Schultz Miller Profile: Jim Hovick
Jim Hovick recalls watching his dad remodel the family kitchen . . . without any tools. So Jim started out by buying the right tools, taking on small projects, and building from there. He was born and raised in Ballard, graduated from Ballard High School in 1965, and is proud to have served in the Air Force. For years, he worked part-time as a trim carpenter and part-time as a boat builder. “You can learn a tremendous amount about trim carpentry from boat building,” Jim says, “because nothing is plumb, level, or square on a boat.” In 1989, Jim joined Schultz Miller, which was then located in his native Ballard.
He enjoys his work with Schultz Miller because our projects often take him outside the norm, offering him a chance to work with different materials or to create unusual details. Among his crewmates, he’s known as a good closer, able to complete a job that otherwise doesn’t seem to want to finish. He recalls an early Schultz Miller job where he was challenged to join a vertical piece of trim to a sloped piece of trim. He got around it with a small, triangular-shaped third trim piece. Not long ago, he came to the same problem. “How do you want me to handle this?” he asked company owner Terry Miller. Terry said: “Same as you did years ago.” It says a lot about Jim that Terry had remembered.