Gilmore Builders

I started working for my father’s mason contracting business when I was about 5 years old. I was a lucky kid, my dad liked taking me to work and I liked going with him. I had my own lunch box and thermos and liked hanging out with the crew. My Dad had me mix mud, but I wasn’t strong enough to lift the bags of mortar on top of the cement mixer, so I had to dump the bags in buckets and build myself some makeshift scaffolding in order to dump the buckets in the mixer. During lunch I would take the leftover block and mud scraps and practice building stuff.  I remember the crew hassling me on the way home because I was a filthy mess, and I would always fall asleep because I was exhausted trying to keep up with the mud mixing.  I started out as a mason tender in grade school and moved my way up to a brick and stone mason during my high school and college years. It was tough work, but kept me in good shape. We had done a lot of masonry work for other builders in the area and one year we decided to build our own spec house, followed by a condominium project in Hartland called Olde Churchill Condominiums and another project in Pewaukee called Villas at Cardinal Ridge.