Hiring a general contractor is really about transferring risk. You are paying someone to hold the licence, carry the insurance, pull the permit, schedule eight trades in the right order and absorb the consequences when one of them does not show up. Done well, none of that is visible to you. Done badly, all of it is.
We hold California CSLB licence #959458. That number is worth checking — not just ours, anyone’s. Search it at cslb.ca.gov and you can see whether the licence is active, what classification it holds, whether the contractor’s bond is current, whether workers’ compensation is on file, and whether there is any disciplinary history.
We carry general liability insurance and workers’ compensation, and we will provide certificates on request before you sign anything. If a contractor hesitates at that request, that is the answer.
Our estimates are line-item, with an allowance per category. You can see what we have budgeted for cabinets, for tile, for electrical, and you can move money between categories with your eyes open.
A single lump-sum number is easier to produce and impossible to interrogate. When a lump-sum job goes over, you have no way to tell whether it was the cabinets, the plumbing or the contractor’s margin. That is the point of a lump sum, and it is why we do not use them.
Estimates are free and there is no obligation. We would rather lose a job at the estimate than surprise you at the halfway point.
We pull permits under our own licence, submit the drawings, handle plan-check corrections and schedule every inspection. You are not the one sitting on hold with the building department.
Occasionally a homeowner asks whether we can skip it. We cannot and would not. Unpermitted work is not counted in the square footage an appraiser will use, it complicates every future sale, and it can void an insurance claim. It is not a saving, it is a deferred cost with interest.
Every change is priced in writing and signed before we do it. That applies to changes you request and to conditions we discover — dry rot at the sill plate, knob-and-tube in the attic, a wall that turns out to be structural.
We also carry an explicit contingency line in the original estimate rather than pretending an eighty-year-old house will hold no surprises. If it goes unused, you keep it.
You get a written schedule before demolition, a weekly update while we are on site, and one point of contact who knows where your job actually is. Not a call centre, and not a project manager who has never seen the house.
We will also tell you when we are behind, and why, as soon as we know. Most contractor complaints are not about delay — they are about finding out about the delay three weeks late.
Workmanship warranty in writing, plus the manufacturer warranties on everything we installed, handed over as a package at completion along with the permit sign-offs and the paint colours. If something we built fails, call us.
That last one matters more than the rest. Anyone can show you a job that finished last week.
We hold the contract for the whole job: pulling the permit, hiring and sequencing the subcontractors, ordering materials, scheduling inspections, and carrying the insurance and licence that make all of it legal. You have one contract and one person to call instead of eight.
Search the licence number at cslb.ca.gov. It shows whether the licence is active, what classification it holds, whether the bond is current, whether workers’ compensation is on file, and any disciplinary history. Ours is #959458.
A clear scope, a line-item price with allowances, a payment schedule tied to milestones rather than dates, a start and substantial-completion window, how change orders are priced and approved, and the warranty terms. California also limits the deposit a contractor may take before work begins.
In writing, priced and signed before the work happens. If we open a wall and find dry rot, you get a number and a decision, not a surprise on the final invoice.
Yes, for the licensed trades — electrical, plumbing, HVAC — and we use the same people repeatedly. They are scheduled and managed by us, and they answer to us, not to you.
General liability and workers’ compensation at minimum. Ask for certificates naming you, and confirm the workers’ comp is current — if an uninsured worker is hurt on your property, that can become your problem.
Tell us what you have in mind. We visit the site, talk through options and send a written, line-item estimate — no obligation.
