We had been looking to buy a home for almost two years in Silicon Valley and couldn’t find the right mixture of neighborhood, function, design, and style. When I found a neglected house with good bones/potential in a great neighborhood, my mind went to work on the possibilities. I drew up what I wanted (not skilled at doing this sort of thing) and then started looking for a team I thought capable of doing the job. I talked to lots of different firms and contractors. I got the lowball estimates and outrageous estimates from firms that didn’t bother to understand the details of what was wanted. In the first meeting with the RemodelWest team, I knew I they were the right team for the job.Bill Reid and his design team spent a lot of time with us to understand what was important and our design sensibilities. They embraced our idea as if it was their own and started to make suggestions that dramatically improved the initial design. The designed evolved into something that felt inspired. We looked at alternatives. We looked at finishes. We looked at design detail options. When we were all excited with the result it moved into the planning phase. Again, they made it easy.

RemodelWest built all of the engineering diagrams (and/or worked with an engineer) and got them approved by the city in record time (keep in mind that every interior wall in the common living space was removed). While they were working on getting things approved, they built a schedule of how the project would work, lined up all of the trades, and constructed a final bottoms-up estimate. We met a few times to make tradeoffs between cost and quality. Looking back, one of the things I appreciated the most was that the RemodelWest team had strong opinions (loosely held) and would stand firm when it made a difference to the end quality of the project, but would happily embrace lower cost/quality things where it wasn’t critical to the end result. When we knew the final cost and had a plan, we kicked off construction.

The construction went like clockwork. There was ALWAYS somebody on site. No down days. Everyone was extremely competent, sweated the details, and was customer-oriented. If something wasn’t right, they made it right quickly. Even the schedule (Microsoft project) was updated and posted weekly. The RemodelWest team made sure all of the trades worked out perfectly. Looking back, the experience was so positive that I struggle to remember any small bumps that happened (all of them were minor and had something to do with one of the subs that was quickly fixed).

In the end, we got the dream house we wanted … on schedule, at the estimated price. All of the conventional wisdom going into the project was to take the estimated price and timeline and double them both. It is nice to be the exception to the rule. You just have to work with exceptional teams. RemodelWest is such a team.

RemodelWest – Bill Reid