“Craft Design America is an amazing company to work with for your construction needs, 5/5 stars without a doubt. Professional, caring, responsive, reliable and cost effective. They handled every aspect of a complex backyard job from obtaining all the required soil and engineering reports, design, construction and permitting with the City of Los Angeles. Luben always kept me in the loop every step of the way, and handled every interaction making my life easy and much less stressful. The team at Craft Design America does all that, at the best prices you can find.
Luben and the team at Craft Design America were like a godsend for me. I had just been fined by the city of Los Angeles for an unpermitted hillside retaining wall. I was facing large fines and having to rebuild the entire wall. I contacted multiple companies, contractors and engineers and was devastated by the prices I was facing. Through a mutual friend, I met the team at Craft Design America and it was the most fortuitous meeting I could have imagined.
Right off the bat, they were able to obtain all the needed surveys, soil reports and engineering reports at savings to me of over $3000-$5000 from what multiple other companies/contractors/engineers had quoted. The reports were provided quickly, professionally and without any errors. They provided me with 4 options for the possible reconstruction and brought architectural drawings of each for me to make the final selection.
The team then handled every aspect of the permitting process with the City, without me ever having to lift a finger. Dozens to hundreds of emails, phone calls, and follow-ups with plan checkers and inspectors were all handled by the team at Craft Design. Many thousands of dollars were saved by avoiding unnecessary requests for additional reports from the city by their hard work, dedication and construction knowledge.
Once the permit had been approved, the team at Craft Design America continued to prove invaluable. They obtained quotes from several contractors and then brought the top 3 to meet with us. They were present at each meeting to ensure that we were all on the same page, provided us with insight into each quote and options to try to save money with each one. Ultimately, we were able to save $12000 over the next lowest offer we had independently been able to obtain ourselves.
Given the results we had seen with Luben and his team, we decided to hire them on the manage the overall construction project as well, at a cost of 15% of the project cost (still resulted in a savings of $6000 over the next lowest offer), and that also turned out to be great investment. Anyone who has ever worked with contractors knows how the price always goes up after the fact, “this part costs more,” “there is extra excavation we did not anticipate,” “materials cost more,” and on and on are the excuses. But over a 4 month construction project, the price never changed, it was AMAZING.
The City of Los Angeles made this project a nightmare. Luben and the team at Craft Design America made it a dream come true.”
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