Stepped-Up Solutions
Flooring contractor lays an unconventional path
For James Morrell, flooring is more than plush carpet, fancy tiles or resilient wood systems. Flooring is often an environmental barrier, a non-slip safety system and even a soundproofing mechanism.
Morrell is the founder and owner of Veteran Solutions Inc., a family-owned flooring business based in San Diego. Beyond the installation of carpeting, tiles and wood solutions for commercial operations, he and his crew are best known for taking on the most challenging repair, remediation and restoration flooring challenges.
To date, the company has solved the flooring problems for some of southern California’s most recognizable names, from Regulus Therapeutics, Inc. to Precision Diagnostics (formerly Precision Toxicology).
Beyond the Berber
Morrell has been in the flooring business most of his professional life. In 1993, while in his late 20s, he founded and operated a retail flooring business. Through that business, he built a strong reputation within the commercial and government communities, particularly with the state of California, for good work. Those clients liked his work ethic so much that they asked if he had considered other construction-related tasks, such as soundproofing, mold remediation, etc.
With an eye to potential business opportunities, he studied for and obtained his general contractors license, learning as much as he could about how to build floors, walls and ceilings. Little did he know that it was that license and those business associates who would help him redefine his professional career many years down the road.
In 2008, Morrell sold his retail carpeting business in order to raise his then newborn daughter. He says, “I was 45 years old when she was born, and so excited to be a father. I wanted to take some time off professionally and spend as much time as possible with her in those critical first few years. Fortunately, my wife had an excellent job, which facilitated the adjustment.”
Over the next few years, Morrell talked with colleagues and friends regularly, but continued to focus on his daughter. To keep his foot in the door, he established a new flooring company that he called Veteran Solutions in 2009, even though he still wasn’t ready for full-time work … until December 2011.
Morrell says, “The owner of a storage unit called via a recommendation from a colleague with the state of California. He needed help cleaning up from a water line break at his storage facility. The water wiped out the storage lockers, filling them with mud and water. Because it wasn’t cleaned up right away, they needed to remediate mold.”
Within a day of the call, Morrell gathered a professional cleanup team to remediate the storage unit. Once it was complete, he realized that he really liked repair and restoration work more than the retail side.
He says, “I like the challenge of solving problems, which is what a restoration project is all about. I also like to do things that others can’t do, like concrete grinding and moisture barrier installation. There aren’t a whole lot of people who can do all the specialized things that we’re doing. We still put in flooring, but that’s not our primary niche—floor restoration, the installation of moisture vapor barriers and concrete leveling is our unique skill set.”
“I like the challenge of solving problems, which is what a restoration project is all about.” James Morrell, Founder and Owner, Veteran Solutions Inc.
From the Ground Up
The storage unit remediation job provided the seed money for Morrell to invest in quality remediation and restoration equipment. Most of his business comes from referrals and his reputation in the industry. After several years, and many jobs, and as the business progressed and evolved, he bought concrete grinding equipment and a 90kW generator to run it.
Initially, Morrell did most jobs on his own until he had enough backlog to hire a skilled crew. Today, that crew includes Peter Harn, Lead Estimator and Sales Manager, Betty Anderson, bookkeeper and administrator, Joe Matrecito and Brandon Kolosky, job coordinators, and eight to 10 skilled concrete professionals in the field.
Since 2011, the Veteran Solutions team has epoxied floors, ground, leveled and polished concrete and applied moisture barriers to a range of projects for commercial clients in the government, pharmaceutical and health care markets.
One of the most complex projects was Regulus Therapeutics, a biopharmaceutical laboratory in San Diego. The concrete in the building was uneven and cracked, and particularly dangerous in the facility’s cleanrooms. Over the course of four months, Veteran Solutions did massive floor preparation to 59,300 square feet of concrete by grinding and self-leveling the entire area to prepare it. In various areas, Morrell and his crew installed stone, commercial wood, carpet tile, vinyl composition tile, and a seamless epoxy floor with an integral cove base.
They’ve also self-leveled the concrete foundation and installed a moisture barrier at the LEGO® Store and installed their own specialized eco-grip flooring on commercial kitchen floors at leading restaurants, such as Denny’s, Viewpoint Brewing Co., The Hake and more.
Morrell says, “We still install flooring, but we prefer the challenging jobs. The bulk of our business is concrete polishing and installing epoxy flooring and moisture barriers. Remediation and restoration is a risky business—any mold or leaks that occur after we’ve done our job can be very costly and potentially dangerous to the operational staff. My in-house team is very specialized and very skilled, and I work every job with my guys to ensure quality and redundancy.”