
Meet the Team
Barak Gibson
Owner/General Contractor
Tressa Jones
Designer
Sam Gibson
Director of Operations
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Owner/Licensed General Contractor
Barak grew up smelling sawdust. His rough, calloused hands were evidence of the many days he spent on construction sites with his dad.
While he thought he’d take a different course than his dad, construction has always followed him. When he built a multi-million dollar retail company, part of his role was overseeing the build-out of new stores popping up around the country. When he moved to Selma, AL to do nonprofit work, he found himself renovating a five-story building into a youth center.
So when a friend approached him about starting a construction company together, he knew he could do it. Life had gotten him ready to embrace how much he really loved it.
The first Hammertime project didn’t make a dime, but it was worth every penny to remind him how much he loves this work. And how much he’d missed the smell of sawdust.
He spends his days overseeing home renovation projects while watching out for the people inside those homes. His nights are often filled with teaching kids how to do woodworking.
He’s the kind of guy you want to have in your house, managing your project - dependable, caring, authentic.
He has a gift to see a project for its potential, not its actual. His friends would tell you it’s how he sees people, too.
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Designer
When she was a little girl, her sister dressed the Barbie dolls while Tressa designed their house. She was too busy making their home beautiful to care if their hair was brushed. When she was done with the Barbie dream house, she’d go rearrange the furniture in her room or make sure all of her stuffed animals were set perfectly on her bed.
Design was in her blood. She didn’t know, though, until her family moved to a rundown house, and she watched her mom come alive as she built onto it, changed the carpet, picked out mirrors, and painted every room. It made her happy simply to see her mom happy, and more than it taught her about design, it gave her an example of someone who chose not to be bitter about a hard situation.
Tressa used those lessons years later when she was going through a hard divorce while caring for her two kids and finishing interior design school. Like her mom, she chose not to carry the bitterness of that situation and used design to fill her days.
She knew if she could take an empty home and design it into something beautiful, she could have faith that her hard situation could turn into something beautiful, too. That’s how she approaches every project and every day.
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Director of Operations
You’ll be grateful to know Sam won’t be picking up any power tools or making any design suggestions on your job site. But you’ll be equally as grateful to know that she’ll be keeping your project organized and humming along from behind the scenes.
With a broken family, Sam didn’t have much order in her childhood and didn’t always find much joy in life. But somehow, she’s been perfectly created to meld those two things together.
She loves Post-Its as much as she loves to laugh. You’ll find her color-coding as much as you’ll find her smiling. She’s always wanted a label-maker, but not as much as she’s wanted to see others happy.
She’s spent her whole life searching for home, and now that she’s found hers, she’s excited to help you build yours.
