Orren Pickell Building Group

Call Directions Website Contact the business

Orren Pickell Building Group We design, build, remodel, and maintain award-winning luxury custom homes. Contact us today to discuss your next project!

Orren Pickell Building Group manages every phase of custom home building and remodeling for clients throughout Chicagoland, Southern Wisconsin, and Harbor Country Michigan. With over 40 years of experience in the industry, we have a reputation built upon outstanding value, craftsmanship, and service. Our estimating, design, construction, home maintenance, and cabinetry experts offer the peace of mind homeowners should expect regarding all aspects of their new home or renovation projects. We believe in cost transparency, with current project pricing available on each customer's secure website.

We're growing.Orren Pickell is looking for a Construction Superintendent to join the team in Harbor Country, Michigan. I...
10/20/2026

We're growing.

Orren Pickell is looking for a Construction Superintendent to join the team in Harbor Country, Michigan. If you've been building high-end custom homes for 7+ years and you're ready to lead your own projects with a team that actually cares about the craft, this one's worth a look.

Full-time, Monday through Friday. Competitive pay, full benefits, and the kind of work that you're proud to put your name on.

Details at pickellbuilders.com/employment-opportunities

Every fall, we close out the season the right way.Ci**rs, a char, good company -- and a reminder that what gets built he...
10/19/2026

Every fall, we close out the season the right way.

Ci**rs, a char, good company -- and a reminder that what gets built here doesn't happen because of one team. It happens because of all of them.

Subcontractors, trade partners, vendors, suppliers. The people who show up before sunrise on the hard days and still take pride in the work.

Thank you. Genuinely. Cigar and Char wouldn't mean anything without every one of you in it.

See you next year.

On a lakeshore property, the site is the permanent decision. Everything else can be changed.You can gut a kitchen. You c...
10/16/2026

On a lakeshore property, the site is the permanent decision. Everything else can be changed.

You can gut a kitchen. You can swap out fixtures. You can repaint every room. You cannot move a house off a busy road, reorient it away from a noisy marina, or give it a view it wasn't built to capture.

That's why site review comes before design on every vacation home we build in Harbor Country and Lake Geneva. How the house sits relative to the dune line, the water, the trees, and the neighbors -- that's the decision that determines the home's value and livability for every year you own it.

Build right once. That's the whole point.

Link in bio.

The amenities in a vacation home are only as good as the infrastructure behind them.An outdoor kitchen needs gas, water,...
10/14/2026

The amenities in a vacation home are only as good as the infrastructure behind them.

An outdoor kitchen needs gas, water, and electrical service sized for real use — not a grill connection and a hope. A spa shower needs hot water capacity for back-to-back guests, not just one. A smart home panel is only worth anything if a caretaker can reset it in minutes when something goes wrong.

The difference between a vacation home that performs and one that frustrates isn't the list of features. It's whether those features were engineered in during design or bolted on during finishing.

Systems also need a plan for the months when nobody's home. That's not a detail — it's the whole point of building with a team that stays involved after closing.

Link in bio.

The word gets used loosely, so here's an honest test for a vacation home.Does the description survive the driveway? Quie...
10/12/2026

The word gets used loosely, so here's an honest test for a vacation home.

Does the description survive the driveway? Quiet should mean quiet — not "a county road behind a tree buffer."

Are fixtures specified, or just present? Grade shows up in photos and in person within minutes.

Is the house designed, or decorated? Layout, ceiling height, and daylight can't be staged.

Would the owner actually stay here? Usually obvious inside ten minutes.

A vacation home earns the label the same way a primary residence does — through siting, structure, materials, and systems that work every time. Square footage and a marble backsplash won't get you there alone.

Link in bio for the full breakdown.

📍 Lake Geneva, Wisconsin

One thing the North Shore doesn't have is a production option.Winnetka, Kenilworth, Glencoe, Wilmette — all platted more...
10/10/2026

One thing the North Shore doesn't have is a production option.

Winnetka, Kenilworth, Glencoe, Wilmette — all platted more than a century ago and built out long before the modern subdivision. There's no raw acreage left for a volume builder to develop. Nearly every new house here rises on a lot that already held one.

That means the site always comes before the plan. Fixed setbacks, mature trees, neighboring rooflines, village design review processes, older infrastructure. A catalog floor plan can't absorb any of that.

Custom building on the North Shore isn't a premium preference. It's just how building here works.

Link in bio.

📍 North Shore, Chicagoland

There are eight steps in a custom home build. The one that runs longest and costs the most to get wrong is step three.De...
10/08/2026

There are eight steps in a custom home build. The one that runs longest and costs the most to get wrong is step three.

Design and selections. Four to nine months on a North Shore project. This is where floor plans get drawn, elevations get resolved, structural decisions get made, and every finish in the house gets chosen. Hundreds of individual selections — tile, cabinetry, hardware, flooring, fixtures, stone — across every room.

What keeps it from becoming chaos is sequence. Structural and mechanical decisions come first because they affect everything downstream. Long lead items — custom windows, specialty appliances, natural stone — get ordered during design, not after groundbreaking. Cabinetry gets designed alongside the architecture so plumbing and electrical rough-in are right the first time.

Get that phase right and the rest of the build runs the way it's supposed to.

Link in bio for the full process guide.

📍 North Shore, Chicagoland

Before a single line gets drawn on your custom home, there's a lot of work that has to happen first.Zoning, setbacks, so...
10/02/2026

Before a single line gets drawn on your custom home, there's a lot of work that has to happen first.

Zoning, setbacks, soil conditions, utility capacity, drainage patterns, tree preservation rules, shoreline setbacks. The site drives everything. A floor plan that ignores the lot it sits on is just a sketch.

On a lakefront site in Genoa City, that due diligence layer is especially important. Waterfront properties carry their own permitting requirements, shoreline setbacks, and drainage considerations that don't show up on a standard lot. Get those wrong in the planning phase and they become very expensive problems later.

The decisions that matter most in a custom build happen before construction starts — and often before design starts.

Link in bio for the full step-by-step breakdown.

📍 Genoa City, Wisconsin — Lake Geneva area

The most common mistakes in a custom build don't happen during construction. They happen before it starts.Choosing a bui...
09/30/2026

The most common mistakes in a custom build don't happen during construction. They happen before it starts.

Choosing a builder on price alone. The lowest bid rarely reflects the real cost — it often just means margin gets recovered through change orders or substituted materials down the line.

Skipping a real design phase. Decisions made at the design table cost a fraction of what they cost once walls are up.

Leaving technology as an afterthought. Smart home systems need conduit and equipment space roughed in during framing. Retrofitting them after walls close is expensive and limited.

Underestimating the lot. A strong house on a poorly considered site loses value it can never recover.

Nearly 50 years of building on the North Shore means we've seen every one of these play out. The builds that go smoothly aren't lucky — they're planned.

Link in bio for the full guide.

📍 North Shore, Chicagoland

Building a custom home is a seven-step process, and the order matters more than most people expect.It starts with defini...
09/28/2026

Building a custom home is a seven-step process, and the order matters more than most people expect.

It starts with defining your vision and your realistic investment range — including a 10 to 15% contingency that actually gets used. Then comes the lot, which shapes everything that follows: topography, orientation, zoning, neighborhood trajectory.

From there, your builder and architect come on together. Not sequentially — together. That alignment between design intent and construction feasibility prevents the expensive redesigns that happen when those two conversations are separate.

Then material and finish selections, which account for close to a quarter of total construction costs. Then permits. Then construction milestones with regular updates. Then a final walkthrough that actually catches everything before you take possession.

Getting the steps in the right order — with the right team — is what makes the difference.

Link in bio.

📍 North Shore, Chicagoland

Address

444 Skokie Boulevard
Wilmette, IL
60091

Opening Hours

Monday 8am - 5pm
Tuesday 8am - 5pm
Wednesday 8am - 5pm
Thursday 8am - 5pm
Friday 8am - 5pm

Telephone

+18474238199

Website

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when Orren Pickell Building Group posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Contact The Business

Send a message to Orren Pickell Building Group:

Shortcuts

Share

Category