Santa Clara County
General Contractor & Remodeler in Santa Clara, CA
Santa Clara is really two towns to a builder — the old blocks around the University, and the postwar tracts that filled in everything else. They ask for completely different things.
Most of Santa Clara went up quickly in the 1950s and 60s. Single story, low roofline, three bedrooms, a kitchen walled off from the living room, and a bathroom that has not been touched since the original tile went in. Then you get to the Old Quad and Franklin Square, where the houses are decades older — Victorians, early bungalows, real trim, plaster, tall skinny windows. A remodel on Homestead Road and a remodel four blocks off Franklin Street are not the same job, and the newer builds over by Rivermark are a third thing again. We look at what the house actually is before we talk about what it could be.
The tract lots here are flat and the back yards run deep, which is why so much of the work in Santa Clara ends up being a detached ADU, a garage conversion, or an addition pushed off the back instead of a second story. One thing that catches people out: Santa Clara runs its own electric utility, so a panel or service upgrade here goes through the city rather than the regional utility everyone else deals with. Worth knowing before you plan a kitchen full of new circuits. And if your house sits in one of the older districts, expect the city to care about what the street sees.
R Twyns Construction is family run. Tim Reynolds owns it, his VP Ben is on the job sites, and we have been licensed and building since 2007 — CSLB #896811. Our office is on North 10th Street in San Jose, a straight run over to Santa Clara. Cabinets and finish carpentry are done in house, which matters here more than most places: a 1950s ranch kitchen is full of odd dimensions that stock boxes will not fill, and an Old Quad house needs casing and base that match what is already on the wall.
What we do in Santa Clara
- Kitchens
- Bathrooms
- Additions
- ADUs
- Custom Homes
- Whole-Home
- Custom Cabinets
- Decks & Outdoor
- Commercial
Photos of work like this — kitchens, bathrooms, decks and custom cabinetry — are on Our Work.
Nearby
We cover Old Quad, Franklin Square, Rivermark, Santa Clara University area, Forest Park, Northside, Sunnyvale, San Jose and Cupertino as well, along with the rest of Santa Clara County.
Questions we get in Santa Clara
Our house is in the Old Quad. Does that limit what we can do?
It can. The older parts of Santa Clara get more attention from the city, and the front of the house is usually where that attention lands. It does not mean you cannot remodel. It means the exterior gets designed with that in mind, and we sort it out with the city before anything gets torn apart.
Can we open up the kitchen in a 1950s Santa Clara ranch?
Usually there is a way. The wall between the kitchen and the living room in these tracts is often not carrying much, but we do not guess — we open a small look and check the framing above it first. Once it is open, the cabinets get built to the real dimensions, because nothing in a house from that era is square.
We want to convert the garage into an ADU. Is that realistic here?
On the typical Santa Clara tract lot, yes, it is one of the more sensible moves — detached garage, flat lot, room to work around it. The real questions are the slab, the existing walls, and getting proper plumbing and electrical to it. We will walk the lot with you and tell you straight if the garage is worth keeping or if a new build in the same footprint is the better answer.
Planning a project in Santa Clara? Call the office and you get the people who will actually be on the job, not a call center.