Solid Success Dobsons Have Built A Thriving Brick Business In Spokane Area

Jamie and Roger Dobson met in Sunday school.

Both were age 4 when Jamie’s grandmother decided they should sit together in church.

Today the Sunday school playmates have two children and a thriving chimney cleaning and repair business in Colbert.

And it could be said the Dobson’s have built their business brick by brick.

They grew up friends and went to the same high school in West Seattle. When they finished, Roger thought he’d join the Navy. But before he could enlist, Jamie gave him the phone number of a brick mason who was looking for help.

“He asked how tall I was, if I played sports and if I was afraid of heights,” said the tall, athletic mason. Having answered all the questions correctly, he began his first job, carrying bricks to the craftsmen.

“As soon as I touched the first brick, I knew this was the job I wanted to do,” he said. At 18, he loved that he could work outside, stay in shape and earn a living.

After he learned what he could from the Norwegian fireplace builder who ran the business, Dobson broke away and started his own company in the Seattle area.

“We started our family, and our needs were for something bigger,” said Jamie.

They wanted more space with more yard for their children, Justin and Whitney, and they knew their money would go further in Spokane.

“We came over here for a long weekend and we loved the area,” said Jamie. “I felt like we went into a time tunnel and went back 10 years.”

The previous homeowner even left behind several large piles of bricks rescued from Spokane’s street renovations.

The Dobsons run their business from a remodeled building next to their house. A fire burns in a stove just inside the office door, while out front are several white trucks and vans that drive the Dobson’s logo throughout the region.

Dobson’s Construction, which has six employees, does everything from building new hearths to restoring the brickwork on the chimney of the 100-year-old Patsy Clark’s Mansion. They also do insurance evaluations and chimney sweeping.

But the business began slowly nine years ago.

“We didn’t realize how conservative Spokane is,” said Jamie. “It’s so much word-of-mouth referral here.”

They counted on cold calls from advertisements and the phone book. Often, they found customers hunting for bargains.

“In Spokane, they’ll call every single contractor in the book and you’ll lose the job for $20,” she said.

Today, though, their business is thriving. Word-of-mouth has finally paid off.

“It took us six or seven years to work our way in,” said Roger.

Meantime, Jamie ran a day-care business from their home. But two years ago she had to stop and focus on bookkeeping and scheduling appointments for the masonry business.

“Now we can devote the time to it that it needs,” Roger said.

One peak time was the ice storm of 1996, when their phone didn’t stop ringing, the Dobsons said. People were trying to use their fireplaces for the first time in years.

Roger spent his days driving from house to house, opening up long-shut flumes and using kindling from his truck to start fires. Because of the weather, he couldn’t clean or repair the fireplaces, but he could fix them enough to keep people warm when the electricity went out.

“We got a lot of follow-up business from that,” he said.

And this year, because some people worry they may have Y2K heating or electrical problems, they’re calling Dobsons again to make sure their chimneys and fireplaces are sound.

“It has been a fun year,” Roger said.

Still, challenges remain. In the winter, it gets too cold to climb the specially made German scaffolding that Dobson uses to repair the frozen mortar and loose bricks. And Dobson finds special challenges in repairing older chimneys.

“I love the work,” he said.“But the most difficult thing in town is to take a 100-year-old home and find a brick for it in the 1990s.”