General contractor recommendations
We are looking for recommendations for reliable East Bay contractors to help with the following:
-troubleshooting a long-standing problem involving leaking windows
-replacing said windows (and possibly redoing all the exterior stucco and home insulation)
-replacing front stairs, walkway, and driveway
-replacing roof
-bathroom remodel
-interior wall repairs
-some electrical updates
Suggestions? We are two women and two children who have had bad luck with contractors (despite vetting carefully and checking references), so have been putting this off...
Thanks BPN!
Feb 12, 2017
Parent Replies
Some old school roofers who have been around for a long time and whose services I have personally used are: Pacific Coast 912-5454, Haight Roofing 523-1504, Nicholas 848-4433, Precision 436-7575, Collins 601-9181. All in area code 510. I suggest you wait until summer if you can to ask for quotes as the prices tend to be lower then when work is not so plentiful as now. For electricians I can recommend Jim Hiatt at 733-9396 and Earle at 436-4787.
I had a great experience with Ken Winfield (Winfield Construction, in Emeryville) - my husband and I bought a house in Berkeley that turned out to have some water leak issues (hard to tell when there's a drought!) - We ended up having to do quite a few things that are on your list. Ken was straight-forward, helpful, friendly and very professional. His team of workers include a supervisor/foreman, great workmen and really good sub-contractors. They did not dilly-dally. Ken inspected the work on an almost daily basis. We really appreciated that he wanted to try the less complicated fixes first (and they worked!!). I would highly highly recommend getting in touch with Ken. We thought his prices were more than fare, he got the jobs done very efficiently, he was easy to work with and...best of all....all the problems were taken care of. Good Luck! Yes, there are some good contractors out there - and Ken is one of them! :)
I've used Walter Nix for replacing windows and wall repair work as well as exterior wood stairs and deck, etc. He is highly trained/skilled as a carpenter and has many years of experience doing house improvements including remodels. He knows his stuff and I can count on him to do high quality work. He's personable and explains everything, and I also like that he is resourceful and able to get some of the materials we needed from Urban Ore. I recommend him highly. 510-504-0670
I highly recommend Levitch Associates, www.levitch.com. They're a family business that's been operating in Berkeley for over 45 years. Starting in 2006,they have done a home inspection for us, some electrical work, remodeled a bathroom and redid our front stairs. Maurice Levitch has a great eye for detail and provides really high quality work and attention to detail. What I particularly liked was on our front stairs project, I initially thought we would just replace the existing stairs with something very similar. Maurice showed us how we could open up the whole porch by widening the stairs and the whole house looks better now!