Carl Gaard

I called Carl about a second bathroom redo, and we had a great conversation about life and work. At this point in his life Carl could certainly retire if he chose to. He stated he was still at it because he still took great pleasure in making beautiful things to delight his clients. I really believe this to be the case. Although he was very busy he promised to look things over within a week. He called back the next day and told me he had received a call from a contractor he knew very well who was between jobs and looking for work. Carl said he could absolutely vouch for this man’s skills and integrity. Added that he was a delight to work with. And so I contacted Donovan McCurdy and hired him and his sidekick to do the job. The bathroom was a mess with very extensive rot around the shower stall and a shower pan that was badly disintegrated. All of this required the better part of a week to refurbish. The floor, shower and walls were completely retiled. In addition the job required some plumbing and dry wall repair. The job is now completed and it looks great. His price was more than reasonable and I wound up giving him around a 20% bonus for a job very well done. He also installed some pre-​hung French doors in about half a day and did a beautiful job on this as well. Several days after the work was completed Carl called to make sure everything had gone well, since he felt the outcome was ultimately his responsibility! It just doesn’t get any better than that. So by all means give Carl a call. If he is too busy to get to your job in a timely fashion and Donovan is available, by all means grab him up. These guys are jewels. Jim Simons

I was faced with making my pedestrian 1940’s kitchen into something special. I saw Carl’s name on Berkeley Parents Network, really hit it off with him. This was in 2012 — before he had most of his crew. We worked together — both of us on weekends, where we really forged ahead, and I alone during the week, to do detail work — plaster, paint, etc.
He really has a gift for seeing the possibilities where only barriers (literally) exist. With his guidance and expertise, we completely transformed the kitchen and adjoining space, demolishing walls and expanding doorways. And the guy is a dynamo — I lost 10 lbs trying to keep up with him.
Now my kitchen is a joy to work in, and a joy to look at, and is at the same time completely unique and fits into my house’s style perfectly.

Company Name: Carl Gaard
Categories: Cabinet Making, Carpentry — Woodworking, Drywall, Electrical, Plastering, Remodeling — General, Remodeling — Kitchen & Bathroom
Work completed on September 15, 2014
Hire Again: Yes
Approximate Cost: $ 75,000.00
Description Of Work:
Carl designed and built (with our help) a complete renovation of 3 small rooms in our early 20^th-​century house into a modern kitchen in a traditional style and constructed an adjacent deck. Carl’s activities involved design, demolition, rough carpentry, electrical, plumbing, drywalling, 5 new windows and cabinets. Carl’s employees do all but the finished carpentry which he reserves for himself. Carl has a roster of high-​quality subcontractors with whom he frequently works who did the floor refinishing and rebuilding, heating ducts, and countertops.
Comments:
We have done many renovations, and one of us is a skilled furniture maker. We were looking for top quality work. We also wanted a contractor who could work with us to design the project and share portions of the work. Carl exhibited flexibility in letting us do what we wanted which included a portion of the demolition, trash hauling, cabinet doors, cabinet finishing, and a portion of the plastering and painting.
Carl has extensive experience (40+ years) with high-​end designers and brings his own creative design sense that was integral to devising a traditional look within a totally modern kitchen.
Carl is attentive to hidden structural elements such as conservative structural framing and extensive shear-​walling. Carl encouraged the furniture-maker’s creativity by working with us on special features such as an ornate column, veneer and hardwood additions to the cabinetry, passthroughs, and shelves. Carl worked hard to coordinate ornamental features found elsewhere in the house into the kitchen.
Carl is extremely hard-​working. Because he shoe-​horned us into an already crowded schedule, for a number of months he worked in our house on weekday evenings and on weekends. During one phase of the project, Carl probably over-​stretched himself, injured himself, and was cranky and stressed, but toward the end he rebalanced his schedule and returned to a more even keel. Our tensions usually arose over differences in opinions on design or the not surprising challenges of defining the shared work. We know that Carl has other clients who encourage him to make almost all the design decisions as well as execute them. We’ve seen a few of his other jobs in situations like this and his work is still of the highest caliber. He is cabable of doing any style, modern to heavy victorian.
Carl’s pricing is fair and his ability to make components that are not readily available is a great asset and saves the clients lots of money. He copied window casings and molding from the rest of our house so they would match. He knows local suppliers well. In a kitchen renovation there are always a thousand different pieces that need to be gotten, vetted, approved, etc. He knew where to get most of these things and how much to expect to pay for them. To save money, we often got those things and Carl was willing to forego the usual cost of him having to go get these supplies. If the homeowner didn’t have the time or inclination to do that, I am sure that his prices would still be fair and reasonable. We had other bids on the kitchen and they came in much higher. And those contractors would have made a very generic kitchen. Now we really feel as if our kitchen is very unique to us and our house.

When I called Carl the first time, he invited me to his current project in Oakland hills where he was rebuilding an entire floor, including kitchen, bath, deck and a cupola into the roof. The work was masterful and I was impressed by his confidence and resume. He used to build high end hotels and vacation homes for Wall Streeters in NYC. But wasn’t he aging out of this work I asked him, observing that he was retirement age. He laughed at me and told me he was put on this earth to rebuild people’s lives by changing the space around them. I knew then that he was the enlightened Zen Master Contractor. So different from the many I’d interviewed who had a habit of little-​ladying me and saying no to my visions of a non-​traditional demo/​party kitchen with an XL island including stove and sink. Anything can be built, he said.
I figured I couldn’t afford him, but Carl came to look at my falling-​down IKEA kitchen remodel anyway. I needed someone who I could trust to work unsupervised for a month. My husband’s cancer came back and it was bad. He would be doing an experimental immunotherapy trial for a month in LA. Our family would move down too, making space for this decade long project to finally happened.
Carl listened to our story and kitchen needs and then he impressed us in 3 ways:
1. He said it was more difficult and expensive per hour to reengineer IKEA cabinets than to build from scratch. Light bulb moment!
2. He’s a design-​build one-​stop-​shop and I wouldn’t need an architect. Just give a general layout plus inspiration tear sheets for style. And he liked my vision of a party kitchen!
3. Most importantly, he wanted the job because he wanted to support my husband in his fight against cancer and help our family. He promised to work within our tight budget and timeline, and he honored that.
Carl took the job. I emptied out the old kitchen and left him a blank canvas. Carl and his crew built an astonishingly beautiful kitchen in six weeks. Check out the photos below. Carl free-​styled the woodpaneled back wall and 2 undercarts on casters for extra table space. It’s a kitchen that far exceeds its cost and our expectations.
I can’t promise the same kind of turnaround and budgeting that Carl gave us. It seemed like so many miracles lined up that made this kitchen transformation possible in a short timeframe. I barely talked to him from the hospital in LA, where my husband was slowly turning into a ghost and the other patient died. I now know that he and his crew must have worked like dogs those weeks to give us a homecoming to remember. I’ll never forget the moment when my exhausted husband, two young daughters and I returned from this debilitating treatment. We walked into our brand new kitchen, looked around and wept. We all knew we were in for a brand-​new life.
Since then, our kitchen has hosted many parties and gatherings and is truly the heart of our home. My husband is doing well. My kids can’t remember the old dingy kitchen. And Carl is our family friend. He did more than upgrade our kitchen with good taste, ingenuity and the skill of a master. Carl helped redesign our lives.

Carl truly is as good as it gets! Working with him has been such a wonderful experience. We converted part of our basement/​garage to a new bedroom and bathroom. Things went so well that we ended up doing a part of our kitchen as well — and all for about the price that others were bidding for just the bed/​bath. We really appreciated that the inevitable small changes along the way were easily accommodated. The finish work at the end was really a team effort with Carl not only doing the work but helping my husband design it as well. And everyone on his team was extremely hard working and easy to deal with (we lived in the house — with our 2 year old — while the work was done).
As all of his other reviewers noted, he is an exceptionally skilled contractor and craftsman, while also being very cost-​conscious. Carl is like a zen master… calm and thoughtful in his manner and work. He has become not only our contractor, but our family friend. Our son refers to him as Uncle Carl. My only hesitation in writing this review is a selfish one — I wish he was a little less busy so we could have him back sooner to work on our next project — though I’m sure it will be worth the wait.

Carl Gaard should change his name to the House Whisperer. He completely freshened up my run down house, refinished hard wood floors, making them glow, painted inside and out, added windows, built a custom desk, and a closet, all while he completely remodeled a brick house next door which he turned into an exquisite Asian style comfortable house with lots of storage and unique touches. Carl is the best!

We called Carl looking to convert our damp, old, nearly-​falling down detached garage into an office. He not only gave us the lowest bid of several contractors, but he took on the project with imagination and gusto. My wife and I connected with Carl on a personal level, often sitting with him long after he finished work for the day to talk about life, current events, and the baby on the way.
The finished project is magnificent. It includes a bay window where I have my standing desk, a skylight above, and enormous amounts of shelf and cabinet space. (Carl began as a master cabinet maker in NYC.) We bought some attractive wood flooring and Carl used the left over scraps to form the top of my desk. It all creates a phenomenal look. We are very happy.
Along the way, Carl took on any number of extra projects, including moving our front fence, building a newer, much more attractive gate, widening our driveway (and pouring the cement), installing new security on our windows, and fixing our patio. Carl does all his work while only charging for time and materials. This work truly seems to be his life’s work, improving the homes and lives of those in his community. We are so, so lucky we found, Carl.

Carl was working on the unit down the hall and I asked him to help build a wardrobe for me too. It was a difficult job as there was already a partial closet to work around. Carl did a great job building the wardrobe and also did a couple other handyman jobs that my condo needed!

My husband and I have been living in a converted attic for years now. For anyone who lives in an attic space — it makes for interesting limited space with sloped walls. Ever since we had a baby we lost our very small closet to her. After a year and half of living in absolute clutter with clothes on every piece of furniture upstairs we finally had it. I got a few bids but after meeting Carl, him actually drawing out the closet (instead of just talking about it), and what sounded like lots of experience in carpentry that made me go with him.
What Carl delivered was far more than what we expected. He is most definitely a skilled carpenter. Not only did he make a great closet that took our limited space into consideration, but he added such great detail that it matches the look of our craftsman house. He did not skimp on his detail work. And he works quickly and efficiently.
One a side not, we decided to paint the closet white to blend in with the attic walls and the person that did the paint job didn’t quite do it to the level that Cark had talked about. Once I pointed that out to him, he immediately came over and fixed it himself. He didn’t give excuses, and sanded the whole closet down to give us a smooth texture to paint over again. It is his professionalism, his craftsmanship, and work ethic that makes it understandable as to why he has so many 5 star ratings. I would highly recommend Carl.

Carl installed an amazing pantry in a kitchen closet. Although we had an idea of what we wanted, Carl’s experience and vision resulted in a beautiful and extremely functional pantry. Working with Carl is a pleasure.

I purchased what I called «the poor little sad condo» in July of 2013. It needed a total overhaul, painting, plumbing, electrical and work to the kitchen. I hired Carl Gaard to do the work. We established a budget. I expected that the entire condo would be painted, window treatments, some fixtures replaced and the kitchen brought up to code. What I got was so much more.
From day one, Carl was always there with solutions to the issues that came up and suggestions for improvements that I had not even considered. Some of these are:
* I was having problems getting the right tiles for the bathrooms. Carl went and got samples and brought them to me so I could choose. He knew just where to go and what to select to turn the seriously out-​dated and unsanitary bathroom into a showplace.
* There was an unsightly set of shelves over the stairs that you accessed by placing a board on a set of nuts in the wall and then climbing on that to access the shelves. I told Carl it was dangerous so even though I sorely needed the storage space, just remove them due to safety issues. Carl closed off the shelves from the stairway and made access through an existing closet so the space could be safely accessed. I had not even considered this alternative.
* I asked him to use paint to seal the acoustic ceilings. Instead, Carl found it in my budget to eradicate them.
* The living room had ugly box ceilings. Carl used his extensive carpentry skills to vault them.
* I knew I had a small budget, but asked for glass separating shelves between the kitchen and living spaces. Again, Carl handcrafted the most beautiful shelves.
* It was my husband’s dream to have a custom closet. I was going to get a prefab set and have Carl put it in. He suggested using natural wood and having it handcrafted. What was delivered was a beautiful natural wood space with drawers and shelves. It was stained to the perfect shade for the rest of the room.
* Although the existing flooring was unsightly, I was going to live with it. One day, Carl called me and told me to meet him. He told me that with what we had saved in other aspects of the job, there was sufficient budget to replace the mismatched floor.
For these reasons, and much, much more, Carl Gaard is my contractor for life. He listened to me, got a sense of where I was going with my own esthetic and worked tirelessly to achieve the most perfect space imaginable. His entire team is excellent at what they do, painters, tile layers, carpenters. Each facet of the place is beyond my expectations. I will take pictures to add to this review once everything is all put away. If you choose Carl and his team, you will not go wrong. He is creative, experienced, a master carpenter, and a genius with a budget. His most valuable quality is his heart. He did not just take on a job and whiz through to complete and move on to the next one, he really cared that we were happy and it would be a home that exceeded our dreams. He achieved that goal. Sometimes I just sit there and say to myself, Wow, this is absolutely beautiful. It is the home of my dreams.

Carl is a skilled craftsman and an artist in his own rite. He can handle any job presented to him, does incredible work, has an amazing eye for detail and is meticulous. He has a remarkable ability to tune in to a clients need (s) and is able to produce in record time. His work is of the highest quality around.

Carl Gaard is a talented carpenter, craftsman and skilled contractor. He is also trustworthy and a wonderful person you can count on. We hired Carl to install a rear exterior door and to install a pet door within that door. He also installed towel racks, repaired broken drawers, replaced a striker plate and tackled a number of other repairs in record time. He comes when he says he’ll come and does superb, quality work. We plan to hire him to remodel our kitchen!

We used Carl for a small kitchen project and he was very easy to work with and had great idead. He has a passion and a love for his work which really shows in the final product. He is honest, respectable, professional and has very reasonable prices. We highly recommend Carl and look forward to working with him again!