SoCal Stairs

Never returned my phone call. Must not need the work.

Apparently they are just "too busy" to come out and do a proper estimate. They wanted to do everything over the phone and said they get "too many bids" to come out and look at the job.

No one got back to me with a quote or a time frame to start / complete the work. As a nurse that works nights, my days are for sleep. It is annoying when a company wastes my time.

They set an appointment time of 0700 to repair my stairs. at 0730 I called and was told that their employee hadn't shown up for work and asked if they could reschedule. I asked why they hadn't called me to tell me and was told we're sorry. They give the impression that they are doing you the favor to fix the stairs. whereas the repair had nothing to do with their installation seven years ago, I am a customer that spent a considerable amount of money with them. I expected a little more consideration for my time. They asked for the early time and I rearranged my schedule to accommodate and then they don't have the respect to call and tell me they are having trouble meeting that time. They were going to charge me 200.00

Outstanding craftsmanship. Schedule provided was followed to a tee. Honno was fantastic to deal with, and we could not be more pleased.

If your ?time? is at all valuable, or at least important to you, these are NOT the people you want to work with.

The first person to come out to give quote was Don. He was extremely knowledgable and professional. Expensive quote but trusted them with securing stairs and fixing them so small children could not fall thru. The second team that was supposed to come out never showed and I had to call to track them down. The next time they showed late but got what they needed. The crew on site to do stairs was efficient and professional. Communication is lacking in company to client relations in my opinion but the work is good. We have not moved in yet so we will see how it holds up in wear and tear of everyday life.

Very excellent work, very Professional finish and design...

I've gotta give these guys credit for being patient with me. We went back and forth on the size and style of the work a few times before we zeroed in on what we wanted. Andy at SoCal Stairs never lost his cool. They also worked with us on price and suggested ways in which we could keep the scope of work on budget (ie. going with different types of wood, ordering balusters from a lower priced vendor, etc). The only thing you have to be prepared to do is invest time at the point of install. Ours took 3 days, and all they did was the railing. Different crews came out each day to tackle a particular aspect of the job. 1 did removal of the old stuff, another did the railing install and staining, while another handled the metal work. Every one of those crews was professional and efficient, and very skilled in what they were doing. We couldn't be happier with the results and it really brought up the overall flow to our house as a transition point between floors. Thanks guys!

SoCal Stairs came into our house, removed the walled area previous homeowner had build to be a railing for the staircase area. Installed railing, post and handle. All the woodworking were done right in our front yard. The removal of the old railing and installation of new railing took about 8 hours. A week later, the finishing guys came and applied stain finishing to the wood post and handles. Everything looks very nice and the people that came to work in house are professional and diligent. We are very happy with the end result and would definitely recommend SoCal Stairs to our friends and anyone who have staircase work needs.

I want to amend my review of SoCal Stairs. Previously I gave them a poor rating because I was never contacted by the San Diego representative. I was promptly contacted by the proprietor who, although he originally thought that I had been contacted, explained what had happened. Mistakes may be made by even superior companies, even when no offense/slight was intended. What displays a company's merit is the willingness of that company to investigate what went wrong and acknowledge responsibility, if the investigation should point to that, rather than assuming that the client was in error. The owner of SoCal stairs did this and told me his findings. This makes me comfortable in assigning the company an "A" even if mistakes were made.

The owner (who was apparently in LA) responded promptly to my email and told me I would be contacted by the SD representative. I never heard from him.

Jake was very helpful in following up with any questions that I had and resolved any issues I had.

Jerry is fantastic. We wouldn't hesitate to contact him again. He's also high integrity, which is important. For what it's worth, he is an Eagle Scout and a military veteran. He takes pride in his work and is a good communicator when challenges arise.

We hired SoCal Stairs to replace an existing metal stair rail with a wooden one. The quality of their work was good but they did a few things that made them a pain to work with. #1 sprayed lacquer paint in our living room for the stairs however they didn't drop cloth anything. This covered pretty much everything in a thin film which took a few hours to clean. #2 the owner subcontracts his work so he had problem with quality. One of the workers installed the railing clearly off center and we had to have them come back and fix. In addition a few of the under stair moulding a were missing and some of the moulding wasn't caulked at all. #3 when I contacted the company the owner gave me a hard time for asking them to come back and fix the work they did wrong in the first place. And it took him multiple months to schedule that "fix your work I already paid for you for"... Sorry but if you're paying over $4k for basic new stairs you want it done right! :/ My recommendation is to not work with SoCal Stairs to save yourself the hassle even though the work is good.

Bill, along with Don, went beyond just providing me with a price quote by providing an alternative design, which I ultimately decided to go with and set them apart from the competition. Bill/Don suggesting building a pony wall on my staircase which would allow the new flooring installation to be much easier and flush from the wall to the new pony wall; plus it met my objective of creating an overall more contemporary look. Overall, the quality of the end project was fantastic - I couldn't be more pleased with the new banister. This was a rather expensive project for me, so I am VERY satisfied with the outcome. However, the two pieces of feedback that I shared with Jacob and Bill were: 1) punctuality of the workers. The project involved several parties for each phase of the project, and Jacob provided me with start time windows each day, plus names of the workers. Except for the stainers, everyone showed up after the start window (which in turn impacted my work day) and I had to call Bill or Jacob to see when the guys would actually be showing up. 2) Cleanliness (or, lack thereof) - if there was a "cleanliness" category above, I would have provided them with a C or D rating in this category. I understand that with woodwork and any remodel that there is an expected level of dust; however, it appeared to me that some of the workers made minimal effort to seal off my house to protect what they could, or did not attempt any sort of clean up when they were finished. It is pretty easy to seal-off the rest of my house from the stairway and it was apparent that this wasn't done or wasn't done well. I had a significant level of dust throughout my house (in places that I wouldn't have expected), which was the biggest challenge of the project. Additionally, I had new hardwood floors installed after the banister work was complete (a project which also lends to a lot of dust and dirt) and my house was significantly cleaner after the flooring project. Lastly, the drywall guy dumped the remnants of his work in my kitchen sink, which still had dishes in it, and did not bother to even rinse the sink - not good considering there was a garbage disposal there, too. To be clear, I am including these two areas of criticism for Jacob/Bill to ensure their workers get the feedback, as well as to provide full transparency to others who select So Cal Stairs. However at the end of the day, the quality of the project GREATLY outweighs these two feedback points and I consider them to be minor in the grand scheme of things. Overall, I would HIGHLY recommend So Cal Stairs for high quality workmanship on my new banister.

The owner was wonderful. He came out to our home to go over the job and was very professional. We really liked his knowledge of using reclaimed wood. Our house is 104 years old. Anything new would not look good. Everyone was very professional and on-time. If they had any questions, they would talk to us and keep us informed of what they were doing. I am so happy with their work. I would recommend So Cal to anyone .

Installed false tread end caps on exposed side of stairs. stained existing railing to match end caps. replaced old wooden balusters with wrought iron balusters. Looks great. Vast improvement over carpet wrapped end caps.

The project was started and completed on schedule, with a beautiful final result

Work was supposed to be complete in 4 days. Everything went fine until we had the bottom stair and riser was stained to match the new handrails/ posts, and pre-existing stairs. My flooring installers (a different company) had suggested to use Walnut wood to match the Acacia stairs. Socal Stairs complied but when it was stained, it looked awful (very dark and green in color compared to the stairs). Walnut should not have been used to begin with...I admit at least 50% fault on this. Socal Stairs recommended Maple, so they re-did the bottom stair/riser in Maple, assuring us it would match really well, and they do this sort of thing all the time. After a number of visits and revisits from the various contractors, the 6-day project ended up being finished in about 3-4 weeks (off and on). The riser had to be redone a total of 3 times due to poor application/bubbling/buckling the second time around. There was poor communication between all the various contractors (the staining guy, the carpenters, etc), leading to a very frustrating experience. I am still not happy with the color of the bottom stair - it turned out much darker than the rest of the stairs and I don't think it's a great match. I feel nothing more can be done at this point except live with it and refinish the bottom stair sometime down the line. Finally I'll also say that $7000 is steep for a 4-day project. Since the company has about 25 projects going on at a time in Southern California, I think one can expect good service if everything goes according to plan, but if something unexpected comes up, expect a big delay and scrambling around to complete the project. Next time I would go with a smaller company. On a positive note, they didn't charge us for re-doing the bottom stair. The quality of the handrails and balusters is good (about a "B+" - some parts on the handrail weren't sanded down enough resulting in some uneven surfaces) but otherwise it looks nice.

SoCal Stairs FAR exceeded our expectations. Our salesman, Dan, was professional, well-versed in the process, made some great suggestions and we absolutely LOVE the new look. We would recommend to our closest friends and family without any reservation whatsoever.

Everything related to scheduling and customer service went well. No complains. However the final result is not what was expected. I had white wash finish on stairs railings and it wasn't removed but slightly sanded and stained. The final finish didn't come even. The color is beautiful but there are many light and dark spots all over the railings. Some parts are really light when main color is dark. I was told that these spots are color variations and are always present when it comes to a natural wood. However, I am sure that if white wash was sanded off completely, the color would be even all over the project. At least a sale person should told me about it before, but when I asked about white wash because I have experience with it before in other home projects, he told me that it would be removed. He also told me that I would be given samples of color to chose from, but it wasn't offered. The other thing is that some parts of the stairs came out very rough, not smooth like others and they are collecting dust and are hard to clean.

Excellent work. The guy who did the install was highly skilled in his area and did a wonderful job. I would recommend SoCal Stairs highly.

It has been a true pleasure to interact with all staff from SoCal Stairs. Don and Jacob provided us lots of technical help to finalize the plan for our stair remodeling. They were very responsive and the price offered is reasonable. The finisher Sean did an excellent job to find a paint for the wood surfaces to match with the new iron baluster. I am quite impressed by his patience and persistence to make sure we are satisfied with the paint color. The installer Miguel was very punctuated and did a great job to remove the old balusters and install the new iron balusters. After the remodeling, I noticed a slight dislodge of a hinge area. I had only one discussion with Jacob and I received email saying Sean will stop by soon to fix the small area, which really shows their professionalism. Overall, we are quite satisfied with the experiences and would recommend them to anyone.

Beautifully done. The wood stain matched perfectly with the sample I gave them. The work was done quickly and efficiently. The new railings look terrific.