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Contact Avis Builders and Design
Avis Builders and Design
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(408) 208-0551Service Area
Santa Clara County and the greater Bay Area
Licensed & Bonded
CSLB #1142220
Fast & Free
Request your free in-home consultation
Rated 5.0 on Google
Reach Avis Builders and Design through the form on this page, by phone on (408) 208-0551, or by email at info@avisbuildersanddesign.com. Avis Builders and Design is a licensed California general contractor, CSLB #1142220, classification B general building, serving San Jose, Santa Clara County and the greater Bay Area, and rated 5.0 on Google. The next step is a free in-home consultation with no obligation attached. Third-party financing is available, and there are discounts for seniors and for veterans.
The form on this page is the shortest route to a project with Avis Builders and Design. It asks for five things: your name, a phone number, an email address, the town the property is in, and a short description of the work. The description box is the one that earns its keep. Name the room or the structure, the age and style of the house, and the one thing that made you start looking into this in the first place.
Four lines of that beats any dropdown menu, and it means the person who calls has something real to work from before the conversation even opens. Avis Builders and Design is a licensed California general contractor, CSLB #1142220, classification B general building, working across San Jose, Santa Clara County and the wider Bay Area. You will not find a showroom address on this page, because there is no showroom. The work happens at your property, so the phone number, the email address and this form are the whole front door.
What follows a message is a free in-home consultation. Somebody comes out, walks the space with you, and talks about budget before anything is drawn or priced. Nothing has to be signed to get that visit.
Three ways to reach us
The form on this page
It carries everything you typed into the office inbox at info@avisbuildersanddesign.com, so nothing gets lost in somebody's phone note. Use it when you have a project to describe rather than one question to ask. The detail you put in the description box is what the first conversation is built on.
Phone: (408) 208-0551
Better for short questions. Is this the sort of work you take on, is a permit likely, do you cover my town, can somebody look at something another contractor built badly. A call also suits people who would simply rather talk than type.
Email: info@avisbuildersanddesign.com
This is the route for attachments. Architect's drawings, an HOA architectural packet, a set of photographs, a previous contractor's scope, a home inspection report. Anything sent ahead means the consultation starts further along than it otherwise would.
Book a time yourself
If trading voicemails is the part you dread, the site carries a scheduling link where you pick a slot from a calendar. It is the same free consultation, arranged without the back and forth.
What the free in-home consultation actually is
A construction consultant comes to the house and walks the actual space with you. That is the whole reason the visit exists instead of a quote over the phone. Remodel pricing is driven by conditions a photograph will not show: where the load is carried, what the floor framing looks like under the finish, how far the nearest supply and drain lines sit from the fixture you want moved, whether the electrical panel has any capacity left for what you are adding.
A number produced without any of that is a guess. Say the budget you have in mind. Homeowners hold that back out of instinct, and it costs them accuracy rather than protecting them. The same kitchen at two different budgets is two different projects. One keeps the layout and the cabinet boxes and changes doors, counters and flooring. The other moves the sink wall, which pulls plumbing, electrical, drywall and often the ceiling into the scope.
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Both are legitimate jobs. Only one of them matches your number, and learning which one on the first visit is a great deal better than learning it after a design has been drawn around the wrong assumption. What the visit produces is a written scope. The work gets described before it gets priced, item by item, so you can read it and know what is in and what is not. Where a project needs layout drawings or a 3D rendering before anyone can decide anything, that comes up at the visit.
Where the work needs a permit, so does the permit route: who submits it, what the jurisdiction will want to see, and which inspections the schedule has to be built around. Two things are worth raising while somebody is standing in your kitchen. Third-party financing is available if paying for a larger project in one go is the obstacle. There are also discounts for seniors and for veterans. Both get applied to the written proposal, so mention them before it is written rather than afterwards.
The consultation is free and carries no obligation. Some questions never need a visit at all. If you want to know whether a wall can come out or whether a permit is likely, the phone answers that faster than a calendar does.
What to have ready before the visit
Nothing is required to book the visit. A few things make it a much better use of everyone's hour. Photographs help. Shoot the room from the doorway, then from two corners, then photograph whatever is actually failing: the water stain on the ceiling, the cracked stucco below a window, the deck board that flexes when you stand on it. The wide shots establish what the space is. The close ones are what change a scope.
Paperwork matters more than people expect. Original plans, if a previous owner left them in a drawer, can save a survey. Permit history tells us what was done legally and what was not, which is the difference between a straightforward addition and an addition that first has to reckon with a room somebody added without a permit in the 1990s. If the property sits in an HOA, the architectural guidelines will decide things like deck height, railing style and exterior color before anybody else gets a vote on them.
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Bring all of it. Say how old the house is. A lot of the housing across San Jose and the surrounding valley is postwar tract construction from the 1950s and 1960s, with Eichler-era homes mixed through parts of the mid-peninsula and pockets of San Jose. Houses of that age carry patterns worth knowing about in advance: original wiring that was never sized for a modern kitchen, wall cavities with no insulation in them, and slab-on-grade floors that turn moving a drain line into concrete cutting rather than plumbing.
If the house predates 1978, mention it, because the federal renovation rule governs how work that disturbs old paint has to be carried out. The town field on the form is not a formality. Permits are issued and inspected by the jurisdiction the property sits in, not by one county-wide office. A house inside San Jose city limits goes through the City of San Jose. An unincorporated parcel goes to Santa Clara County. Santa Clara, Sunnyvale, Mountain View, Cupertino, Campbell, Los Gatos and Saratoga each run their own building department, with their own submittal requirements and their own way of scheduling inspections.
Naming the town early means the permit route is part of the first conversation instead of a surprise in the third one. California adds requirements that catch people out. Title 24 energy standards apply to most alterations and additions, not only to new construction, and they reach windows, insulation, lighting and mechanical work. Structural changes and additions carry seismic detailing. Neither one is a reason to avoid a project. They are a reason to have the scope written by somebody who expects them and prices them in from the start.
Practical details are worth mentioning early too, because they change sequencing rather than price. Where a truck can park. How wide the side gate is. Whether there is a dog. Whether you intend to keep living in the house through the work, and whether anyone in it sleeps during the day. If an architect or a designer is already involved, say so at the start, since it changes who is drawing what.
Our Process
From your message to a start date
The same sequence runs however you get in touch.
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Step : 01
You send the form, call, or email
Whichever route you use, the same details get collected: who you are, how to reach you, where the property is, and what you are trying to do. Anything you already hold can come with it: a set of drawings, a photo album on your phone, an HOA packet.
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Step : 02
Free in-home consultation
A consultant comes to the property, walks the space with you, reads the conditions that drive the scope, and talks about budget openly. Questions run in both directions at this stage. Ask about the license, who is actually on site, how permits are handled, and how a change order gets priced when something unexpected turns up behind a wall.
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Step : 03
Written scope, then an estimate
The work is described in writing before it is priced, so the number attaches to a specific list rather than a summary. Read it for what is excluded as closely as for what is included. Exclusions are where the surprises live on every remodel that goes wrong.
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Step : 04
Design and selections, where the project needs them
Layout drawings, and 3D renderings for projects where seeing it beforehand genuinely changes what you choose. Materials and finishes get selected in this stage rather than mid-build, because a selection made late is the most common reason a construction schedule slips.
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Step : 05
Permits and approvals
Where the work is permitted, the submittal goes to the jurisdiction the property sits in, and any HOA approval runs alongside it. Inspections are scheduled into the build rather than bolted onto the end of it, since a framing inspection that is missed means opening back up what was already closed.
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Step : 06
Build, then the final walkthrough
One project manager stays with the job from the estimate through the last inspection, so there is one person who knows the history of your house rather than a rotating cast. The walkthrough at the end is where the punch list gets written, worked and signed off.
Service Area
Avis Builders and Design is a service-area business. Crews travel to the property, and there is no public premises to visit, so no address or directions are published here. The service area runs from San Jose across Santa Clara County and into the wider Bay Area.
FAQs
Frequently asked questions: contact
Does the in-home consultation cost anything?
No. The visit is free and there is no obligation attached to it. Nobody has to sign anything to have someone come out and look at the space, and the budget conversation happens during that visit rather than after a proposal has been built around a number nobody ever discussed.
Do I need to be there for the visit?
Yes, and so does anyone else who is part of the decision. The valuable part of the visit is the conversation standing in the room, where you can point at what bothers you and hear on the spot what changing it involves. A visit where the decision-maker is at work tends to turn into a second visit.
Do you handle permits and inspections, or is that on me?
Avis Builders and Design handles the permit process, from the submittal through the approvals to the inspections and sign-off. A licensed general contractor is what the jurisdiction expects to see on the paperwork. The license here is CSLB #1142220, classification B general building.
How do I check the license before I contact you?
Look up CSLB #1142220 on the Contractors State License Board's Check A License tool at cslb.ca.gov. It will show you the license status, the classification, the bond and the workers' compensation coverage on file. It takes about a minute, and it is worth doing for every contractor you speak to, this one included.
Which towns do you work in?
San Jose is home ground, with regular work through Santa Clara, Sunnyvale, Cupertino, Campbell, Los Gatos, Saratoga and Mountain View. Milpitas, Palo Alto, Los Altos, Menlo Park, Redwood City and Fremont are served as well. If your town is not on that list, ask on the phone instead of assuming either way, because the edge of the service area moves with the size and type of the project.
Can one company do the inside and the outside of the same project?
Yes. Avis Builders and Design runs an indoor team for kitchens, bathrooms, whole-home remodels and ADUs, and an outdoor team for decks, patios, pergolas and backyard work, under one licensed general contractor. A new deck that ties into a new set of patio doors is then one project, rather than two trades pointing at each other over the threshold detail.