Seven phases. Three exits.
Eighteen months is a long time to wonder. Here is the whole road: every stage, what you receive at each, and three forks where you can leave with everything.
Typical total7–21 months
On a renovation, the five phases before construction take about 50% of the elapsed time and settle nearly every decision on cost and schedule. The part everyone pictures is the last two blocks on the right.
Phase 01
The parcel
Two business days
Send whatever exists: an architect's set, a sketch, an address. Matt walks the zoning, constraints and scope himself.
- A written reading of your parcel
- An order of cost
- The permit path for your parcel
- The review bodies your address answers to, named
Phase 02
Feasibility
One to four weeks
Utility capacity, access, soils where they matter, and a preliminary budget built from line items, not an average per square foot.
- A line-item preliminary budget
- Site constraints and utility findings
- A preliminary schedule with agency dates
A written budget and a feasibility reading. If the numbers don't work, it ends here.
- The written feasibility report
- The line-item preliminary budget
- Site and utility findings
- The permit path — yours to take elsewhere
Phase 03
Design development
Four weeks to four months
Drawings carried to a standard that can be priced and permitted, reviewed for constructability throughout, not after.
- A permit-ready set
- Structural and Title 24 coordination
- A budget revised against real drawings
- A written constructability review
The drawings you paid for are yours, to price with another builder if you wish.
- The full permit-ready set
- Structural and Title 24 coordination
- The revised budget
- No penalty and no clawback
Phase 04
Entitlement
Six weeks to nine months
We submit, answer plan check and hold the agency relationship. Coastal, architectural review and variance triggers were identified in Phase 01.
- A submitted and tracked application
- Plan check corrections answered in writing
- Issued permits
Approved permits attach to the property, not to us.
- Issued permits in the property's name
- All plan-check correspondence
- Permits that stay with the property
- No construction commitment
Phase 05
Preconstruction
Two to four weeks
Trades bid the permitted set; allowances become selections. We open walls on purpose here, so what is behind them is priced, not discovered.
- A fixed contract sum: the number is set here
- A confirmed schedule
- An allowance schedule with dated decision deadlines
Phase 06
Construction
Three to eighteen months
Matt is on site. A written Friday account with photographs, a live schedule, and any cost movement in writing before the work occurs.
- A written update every Friday
- Variations priced in writing, in advance
- A single point of accountability
Phase 07
Closing and warranty
Ongoing
Final inspection, a punch walk you lead, and the full documentation package. The person who will live there writes the better list.
- A punch list closed to your satisfaction
- Warranties, manuals, and as-builts
- Two years of workmanship coverage
- A twelve-month return visit, called for or not
Start this month. Finish when?
The seven phases on real months, rainy season marked. Choose the project, the month we first talk, and how smoothly review goes.
Rainy season: in the County, grading from November 1 to April 15 needs erosion controls in placeToday
Twelve months on the South Coast, and what each one asks of a project.
Rain decides when earth can move, wind decides what a house must be made of, and the coast has its own calendar besides. Choose a month.
September
0.05 inaverage rain78° / 60°average high and low
Still dry, and still warm. The months left before the rain are the ones to use for anything that must be closed in.
- Rainy season for gradingCounty grading code: November 1 to April 15
- Sundowner winds, most frequentSpring, typically beginning near sunset
- May gray and June gloomMarine layer mornings
- Gray whales, then blue whalesGray December to May; blue late May to September
- Monarchs at EllwoodOctober to February
- Seal pups at CarpinteriaRookery beach closed December 1 to May 31
- Plovers nestingMarch 15 to September 15
| Month | Rain | High / low |
|---|---|---|
| January | 4.43 in | 67° / 46° |
| February | 4.41 in | 67° / 47° |
| March | 3.20 in | 68° / 49° |
| April | 1.01 in | 71° / 51° |
| May | 0.41 in | 72° / 54° |
| June | 0.14 in | 73° / 57° |
| July | 0.01 in | 76° / 60° |
| August | 0.01 in | 78° / 60° |
| September | 0.05 in | 78° / 60° |
| October | 0.84 in | 76° / 56° |
| November | 1.40 in | 71° / 50° |
| December | 3.07 in | 66° / 46° |
Rain and temperature: NOAA 1991–2020 normals, Santa Barbara. Seasons: County of Santa Barbara grading code; UCSB; NOAA Channel Islands; City of Goleta; City of Carpinteria; UCSB Coal Oil Point Reserve.
Every claim above has a document behind it.
A process page is easy to write and hard to prove. So we publish the specimens: an allowance schedule, a Friday update, the change-order clause in our standard wording, and when the price stops moving.
Send us the address. We'll tell you the truth about it.
Email it to purchasing@amnbuild.com. A written assessment, free, in two business days. Yours to keep, whether or not we build together.
- Same dayMatt confirms he has it, and flags anything obvious that is missing.
- Within two business daysA written reading of your parcel: jurisdiction, review bodies, constraints, an order of cost and the permit path.
- Then nothing, unless you askNo follow-up sequence, no call from anyone else. The assessment is yours to keep, and to take anywhere.