural projects. In 1998 one of the homes built by Mueller Construction was chosen as Country Living Magazine’s “House of the Year.” Other homes built by the company have been featured in magazines such as Pacific Northwest Magazine, Luxury Homes, and Architectural Digest.

Mueller himself has won a number of awards, including Kitsap County’s Builder of the Year in 1989, Bainbridge Island Chamber of Commerce’s Business Person of the Year in 1995, and an award of merit from the Washington Trust for Historic Preservation for work done restoring the original mansion at the Bloedel Reserve. He has served in a number of positions including past president of the Homebuilder’s Association of Kitsap County (HBA); director of the National Association of Homebuilders (NAHB) from 1989 to 1998; and co-chair of the Winslow Master Plan Steering Committee.

“And I currently serve on the board of directors for American Marine Bank,” said Mueller. “In my spare time.”

Although his increased earnings that summer long ago inspired him to give construction a second look, and over the years he’s received many accolades, it’s not just these things that have kept Mueller in the business.

“Construction has been really rewarding,” said Mueller. “It’s great to look over your shoulder at the end of the day and see what you’ve done. I love working with the clients and helping them make their dreams come true.”.