Custom Homes
Conventional custom homes, managed from planning through to final details — not every house we build is a metal building.
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Business and personal · Harrison and Boone County
Metal buildings in Harrison, Arkansas
Shops, storage and workspaces for a business or for personal use, sized and spanned around what has to fit inside. We put them up. We do not drop them off on a trailer.
What it is
A building shaped around the work
Our metal buildings are durable, customisable spaces for both business and personal use — whether that is somewhere for your hobbies, storage that has to keep the weather out, or a fully-equipped workshop your business runs out of every day.
Metal construction has become the default for this kind of project because of its versatility. A metal building can be designed for commercial use, a shop, storage, a workspace or a specialty structure, and steel framing gives you large, open interior spaces that are difficult and expensive to get any other way.
The real advantage, though, is at the planning stage. The building gets developed around how the space actually needs to function, rather than forcing you to work inside a layout somebody else already decided on. That matters here in North Arkansas, where every property and every use is a little different.
Who builds one
The people we build these for
A business that has outgrown its space
Auto shops, contractors, storage and light manufacturing. A building sized to the equipment and the workflow, with the door openings and the clear floor the work genuinely needs.
Personal and hobby shops
Somewhere for the projects, the equipment and the tools, built properly rather than assembled out of whatever was on the lot. Often with a lean-to bay for the tractor or covered parking.
Somebody who has already bought a building
If a supplier has sold you a package and you are now looking for someone dependable to erect it, that is precisely the job this company was started to do.
Before we draw anything
Questions we ask first
No two buildings should be treated the same. These are the questions that decide the footprint and the structural layout, and we would rather work through them with you than sell you a size off a list.
- How much interior space do you actually need?
- How will vehicles or equipment move through the building?
- Where do the entrances need to be, and how big?
- What kind of equipment will be operating inside?
- Do you need large open areas with no posts in them?
- Will parts of the building eventually be divided into separate spaces?
What we do
From slab to finished building
The sequence below is the one we walked through publicly on a real Boone County job, from an empty site to steel in the air.
01
Coordination before concrete
The foundation and slab establish the base for the whole structure. Framing, plumbing locations, concrete, utilities and equipment access all have to be coordinated at this stage, because each one changes what happens next.
02
Steel in the air
Columns, beams and roof framing create the skeleton. This is the first point where you can read the real size, layout and footprint of the finished space, and where the spacing of the framing shows you how much open floor you are getting.
03
Envelope
Roofing, siding, overhead doors, walk doors and windows, flashed so the building is still tight in fifteen years. This is the part a delivered kit leaves entirely to you.
04
Interior and services
Insulation, lighting, power to where the equipment actually is, and any interior division. What eventually looks simple and clean is the result of hundreds of decisions made in the stages before it.
A kit is a bill of materials. A building is what happens next.
Most of what you find online for metal buildings in Harrison is a delivered, installed unit. Somebody still has to set the steel, plumb and square it, tie it to the slab, flash the envelope properly, and coordinate every trade that comes after.
That is the whole reason this company exists. Ben Bowser grew up in his family's steel roofing and siding business, spent more than thirty years in the trade, and kept watching customers buy a metal building and then struggle to find a dependable contractor to erect it. So he started one.
Cost
What actually drives the number
There is no price list on this page. These are the things that genuinely change what a metal building costs.
Clear span
How far the frame has to reach without a post is the biggest structural cost lever there is. Decide whether you truly need a clear floor before you decide anything else.
Eave height and door openings
Doors sized for what actually drives in, and the eave height that follows. Bigger openings mean more framing around them, not just a bigger door.
Insulation and interior finish
A conditioned, finished workspace and an unheated storage building are different projects. So is a building you will divide into separate spaces later — plan for it now and it is cheap; retrofit it and it is not.
Site and access
Slope, rock, and whether a delivery truck and a lift can actually reach where the building is going. On Ozark sites this is a real number and it is easy to underestimate.
Scope
Erecting a package you have already bought, putting up a shell, or delivering a finished conditioned building are three different jobs. Tell us which one you are pricing.
Proof
Metal buildings
The metal buildings photographed on this page are ours. What we have not done yet is publish a proper case study for one — the size, the span, the scope and the finish written down where you can read them — and that is a gap we would rather name than paper over.
The two published projects closest to this work are the Shop House, a red iron structure with a shop and connected living quarters, and the Valley Springs Fitness Center, where we provided the steel framework on a red iron commercial building. Neither is a plain shop building, and we are not going to present them as one.
Straight answers
Questions we get asked
No prices and no timelines below. Both are project numbers, and a builder who quotes them before seeing your site is guessing at your expense.
- Do you sell metal building kits?
- No. We are a contractor, not a supplier. If you have already bought a building from a manufacturer or a dealer, erecting somebody else's package is exactly the job this company was founded to do — bring us the drawings and the bill of materials.
- What sizes do you build?
- We start from what has to fit inside rather than from a size list. Tell us the equipment, the vehicles, the clear floor you need and whether you want posts in the middle, and the footprint, span and eave height follow from that.
- What is red iron, and do I need it?
- Red iron is engineered structural steel — columns, beams and roof framing designed for your building rather than assembled from stock light-gauge sections. It is what carries long clear spans. Our commercial work is built on it, and so is our published Shop House.
- Do you pour the slab?
- On a full build we prepare the site and build the foundation the structure needs — slab, crawl space or another engineered system — and we coordinate the trades around it. Tell us what you already have arranged and we will tell you plainly who is doing what before you sign anything.
- Can you put living quarters in a metal building?
- Yes. With a shop on one end and a house on the other it is called a shouse; with most of the floor area finished as living space it is a barndominium. Both are on our barndominium page, because the design questions are different enough from a plain shop to be worth reading about separately.
- Do I need a permit for a metal building in Boone County?
- It depends on your parcel. Requirements differ inside Harrison city limits and in unincorporated Boone County, and they change. We confirm what applies to your specific address with the authority having jurisdiction rather than repeating something we read online.
Also from us
The rest of what we build
Six categories, one crew, one company answering the phone.
Commercial Buildings
Metal commercial buildings for businesses opening, expanding or replacing a building they have outgrown — and the structural steel package underneath somebody else's job.
1 project
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Barndominiums
Metal buildings with full living quarters inside — open-concept, energy-efficient and low-maintenance. Shouses, where the shop comes first, are built the same way.
4 projects
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Steel Roofing & Siding
Metal roofing, siding, soffit, gutters and downspouts — on a new building, or replacing what is on one you already own.
2 projects
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…and More
Additions, remodels, outdoor structures, agricultural and other specialty buildings — the work that does not fit neatly under one of the other five.
1 project
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Get a quote for your upcoming project
Tell us what has to fit inside, whether you need a clear floor, and where the site is. That is enough to start.