AROUND
THE BLOCK

About Mediterraneo

We’re Mediterraneo Design Build, a construction firm in Menlo Park that has served the Bay Area since 1991, working closely with homeowners and architects on more than 150 new residential and major remodeling projects.

Our Philosophy

There was a time when builders could frame a house with little more than a broad ax to fell trees and hew them square, and a knife with which to whittle the wooden pegs that joined the great posts and beams. It took dozens of neighbors to help raise those massive frames, so at every stage, house-building took great skill, close collaboration and constant communication.

When builders used the word “true” in those days it was often a verb. When you trued a log, you made its faces as flat as humanly possible. A trued wall was perfectly plumb. “Almost” didn’t cut it: either it was true or it wasn’t. Likewise, if a builder was “true as his word,” you had no doubt about the craft, quality or integrity that went into his houses.

Times and tools change. Long ago the sawmill supplanted the hewer of trees, and the plumb bob gave way to laser levels that today do everything but brew your coffee. But we’d like to think that integrity still has great value to everyone who designs and builds homes, or lives in them. And that exceptional skill, unstinting standards, close collaboration and constant communication are still the best paths to building it true—true to the owner’s vision, true to the architect’s design, and true to the great traditions of honest building.

March 7, 2020

Great Resource: Journal Of Light Construction (JLC)

As passionate builders and innovators exploring the complicated details of buildings and how they go together, we are excited to share a resource with you that we love – The Journal of Light Construction, or JLC for short.

This is a fantastic publication for folks in the residential building community and for those that like to see the nuts and bolts of how buildings are built, new means and methods, case studies of when things go wrong, etc.  Without fail they have an article that is relevant to work that we are currently working on.
 
Some articles that we’ve recently enjoyed include:
We will look forward to sharing more of the JLC articles down the road that we find particularly interesting and relevant.
 
Happy Building!
Mediterraneo Builders