It’s a rare business story that starts this way: Two boys meet in kindergarten, find plenty of mischief together — including building extraordinary tree forts 25 feet off the ground in the woods behind their tiny Pleasantville, New York neighborhood — go their separate ways for college, and build disparate careers in construction on opposite sides of the continent before joining forces decades later in Montana to live out their childhood dream.

But Tim Rote and Kevin Sullivan are rare birds anyway. One need only step into their Bozeman office to see the signs.

This Madison Valley home by Dovetail Construction sits on a bench above a burbling spring creek. The dining room, shown here, has Montana moss rock on both sides and contemporary exposed structural steel above. The room opens entirely to the outdoors with bifold doors for alfresco streamside dining. | AUDREY HALL

On the walls alongside cover-worthy images of homes they’ve built, there are photos of people, too. Rote and Sullivan’s 1974 first-grade class picture hangs beside images of the two men on horseback with some of their clients, and fishing with others. There’s one of their seventh-grade science teacher, Mr. Walsh, with a gnarly purple chubby dry fly hooked into his nose. Rote and Sullivan delight in telling the story of his visit all these years later. In fact, they delight in telling each of the unwritten stories in the photos that line the walls. It’s clear Rote and Sullivan are people people.

Tim Rote (left) and Kevin Sullivan (right) are the founders and proprietors of Dovetail. They’ve been in business together for 21 years and best friends for more than five decades. | NATHAN NORBY

As founders and proprietors of Dovetail Construction, Rote and Sullivan are also master craftsmen and accomplished businessmen, having built a remarkable body of work across southwest Montana — from Big Timber to Big Sky, and Georgetown Lake to Ennis Lake — over two decades. They’ve established a reputation for quality and integrity, both in the luxury custom homes they build and, equally important for them, in the ways they contribute to their community.

But what they love, what they want to talk about, are the people they built for, the dreams that came to life board by board and nail by nail, and all the fun they had along the way.

While their shared journey began at Roselle Avenue School, Rote and Sullivan left their hometown for college: Rote headed north to Boston for a bachelor’s in construction management, and Sullivan left for Pennsylvania and civil engineering.

Known as “Angie’s Suite,” this room in a Spanish Peaks home is defined by a rolling barn door and an outsized window created from four different pieces of glass that form a crisscross. | AUDREY HALL

After working on Boston skyscrapers in college, Rote found inspiration from a great uncle who had worked as a marine engineer on supertanker projects after World War II. “That opened up a whole thing for me,” he says. “I realized construction is not just limited to residential building. It can be anything … and in all sorts of places.” Rote began his career in Hawaii, building resorts and an enormous bridge over five years, then moved to Alaska to work on a gold-mine project. Eventually, he made his way to Seattle, where he worked on projects for Boeing and for a private commercial design-build firm.

Sullivan stayed closer to home after college, doing landfill reclamation and heavy civil engineering work around the five boroughs of New York. But on weekends, he found himself racing to Vermont to go skiing. “I asked myself why I was doing that,” Sullivan says. “I spent every minute I could getting out of the city, to Vermont or Upstate New York. I needed to make a move.”

Toward that end, Sullivan agreed to meet one of his older brothers in Kalispell, Montana, and together they drove down through the Rockies, skiing everywhere they could. “When we got to Bozeman, I said, ‘Well, this is it,’” he says, recalling that it was the late 1990s and the town was already booming. It didn’t take long before Sullivan packed his bags in New York and headed west.

Another brother — all the Sullivan boys but Kevin were carpenters (their father had been a contractor and they had all pounded nails for him growing up) — had made a prescient suggestion as Kevin departed: “‘You know, you might want to bring your nail bags with you,’” Sullivan recalls his brother saying. “It was great advice. I got out here and got a job with a construction company as a carpenter, and I absolutely loved it. I loved building. I loved being outside. All of it,” he says.

The Dovetail founders’ first-grade class picture from 1974 hangs in their Bozeman office amid images of the homes they’ve built. Though they were separated in fourth grade for the mischief they caused when together, by seventh grade, they were placed back together so “teachers could keep an eye on us. And that didn’t work out too well either,” says Sullivan with a laugh. | COURTESY OF DOVETAIL CONSTRUCTION

Rote and Sullivan stayed best friends throughout the years, with Rote often visiting Sullivan in Montana to fly fish together. While Sullivan learned the ins and outs of custom home building and field operations around the Gallatin Valley, Rote managed major projects in the South Pacific and Pacific Northwest. But at Christmas one year, the friends met up at a pub back home, where they imagined what would happen if they married their skill sets. The idea took shape over time, with endless conversations and funny fax exchanges. By 2005, Rote had moved his family to Bozeman and Dovetail was born.

The name itself grew from the conversations they’d had over the years about what they loved and believed in. Sullivan was into woodworking and building furniture, so when Rote suggested they find a name that addressed construction but focused on quality and integrity, Sullivan proposed Dovetail, the interlocking woodworking joint known for its strength, durability, and beauty. “There’s no better way to show where quality joins integrity than in a dovetail joint,” he says.

“So that’s how it all started,” says Rote. “But I think the catalyst for why we wanted to start Dovetail is because I think it’s fair to say that most people are taken aback by car salesmen, lawyers, and contractors. We knew we had the skill sets to do things in a better way.”

From the porch of this farmhouse set against the Bridgers in Bozeman’s Springhill area, the homeowners have commanding views of six mountain ranges. | AUDREY HALL

The proof, as they say, is in the pudding. Dovetail’s projects include remarkable homes by some of the best-known architects and firms in the region, including JLF, Centre Sky, Reid Smith, Brechbuhler, Faure Halvorsen, and Miller Roodell, to name a few. While the sizes and styles of each home vary — from modern cabins to classic mountain lodges — all of them boast the exquisite craftsmanship for which Dovetail has become known.

In the 21 years since they founded Dovetail, Rote and Sullivan have built more than 70 projects across southwest Montana. And true to their intention of finding a better way to do things, they’ve forged meaningful friendships along the way. As evidence, they’ve stayed close friends with their very first client, Todd Eliason, who recalls the way the duo overcame challenges.

“As with any complex construction project, things come up during the course of construction that can often strain relationships,” says Eliason. “Their approach, candor, creativity, and sense of humor ameliorated these very few situations. At one point, we had a misunderstanding about our kitchen layout that really was an issue with the architect, and Kevin tackled it head-on and helped us find a solution so my wife was satisfied. I think at that point I said, ‘I trust you guys with my life, my marriage, and my house. Go for it!’ I still believe that today.”

What Rote and Sullivan continue to believe today is that their original mission — to provide a better way of doing things, to join quality with integrity — holds up. They still are who they were when they started.

For the primary bedroom in this same Bozeman farmhouse, Dovetail created the illusion of a log cabin with hand-hewn timbers and authentic chinking. | AUDREY HALL

Dovetail serves roughly four clients per year with a time-tested team of craftsmen and subcontractors. Instead of growing bigger, they’ve chosen to focus on growing better. “The growth in this valley has been incredible, and we’ve seen companies who seem to have grown beyond their mission statement,” Sullivan says. “But for us, it’s not about making as much money as we can make. It’s about living in this community, being satisfied with the product we’re putting out, and being able to walk down Main Street and see people that we’ve built houses for and still have pleasant chats.”

Eliason offers more evidence of just such success. “In my previous experience with building my home in Kirkland, Washington, at the end of the process I did not want to have any interactions with my builder again. With Dovetail it was the complete opposite. Tim and Kevin are not just great builders, they are good guys, too.”

In addition to their professional integrity on each and every job, Sullivan and Rote hark back to some lessons they learned in kindergarten. “They are really easy fundamentals,” Rote says. “Be good people. Treat people the way we want to be treated. Do what you say you’re going to do.”

After more than two decades of experience building homes in complex alpine settings with seismic activity, some as high as 9,000 feet above sea level, Dovetail Construction expertly secures structures to the earth using micropiles and helical piers. | NATHAN NORBY

Indeed, both men live up to the high standards they set. Sullivan volunteers for Eagle Mount and the Special Olympics. Rote is a past president of Bozeman’s Sunrise Rotary and, with Sullivan, organizes an annual fix-up festival helping underprivileged people complete work on their homes. He volunteers for Project Healing Waters, a fishing program for wounded veterans, and was the state coordinator of the Reel Recovery program, which takes men with cancer fly fishing. For them, contributing to their community is a natural extension of how much they love this place.

Rote and Sullivan are practiced at deflecting attention from their own achievements in favor of gratitude for those who made such achievements possible. Whether praising their wives and children, their clients, the architects who have hired them, or the subcontractors and artisans who have worked for them, Rote and Sullivan agree on their own good fortune, and point again to the pictures on the wall. “We wouldn’t be anything without them, you know?” Rote says.

A writer and editor for various publications, Carter Walker covers art, architecture, food, travel, and culture. Her latest travel guide from Moon Books, Yellowstone to Glacier National Parks Road Trip, was released on March 31, 2026. She has a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing from the University of Southern Maine’s Stonecoast program and always has at least one creative project going. Walker is a founding board member of The Montana Project, which empowers Montana artists to advocate for the places that inspire them.