About CMG
A farm in East Lyme, and a father who checked the work.
CMG Construction is a tight-knit crew building and renovating homes along the southern Connecticut shoreline. This is where it came from and how it runs.
B / 01 Origin
It started with fencing, shelters, and a lot of supervision.
I grew up on a small farm in East Lyme. My brother Jeff and I spent most of our time building things with our father: fencing, shelters, whatever the property needed that season.
It was hands-on work, and the lesson in it was not really about carpentry. It was that you do things the right way even when nobody is standing behind you checking. On a farm the consequence of a lazy joint turns up in February when something has blown apart in a storm and an animal is standing in the weather. You learn quickly.
Twenty years later that is still the whole philosophy of this company. Most of what we build gets covered up. Framing disappears behind drywall. Waterproofing disappears behind tile. Blocking disappears entirely. The only person who will ever know whether it was done properly is the person who did it, and eventually, expensively, you.
So we build assuming somebody will open it up in thirty years and look. Occasionally somebody does.
B / 02 The crew
Small on purpose, and it stays that way.
CMG Construction is a tight-knit crew rather than a volume builder, and every project gets treated as though it were our own house.
There is a version of this business where you take on eleven projects at once, put a junior project manager on each, and the owner becomes someone the client meets at the contract signing and never again. It is more profitable. It is also why so many people have a contractor story.
We run a small number of projects at a time. The person who prices your job walks the site with you at the end of it. Our subcontractors are people we have worked with for years, not the cheapest quote of that particular month, and they show up when they say they will because they want the next job too.
What matters most to me is understanding what a homeowner actually pictured and then staying true to it, right down to details they did not think to mention. There is nothing better than watching someone walk into a finished space and find it went a little further than they expected.
B / 03 Values
Four commitments, and what each one costs us.
Anyone can list values. These are the ones we have actually lost money defending.
Honesty and transparency
We communicate openly about timelines, costs, and expectations. That includes telling you when a decision you are excited about is going to cost more than you think, or when your budget does not reach the scope you have described. Those conversations lose us work sometimes. They have never lost us a client.
Safety first
The wellbeing of our crew and the people living in the house comes ahead of the schedule. Fall protection goes up even when the job is two days. Sites get secured at the end of every day. If moving faster means cutting a corner on safety, we move slower.
Collaborative process
We work closely with homeowners, architects, and structural engineers rather than treating drawings as instructions to be followed silently. If we believe a detail will fail or cost more than it needs to, we raise it before it is built, which is occasionally an uncomfortable conversation with a designer.
Full accountability
We stand behind the work. If something is not right it comes back out at our expense, and we do not spend three weeks arguing about whose trade it was. You hired one company. That company answers for the result.
B / 04 Credentials
Licensed, insured, and permitted properly.
CMG Construction is a licensed new home builder and registered home improvement contractor in Connecticut, carrying general liability and workers compensation coverage. Certificates go out with every contract and are available on request before that.
We file our own permits. Building, zoning, inland wetlands, and coastal site plan review where the property requires it. We deal with the town directly, we attend the hearings, and we schedule the inspections. You do not become an amateur expert in your own municipality's application calendar.
Financing is available through Acorn, with a link on every invoice, for homeowners who would rather spread a project across a longer horizon than pull it out of savings in one go.
Communication is the cornerstone. We keep the process clear, honest, and steady from the first conversation through the final walk-through.
Founder · CMG Construction LLC
Next step
Come and see the work in person.
The best way to judge a builder is to stand in something they finished. We can usually arrange that with a past client.