Coast to Coast Development

We hired Augie and team to do a complete rebuild of a 1920's era cottage in Redwood City. The original goal was six months from tear-down to completion and it was complete in just seven months. That is absolutely stunning given the scale of the work that was done. We give him credit for understanding that our goal was to build a relatively small (1,500 square foot) cottage that was absolutely exquisite -- all without looking wholly out of place in our downtown location.

The work that I had done was a long time ago but I'm still angry enough about it to post a review. I hired Coast to Coast (Augie) to remodel my home office. He quoted me $10-12K. His guys came out and, in all fairness, did a very good job on the build. But 3/4 of the way through the work Augie hadn't mentioned anything about money so I asked him how the project was going against the budget. He told me that it was going to be $17-20K - that's roughly a 70% cost overrun!. And he told me this in a matter of fact tone. No apology. I don't think he cared a bit. It was a weird arrogance. I will never use Augie again because I can't trust he is going to live up to his price quotes. And I don't care to be treated in that manner, especially when I'm writing a five digit check.

Update: We found out that the contractor we used at the end told me a lot of lies. So even though He told me that the plan from coast to coast was not meeting the set back requirement, now I am not sure if he was telling me the truth. So to be fair, Coast to Coast may have given me a plan that was actually usable. Previous review: We hired them and fired them. We started the design process and Augie came up with one plan that was 100K over our budget that did not consider our needs much. He charged us $3000 for it. We were shocked with luck of communication during this process. We met for 30 min one day, and two weeks later, he suddenly came up with a plan that really did not fit our needs nor budget. We later found out that this plan that costed us $3000 was drawn without checking city's set back requirements, so it was not even usable!!!! I was very surprised because two people we know were very happy with Coast to Coast. We now have another contractor and are very happy, but I would like to get that $3000 back.

This review is over due. Augie and his crew did a kitchen/great room remodel for us back in 2010-2011. We absolutely loved working with him and we will work with him again as soon as we can. The remodeling went really smoothly and we stayed on budget (even under). The house jumped in value and we get great compliments every time someone visits, but the best thing was working with Augie and his crew. Augie comes to the job everyday (unless he is on the East Coast) to check the progress, answer questions, solve design issues if any and give recommendations. He is always receptive, professional and friendly. He is a great communicator and is very responsive via phone and email. I rely on email to communicate rather than the phone and Augie understood that and it worked great. His entire crew is professional and friendly. Everyone was happy to be there, every day and every one respected us and Augie. This is very important to me. Life is too short. Less stress is good. No stress is better.

This is an update to an earlier review of Coast to Coast. We used them in 2007 for a remodel, which included design. We did have to go back and forth once or twice, mostly because we were refining what we really wanted. Augie was happy to go through this process because he wanted us to be satisfied. The end result was great. We have used C2C many times since for small jobs. In the past 2 months, we hired them again to "remodel' our garage. As usual, the C2C crew did a great job, were responsive, and have given us what we were looking for. It is too bad that the reviewer who gave C2C one star did not just sit down and have a conversation with Augie and try and work things out--he is a very reasonable man who wants his clients to be happy. We will continue to call on Augie and his guys, as well as recommend them to friends.