Building on land in the Mid-South usually means dealing with the site before dealing with the house. Drainage, soil bearing, and where the water goes in a heavy spring are the things that decide whether a slab is still level in ten years — and they are settled long before anyone frames a wall.
Licensed for residential work
S&L Construction holds a Tennessee BC-A residential contractor licence. Under the Tennessee Board for Licensing Contractors, that classification covers building, repairing, remodelling and improving residential properties up to three stories.
We also hold BC-B for commercial work, which is useful on properties that blur the line — a shop building on a residential lot, or a project that grows past what a residential licence covers.
What we build
- New home construction, including the barndominium-style builds that suit rural and suburban Mid-South land.
- Additions and remodels, scoped and permitted under the residential licence.
- Site preparation and grading — soil-aware, and informed by our parent company’s environmental background.
- Hazmat-aware renovation — lead and asbestos handling built into scope from the start.
Why the site work matters more than people expect
S&L Construction is a division of S&L Environmental, a water and wastewater compliance company. Reading soils, drainage and site history is the core competence of the other half of this business.
On a residential build that translates into practical things: noticing that a lot drains toward where you want the foundation, spotting undocumented fill before it becomes a settling problem, and understanding what a wet-weather conveyance on the plat actually means for your buildable area.
On an older home, it means the lead and asbestos question gets asked during scoping rather than discovered mid-demolition — when it stops being a line item and becomes a stoppage.
Working with homeowners
Most of our residential clients are building once. That means the job includes explaining trade-offs in plain terms — what a decision costs now versus what it costs later, and where spending more genuinely buys something.
We will tell you when something is not worth doing. A contractor who agrees with every request is not saving you money.
Service area
West Tennessee, Northern Mississippi, and Eastern Arkansas.
Getting started
Tell us the location, roughly what you want to build, and your timeline. If you have plans, send them. If you are looking at a piece of land and want to know whether it will build cheaply or expensively, that is worth asking before you buy it — and it is the question we are best placed to answer.
Related: commercial construction and site work.