After 61 years building homes, Glen Olin is retiring, again

EVERETT — Glen Olin built his first house in Everett in 1963, a 1,500-square-foot rambler that sold for $12,000.

He’s been swinging a hammer since.

What’s up with that?

“I am retiring, for real this time,” Olin said.

Or so he says.

Olin, 83, has tried to retire several times before.

“Someone calls and wants me to do a home,” he said.

He just finished a small custom home with a huge kitchen in Silver Lake, what he says is his last build.

It might stick this time. He didn’t renew his contractor license that expires April 1.

More than 80 people attended his March 16 retirement party at the Everett Elks Club. He didn’t want any fuss, but his wife insisted. A “Glen’s Career” memory board showed a sampling of photos of homes, mostly in Snohomish County.

“I have no idea how many I built, after 61 years,” he said. “I get asked that all the time.”

The board is a simple folding cardboard display. Nothing fancy, but those snapshots speak volumes.

Olin wears flannel shirts and a Seahawks cap. He tools around in a teal 1993 Ford Ranger XLT pickup truck with over 200,000 miles. His other rig is a ’94 white Ford work van, 400,000 miles strong.

“I’ve been through four or five recessions, but I made it through them all,” he said. “I always kept busy. People would call me and I’d go give them a bid.”

He built homes for people with gobs of cash and those with humble means.

“You didn’t have to have a lot of money,” he said. “I built for regular people most of the time.”

He denies having a favorite build.

“I want them to all feel that theirs is the best house,” he said. “I’ve always had pride in what I’ve done. They all turned out pretty nice.”

Some of his custom homes would fetch over $2 million now.

His final house was for longtime working friend Vern Southard, 87, a retired cabinetmaker.

“My wife wanted a large kitchen because she loves to bake,” Southard said.

She got one.

“He’s tops as far as I’m concerned,” Southard said. “He makes sure you get what you think you are going to get. He’s the kind of guy who enjoys building something that someone else is going to like.”

Until he was 10, Olin lived on a farm in North Dakota with no electricity or running water.

“Us kids had to work,” he said.

The chores continued after the family moved to Montana.

He and a younger brother, Lowell, came to Washington in the early 1960s and worked as carpenters. They were later joined by another hammer-slinging brother, Roger, and their parents, Pauline and Alvin.

“We put my dad to work,” Olin said.

His mom was a longtime checker at Olson’s Food in Silver Lake for years. She died in 2022 at age 100.

“Everybody who traded there knew who she was,” Olin said. “She tried to help everybody. Some people thought she owned the place.”

Olin formed friendships with many of his clients, and even more with one. Wendy Ermence hired him to build a home in Snohomish in 2005. She got a house and he got a wife out of the deal.

“He was highly recommended. I got to keep him,” she said. “Someone at the party said, ‘We hated to see him go.’ I said, ‘I understand, I kept him.’”

She contacted The Daily Herald, over his objections, to suggest him for this story. Olin tried his best to get out of it.

“Oh, my gosh. I’m just a regular person. You do stories about important people, not people like me,” he said.

That $12,000 first house he built is on First Place West, off busy 112th Street SE near Fourth Avenue West in Everett.

It was one of the first on the block in what was then an undeveloped part of town. The lot is a quarter-acre.

“My brother and I both were working for another contractor as carpenters,” Olin said. “We built that house on nights and weekends. When we sold it, I think we made $1,000 apiece for all the labor and profit. And we thought, ‘Boy, that’s good.’ In 1963, that was a good bit of money.”

It was the start.

“The banker told us, ‘I think you guys might do OK.’ So he gave us another loan,” he said.

The brothers then built spec homes.

“On Sundays, we’d have an open house. And that’s how we got customs,” he said, referring to custom homebuilding projects.

A 1969 newspaper ad shows an Olin Brother’s Construction split-level model home near Murphy’s Corner in Everett for $22,500 to $27,500. The current Zillow estimate is about $730,000.

“I wasn’t trying to be a real big builder,” Olin said. “I just wanted to be small, and do the work myself and get really good subs that knew what they were doing.”

Since the mid-1990s, most homes were custom builds, he said.

Times were simpler.

“Back in the olden days I’d go in and get a permit the same day I went in,” he said. “When we first started we didn’t even have steel in the foundations. That’s why it has gotten so expensive. They’ve come out with these new structural codes.”

Another change: “Everything is bigger.”

That modest $12,000 rambler with three bedrooms that Olin built on First Place West now has a Zillow estimate of about $650,000.

Pam Geer paid $264,950 for that house in 2014 for her parents so they could live near her in their golden years. She lives across the street.

Her parents have since passed. A tenant is in it now.

“I’ve had so many people wanting to buy this house,” Geer said. “I plan to age out over here. I love the place. It’s the best built house. It has hardwood floors throughout.”

The exterior is cedar siding with a brick accent below a large picture window.

I met up with Olin there last week. He pulled up in his teal pickup. From under his cap, he looked at the house and smiled.

“It looks just as good as when we built it in 1963,” he said. “It brings back memories. Just seems like maybe 20 years ago.”

Is there a person, place or thing making you wonder “What’s Up With That?” Contact reporter Andrea Brown: 425-339-3443; abrown@heraldnet.com; Twitter: @reporterbrown.