Meet Nick and Marilyn Tassielli

Nick Tassielli and his wife Marilyn discovered Harbour Island in Narragansett when visiting friends and camping in Rhode Island years ago. They fell in love with the area and decided to make it their home. Having just endured a disappointing experience with their own stick-built home in Avon, Connecticut, the Tassiellis searched the phone book for a reputable modular home company.

Connecticut Valley Homes in East Lyme* stood out because Nick recognized the address as one he frequently passed on the highway. He stopped in and was immediately impressed by the professional atmosphere and welcoming environment. He and his wife became clients soon after.

By October of 1994, their home was built, delivered, and ready for residence. The very next month saw Nick working with Connecticut Valley Homes as a design consultant, guiding clients in the creation of their own modular homes just as he’d been guided several months before. He has built over 100 homes to date.

Their own home, purchased almost 13 years ago, looks like it was built yesterday. Itis shown as an open house as an alternative for potential clients who live closer to them than to the company’s main office in East Lyme. Marilyn assists in a hospitality capacity, answering the phone, helping to show their home to visitors or entertaining children while Nick meets with their parents.

“I’ll spend an average of an hour-and-a-half to two hours with a customer,” Nick said of the meeting process. “We sit at the dining room table – they’re in our home, we become friends.”

The couple is still friendly with several of their past clients, one of whom acts as their physical therapist. Others visit with their children or just come alone.

The kindly and knowledgeable grandparents of nine enjoy meeting people and welcoming them into their home to showcase the product they so avidly believe in. “Everybody’s been really nice,” Marilyn said. “Customers tell us they feel comfortable and at home here.”

Each visitor fills out a short questionnaire for Nick’s reference to help guide the initial informational meeting. He keeps each one. “You’d be amazed,” he said. “People call you – sometimes after a number of years – with questions, or they want to refer somebody to you. I always have the sheets so I can look back and refresh my memory.”

Although Connecticut Valley Homes is not directly involved with site work like driveways, landscaping, and foundation installation, Nick has an entire arsenal of general and subcontractors he readily refers to clients for these jobs. “I trust them,”he said, “I know they’re honest and have done wonderful work for my other clients.” Modular homes suffered a less-than-stellar reputation when they first arrived on the scene. Though these homes have undoubtedly made advances since their debut, the unfavorable initial view many held was “wrong,” Nick said.

The quality of stick-built homes falls short of modular homes due to the products used and the respective environments in which the two kinds of homes are built, Nick explained. Stick-builders often use particleboard, which gets soaked as the house sits on the lot, exposed to rain, snow, and other environmental abuses.

“When you talk to people, and you say to them, have you driven down the street and seen a house being stick-built? It’s getting rained on and the whole house is soaking wet,” Nick pointed out. “What happens to that wood when it dries? It twists and turns, so you don’t have straight walls. That affects the final product.”

"When the elements interfere with the exposed portions of the unfinished house", said Nick, the final product is very much affected by warping, which can result in uneven walls and floors and protruding nails. He pointed to his ceiling, as smooth and flawless as a fifth wall, and said simply, “No nail pops.”

When the Tassiellis’ modular home arrived in Narragansett in 1994, not everyone was welcoming. The couple recalled a resident in a Cadillac stopping to share her opinion when their house was being set. She said, ‘We don’t want a house like that on our island" and our builder said, ‘Ma’am, this is going to be the nicest house on the street,’” Marilyn said, chuckling.

Others were amazed at how quickly the modular boxes became a house. “They went to work in the morning and there was nothing here and they came back and the house was up,” Nick said, “and then after that I’d be working on the lawn and people would stop and ask, ‘How did that happen?’”
“Everyone told us how nice our house was,” Marilyn added.
Overall, any skeptics have become believers and those who held no prior notions about modular homes now do – and they’re positive. The reaction of visitors and neighbors to the Tassiellis’ home is enthusiastic. “They all say the next house they build is going to be a modular,” Nick said.

*Rhode Island modular homes are satellite
  locations for Connecticut Valley Homes.