Denise McEwan is a ceramic tile contractor who owns her own tile business, Women in Construction. A member of the Tile Contractors Association, she has been in construction for 20 years, and has owned her business for 15 years, serving all of San Diego County. “I set all my own tile,” she said. “Everything I do in mud; I do everything in plaster – the old way.”

McEwan got her start in construction by remodeling homes and businesses in the GLBT community, including West Coast Production Company and The Flame. After extensive schooling, then working through the Tile Union, she was able to start her own business. “It took me probably six years of just floating, plastering walls in showers, before I became an expert at it,” she said. “It takes many, many years to master.”

Construction involves a lot of heavy lifting, McEwan said, and the women she hires to help her on the various jobs she does have to be able to handle that. She does 90 percent of the jobs herself, but occasionally hires an assistant for duties like mixing cement and carrying buckets.

“Tile is an intricate field and it is a very difficult field,” she said. “Being a woman in this trade has been difficult, because everything is so heavy – it’s 25 to 100 pounds that you have to lift.” To keep herself fit for the daily lifting tasks, McEwan works out regularly at a gym.

Her favorite part of the job, she said, is the end. “I’ve managed to finish something with my hands, that is beautiful, that makes the client happy,” she said. “Then they pay me that last check; I go away smiling and I’ve made a friend. It gives me so much satisfaction to be able to know that all over San Diego there are these houses where I’ve done work in … I put so much of myself into every job I do. There is a part of me out there everywhere.”

Though she would like to see her company grow, McEwan said the reality is that taking the time to train new employees and manage business expansion while balancing the duties of self-employment and home ownership can be overwhelming.

Besides, business is good. “I get a lot of my business through my name being at the tile stores as part of the contractors association, and through word of mouth,” she said. McEwan said she works predominantly outside of the GLBT community, though that is changing. “I’ve been getting more calls lately from the gay community than I have in the past.”

McEwan is active in the local GLBT community. Out since she was 14 years old, she ran for “Mr. Gay Teenager of San Diego” when she was 17. “It was me and 35 guys,” she said. “It is an experience I will never forget.”

McEwan served on the Alano Club’s board of directors for two years, and is a member of Womenmoto, a local women’s motorcycle group that rides in the Dykes on Bikes contingent in the Pride parade every year.

In fact, McEwan’s life nowadays owes a lot to Pride. Pictured on our cover with her partner, Molly Quillin, a pre-med student at UCSD, the couple met at the Pride festival last year. “Molly had actually taken a picture of me two years prior to that at the parade, and had my picture on her wall in her bedroom for two years before we met,” McEwan said.