Frequently Asked Questions

The Contractors State License Board publishes a free public lookup, and the check takes about a minute for each bid you are holding. You need the license number, which any legitimate contractor prints on a proposal. Read four fields when it comes back. Status tells you whether the license is active today rather than at some point in the past. Classification decides whether that contractor is permitted to hold the contract in front of you.

The bond line confirms a surety stands behind the license. The workers' compensation line shows either a carrier or an exemption, and an exemption means the licensee has told the state they have no employees, which is a fair thing to ask about directly if a crew of four turns up on the first morning. Then check that the name on the license matches the name on the contract and the name the check is written to. For this company the number is CSLB #1142220.

Yes, and the record is worth reading rather than accepting as a slogan. Avis Builders and Design CORP holds CSLB #1142220 as a corporation license. The state register reports the status as current and active and the classification as B, General Building. A $25,000 bond is filed against the license as a condition of holding it, and workers' compensation coverage is carried through the State Compensation Insurance Fund. Every field in that paragraph comes back from the public lookup, which is the point of putting the number on every page of this site.

The issue date, the expiration date and the name of the surety sit on that same screen, so read them there instead of taking them from anybody's website, including this one.

California defines a general building contractor by the kind of structure the work involves, specifically one whose construction requires the use of at least two unrelated building trades or crafts. Most remodeling clears that bar without argument. A kitchen where framing changes, a drain moves, circuits are added and tile and cabinetry finish the room is several unrelated trades running under one contract, and Class B is the classification that lets one contractor hold all of it and answer for the parts that go wrong.

What Class B does not do is stand in for a specialty classification on single-trade work. Standalone electrical, plumbing, HVAC and solar jobs belong to a contractor who holds the specialty classification for that trade. The same section of the state's contractor law draws that line: a general building contractor may not take a prime contract for a project involving trades other than framing or carpentry unless the job requires at least two unrelated trades, or the contractor holds the specialty classification, or the work is subcontracted to somebody who does.

Framing and carpentry cannot be counted toward the two. No C-class classification appears on CSLB #1142220, so nothing on this site claims one, and solar is not offered here for exactly that reason.

A contractor classified for that trade. On multi-trade work California puts the prime contract with the general building contractor and leaves the single-trade portions to contractors who hold the specialty classification covering them, which is the reason the licensing question is worth asking about the trades on a job as well as about the general contractor. Ask for that arrangement in writing before you sign, trade by trade, so the scope states who performs each portion and under whose license. Then check those licenses the same way you checked the general. Ask for the numbers and run the same four fields.

Ask for the certificate itself and read what is on it, rather than accepting a phrase off a website. Start with the state license record, because two things appear there. For CSLB #1142220 the record shows the $25,000 contractor bond and workers' compensation coverage through the State Compensation Insurance Fund. Workers' compensation is the entry that quietly matters most to a homeowner: if somebody is hurt on your property and no coverage is in place, the question of who pays has a way of ending up pointed at your own homeowner's policy.

General liability is a separate policy from a separate carrier and it does not appear on the state license record for anybody, so that one has to be requested directly. Ask every contractor you are considering, including us, and read the policy dates and the limits rather than the cover page.

No, and being blunt about that is more useful than letting the word do work it cannot do. A contractor's bond in California is a fixed amount filed with the state as a condition of licensure. It does not scale with the size of your project, it is not insurance on your job, and it is not a guarantee that a project will finish. What it does is put a surety behind the license itself.

The things that actually protect you on a project are a written scope specific enough to argue from, a change order process where a price is agreed before the work happens, a payment schedule tied to completed milestones, and the lien releases you collect from subcontractors and suppliers at each payment.

Avis Builders and Design, a licensed California general contractor working from San Jose across Santa Clara County and the wider Bay Area. The part of that sentence worth checking rather than believing is the license. The number is CSLB #1142220, the classification is B General Building, the state register reports the status as current and active, a $25,000 bond is filed against the license as a condition of holding it, and workers' compensation coverage is carried through the State Compensation Insurance Fund.

The work spans the inside of the house and the yard under one contract: whole home remodeling, kitchens, bathrooms, ADUs and room additions, flooring, interior painting, exterior siding and painting, windows and doors, decks, pergolas and gazebos, landscaping, and design services including 3D design and planning. This site carries town pages for San Jose, Santa Clara, Sunnyvale, Los Gatos, Campbell, Cupertino, Saratoga, Mountain View and Los Altos. The consultation happens at your property and it is free.

Call (408) 208-0551, send the form on the contact page, or email info@avisbuildersanddesign.com, and a visit gets arranged at the property. It is free, nothing has to be signed to get it, and there is no obligation attached to the end of it. Somebody comes out and walks the space with you, and the conversation is about what you want changed measured against what the house will allow. That is why it happens at the house rather than over a phone.

The things that decide a scope are physical: how the house meets the ground, where the electrical panel sits and how much capacity is already spoken for, which walls are carrying load and which are only dividing rooms, where the drains run, and how crew and material will get in and out without you living in a hallway for the duration. Budget gets discussed at that visit, before anything is drawn or priced, because a design nobody can afford to build wastes your time as much as ours.

Anything that already exists on paper, and a rough budget range you are willing to say out loud. Useful things to have to hand: any drawings you hold, an HOA architectural packet, a home inspection report if you bought recently, photographs of finishes or rooms you like, and a previous contractor's scope if one is sitting in a drawer. Also worth writing down beforehand: the one thing that made you start looking into this, the parts of the house you want left alone, and any date you are working towards, such as a family event or a lease ending.

A budget range is not a trap. Naming one is what lets a scope be built around it rather than presented to you as a number that has to be argued down.

More than most proposals carry. What is included, described specifically enough that two people would read it the same way. What is excluded, which is the half people skip and the half disputes come from. Which items are carried as allowances because nothing has been selected yet. Who prepares the submittal, who pulls the permit, and whether permit fees are inside the price or outside it. A payment schedule tied to completed milestones rather than to calendar dates.

The change order process, stating that a change is described and priced and signed before it is performed. The labor warranty terms and how you report a callback under it. And the legal entity holding the license, matching the license record, the contract and the payee. If a proposal is one paragraph and a total, the disagreements are already written into it and simply have not happened yet.

California caps the down payment on a home improvement contract at $1,000 or ten percent of the contract price, whichever is less. That applies to every licensed contractor in the state, this one included, and it is not a matter of negotiation or of goodwill. Payments after that should follow work actually completed, which is why a schedule keyed to milestones is worth more to you than one keyed to dates on a calendar: a date arrives whether or not the work did. A contractor asking for a third of the job before anybody arrives on site is telling you something about how the business is funded, and it is worth hearing.

Mostly in three ways. Something gets discovered once a surface is open, which is the honest reality of working on an existing house: rot under a shower pan, a drain running the wrong direction, wiring in a wall that has not been opened since the house was built, a beam somebody cut for a duct decades ago. Or the plan checker requires something the submittal did not include. Or you change your mind, which is legitimate and is far cheaper on paper than in framing.

The right sequence is the same in all three cases. Describe the change, price it, get it signed, then build it. An agreement to sort it out at the end is how projects end in arguments. Discovery is also the reason a bid that never asked what is behind the wall is a lower number rather than a better price: those costs did not vanish, they were left to arrive later, when you have less room to move.

Drawings, usually yes, and the earlier you send them the better, because they get reviewed against what a plan checker in your jurisdiction will expect rather than taken at face value. Materials are a different question and it is worth thinking about before you buy. When you supply an item, responsibility for it moves to you: if it arrives damaged, short, discontinued halfway through, or wrong for the application, the delay and the return sit on your side, and a workmanship warranty covers the installation rather than the product.

Sometimes that trade is entirely worth it, for a tile you love or a fixture you already own. Get the split written into the scope so nobody is working out who owns the problem while a crew is standing still.

Start in the room rather than in a showroom, because finishes are the last decision and they are reliably the first one people make. Spend a week noticing what actually fails: where the storage runs out, where two people collide, what is badly lit, which door swings into which. Write that down, because it is the brief. Then photograph the room from each corner, measure it roughly, and find the electrical panel and note whether it looks full.

The single question that moves a kitchen budget more than any finish is whether the sink, the range or a wall moves, because that is drains, circuits, framing and a permit rather than cabinetry. Collect pictures of kitchens you like and, more usefully, write down what you like about each one, since that is the part a designer can work with. Then settle on a budget range you are willing to say out loud and book the free in-home consultation, so the layout gets resolved against what the house allows before anything is priced.

Yes. Design services and 3D design and planning are two of the services offered here, so layout, material selection and a modeled view of the finished room can be produced before construction rather than left to your imagination. Whether design is included in a particular project is settled in the written scope rather than assumed, so raise it at the consultation and have it named in the document. What design work earns you is mostly not the picture.

It is a layout resolved against what the house will allow: which walls carry load, where the drains run, what capacity is left on the panel, where the windows and doors already sit. It is selections made before pricing, which turns allowances into real numbers instead of placeholders that get settled later at a tile counter. And it is decisions made on paper, where changing your mind costs a revision rather than a change order and a week of undoing framing that has already been paid for.

No duration is published on this site for any scope, and that is a deliberate position rather than an evasion: a schedule quoted before anybody has seen the house or submitted a drawing is a sales figure. What sets a real schedule is worth knowing, because most of it is not construction. Design and selections come first, and a project waits on decisions more often than it waits on trades. Plan check belongs to the jurisdiction and its queue, and correction comments are normal and add a cycle.

Material lead times run on their own clock, and cabinetry, windows, tile and appliances are ordered rather than collected. Inspections gate the stages, so framing waits on a footing sign off and finishes wait on framing. Then there is discovery, because an existing house does not disclose everything until a surface is open. The schedule that means anything is the one written into your scope, next to the milestones your payments are tied to.

Call (408) 208-0551, send the form on the contact page, or email info@avisbuildersanddesign.com, and a visit gets arranged at the property. Nothing is signed to get that visit and nothing is owed at the end of it. After the walkthrough the sequence is design and layout, then a written scope naming what is included, what is excluded, which items are carried as allowances, who prepares the submittal and pulls the permit, the payment schedule tied to completed milestones, the change order process and the labor warranty terms.

Read that document before you sign it, and check the entity name on it against the license record and against whoever the check is written to. Then the permit submittal and plan check, then the build with its staged inspections, then a walkthrough and a written punch list that gets closed out before the work is called complete. The only step in that sequence with nothing attached to it is the first one.

It depends entirely on what is in the scope, and the honest way to settle it is to walk the sequence at the consultation and decide before demolition rather than during it. Where the work can be phased so that a functioning kitchen or bathroom always remains, staying is often workable. Where the only bathroom is being gutted, or the plan takes the kitchen and the electrical service out in the same stretch, it usually is not, and hearing that early is worth more than being told what you were hoping for.

If you do stay, that decision changes the plan rather than sitting outside it: dust containment, a protected route in and out, where material is staged and which rooms are off limits all become part of the scope instead of being improvised in week two.

By containing it at the boundary rather than cleaning it up afterwards, which never quite works. That means temporary barriers at the edge of the work area, plastic over openings, floor and stair protection along the route in and out, and sealing the heating and cooling returns inside the work zone so the system is not quietly distributing drywall dust into bedrooms at the other end of the house. Where the scope justifies it, the work area is kept under negative pressure so air moves out rather than in.

Cutting and sanding are what produce the fine dust that travels, so where those happen is a planning decision. Where any painted or glued material predates 1978, the federal renovation rule governs how those surfaces may be disturbed and how the area is contained and cleaned, and that is a requirement rather than a preference. Nothing keeps a construction zone spotless, and a contractor promising that is describing a house nobody is working in.

Agreed before the first day and written into the scope, because access is the thing that goes wrong quietly. That means where vehicles park, where material is staged so a delivery is not sitting on your lawn for a week, and where debris accumulates before it leaves. On most South Bay lots the driveway takes the container and the street takes the trucks. Where a container has to sit in the street instead, whether that needs permission from the city is a question for the jurisdiction over your address, and it gets asked rather than assumed.

Deliveries and pickups get scheduled around the times a narrow residential street cannot take a truck, and if there is a gate, a shared driveway, a tight turn or a neighbor with strong feelings about any of it, tell us at the consultation rather than on the morning it matters.

Floors and stairs along the route in and out, finishes that are staying, cabinetry and countertops, handrails, and the landscaping under any window that material has to move through. Fixtures that are staying get covered rather than relocated. Anything you would rather handle personally, art, instruments, anything irreplaceable, should be out of the work zone before the first day, and part of our job is telling you clearly which rooms count as the work zone so that decision is not left to guesswork.

Damage does happen on construction sites. The difference between a well-run job and a badly run one is that on a well-run job you hear about it from us rather than discovering it yourself, and it is repaired or replaced. Put that expectation in the written scope, because it is easier to agree to before it is needed.

With a walkthrough and a written punch list, rather than on the day the crew stops arriving. We walk the finished work together, you point at whatever is not right, all of it gets written down, and the project is complete when that list is closed out and signed rather than when it is verbally agreed to be nearly done. Final inspection and permit closeout are part of the same finish line, and that part matters long after the dust is gone: an open permit sitting on a county record is exactly the sort of thing a buyer's agent finds when you sell.

Keep the closed permit, the warranty document and the lien releases together in one place, because that folder is what proves the work was done properly to the next person who asks.