Dear Jim:
I am writing to sincerely thank you for the wonderful job you did on our Huntington Beach vacation home and to provide a letter of recommendation. We already knew you were a fantastic builder from our experience with you eleven years ago, when you built our home in La Canada. You again surpassed our expectations with your work on our Huntington Beach home.
When we bought the Huntington Beach house in 2012, it was ugly and we knew it had not been well maintained. We bought it anyway, knowing that you would fix any problems and turn it into our dream vacation home. Our remodel plans included demolishing the one story front section of the house and replacing it with a first floor living room and second story family room, reconfiguring the second floor to add a hallway and enlarge an existing bedroom and bathroom, adding retaining walls and a patio in front, and re-stuccoing the entire house. The narrow lot and close neighboring houses made the work difficult, but you somehow convinced the neighbors to let us put scaffolding over the property line, which allowed the framing and stucco work to be completed very quickly.
We couldn’t figure out what to do with the awkward long narrow bedroom which was created when we added an upstairs hallway to access the new family room. We absolutely loved your idea of raising the ceiling to 12 feet and building bunks on each side resembling sleeping compartments on a train. This allowed us to have four double beds in the room, giving us much needed space when our children bring friends home from college. Everyone who sees our new “bunkroom” is so impressed.
We appreciate how hard you worked to get the job done on budget. The construction revealed a lot of water damage and dry rot, as well as unsafe electrical wiring and improperly installed recessed lighting in the kitchen. You made sure that everything was fixed, and found ways to save money, including doing some of the electrical work yourself. This allowed us to stay within our tight budget even with all the extra work.
Despite the long commute from Arcadia, you were at the house at least six days per week and had several subcontractors there every day, so the remodel was finished in under four months instead of the estimated six months. We were pleased to see that you still had many of the subcontractors you used eleven years ago on our La Canada house, and were amazed that they were willing to travel to Huntington Beach to work for you. You were very efficient in scheduling the required inspections so we never had a wasted day, and the house passed every inspection with flying colors. In fact, when I went to the Building Department toward the end of the construction to request a variance for the front stairs, the City inspector told me he had never seen such high quality construction in Huntington Beach and congratulated me on having picked such a great builder – and because he was so impressed with you, he granted our variance request!
We are so grateful to have you as our general contractor. Not only are our homes beautiful, but we have the peace of mind of knowing that everything was done right. Now, if we could only convince you to build a ski chalet for us in Mammoth …. Thanks for everything.
Very truly yours,
Lynn A. O’Leary
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