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Old Montana Building Company
Somer Treat By Mary Wallace Photos by alisia dawn photography
Somer Joy Treat grew up in West Glacier, part of a huge close-knit family. Because her grandfather worked as the Road Superintendent in Glacier National Park for 48 years, it is no surprise that she returned to her roots to accept a position as the official Glacier Park photographer after receiving her Fine Arts degree from the University of Montana. No surprise that she loved working for the Park Service. Life was good! So how in the world did she come to make a rather abrupt switch in careers from photography to the construction business? Somer dove into construction by a rather unorthodox means. She was happily working her days away at the U.S. Park Service when Jon Krack invited her for coffee one day. She had been acquainted with Jon for about 10 years and knew that he had previously been a software consultant for Microsoft. She also knew that he had recently formed a construction company, Old Montana Building Company. He had started with a development project called the Timbers in Whitefish and was growing it into a company focused on building custom homes. Jon told Somer he wanted a woman on his team and asked her to consider joining him at Old Montana Building Company. He gave her a rather vague job description, promising that there would be few limits in her position and he wanted to see how they could work as a team. He also gave her some homework. “Go pick out
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some cabinets and get some quotes . . . see if this is something you’d like to do.” The long and the short of it is that Somer decided to jump in with both feet and they both liked it so much that she quickly became a partner in the business. The unique teamwork has evolved into an award-winning construction company. Running the company together as a tightly-focused team, they are currently juggling about a dozen projects scattered from West Glacier to Bigfork and points in between. While Jon was named the Flathead Building Association’s 2014 Builder of the Year and they won 9 awards in the 2014 Parade of Homes, Jon & Somer both are the quick to point out that it wasn’t just Old Montana Building Company, but also their team of local contractors and vendors who make the homes and building experience special. Somer’s official capacity is as the Project Manager/Designer for Old Montana - She guides the homeowner from start to finish on the home
building project. Due to their reputation and portfolio of homes, people come to Old Montana Building Company to help them design and build their new home. Somer starts working with them from the early planning stages all the way through the completed project to ensure their new home will truly meet their family’s needs. As the project moves along, she also gets to help design the cabinets, hardware, and paint – the part she calls ‘the frosting on the cake’.
Somer says that that both her favorite and least favorite part of her job is when each project is finally done and on the last day, the homeowner says “I love this house!” Each project, to her, is like bringing up a child – they are babies, they grow, they got through an awkward teenage phase, they go to college and have their fun phase, they graduate, and suddenly . . . a perfect kid (or house as the case may be) is suddenly standing there. “We really end up caring about our clients during the building process!” says Somer. “I love that we become part of our client’s lives and part of their