The Dallas Morning News
By STEVE QUINN

Shelley Reynolds has until May 18 to complete a 5,998-square-foot house that her company is building in Frisco's Starwood development. It's not an unreasonable deadline, Ms. Reynolds says, but she's still nervous.

May 18 is the beginning of the Home Builders Association of Greater Dallas' Parade of Homes. And Ms. Reynolds' Frisco house will be the first to be showcased from a female builder.

"Everyone told me it would be a nightmare," said Ms. Reynolds, who owns and runs Reynolds Signature Homes. "But it's been a lot of fun. There are just a lot of little things I need to get done."

Since coming to Frisco from Memphis, Tenn., in 1999, Ms. Reynolds has completed two houses in Starwood and has four others under construction and two in the planning stages.

"She's had more hurdles to fight off than any male," said Dena Compton, director of sales and marketing for Starwood.

Women are still a tiny minority in the home-building industry. The National Association of Home Builders' most recent survey, finished five years ago, found that only 3 percent of its 146,000 member companies were operated by women.

The number is now up to about 5 percent, said Marilyn Kneebone, president of the association's women's council.

"The first assumption most people make is that you must be an interior decorator because it's such a male-dominated industry," said Debora Trimpe, a Flower Mound builder and former president of the Dallas Association of Home Builders.

That's why Ms. Reynolds' time in the spotlight during the Parade of Homes is so important to women builders, Ms. Trimpe said.

"If you have a passion and a love for this industry, and believe in what you do – building quality homes – you work past those issues," she said.

Most of the structural work has been finished on Ms. Reynolds' showcase home on Brandywine Lane. The landscaping work, including a backyard putting green, and interior work remain, and Ms. Reynolds is making some last-minute alterations.

Ms. Reynolds, 35, first donned a tool belt when she was a kid in Michigan, working for her father, a shop teacher-turned-builder.

She graduated from Hillsdale College in her hometown of Hillsdale, Mich., with a marketing degree in 1988, but she slowly gravitated back toward home building.

She began by remodeling houses that she and her husband, Jeff, an advertising executive, bought as they moved across the Midwest and Northeast. By the time they landed in Memphis, Ms. Reynolds had decided to start building custom homes from scratch.

That experience didn't carry a lot of weight, however, when the Reynolds family moved to Frisco three years ago.

"I'd get more looks of surprise here than I ever got in Memphis," Ms. Reynolds said.

Before she could break ground at Starwood, Ms. Reynolds had to sell herself to executives at Blue Star Land LP. Blue Star wanted her to get more experience in the Dallas market, perhaps by working for another builder first.

But after Blue Star officials got to know her, they eventually sold Ms. Reynolds two lots. She built her family's home on one of them.

John Howard, a custom framer for M.J. Builders in Dallas, said he had enjoyed watching Ms. Reynolds establish her credibility.

"She knows the business, and she's firm. She's also one of the best builders I've worked for in the 25 years I've been doing this."

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