Shanta Design Build

How fortunate for us to have contracted with Shanta for a 3 story deck to replace the dangerous failing one full of woodrot… our first of many successful projects by him and his crew, inside and out, over at least 30 years. The last a beautiful kitchen redo in our 75 year old home for a reasonable charge. Shanta is professional, easy to deal with.

Shanta just finished a job for us and we couldn’t be happier with the outcome. We needed a closet added to a room and Shanta and his son Krishna came up with a fabulous design that looks like it was an original part of the house — which is no small feat in a 100 year old home with lots of interior detail. The quality of the work was first rate and perhaps more importantly it was a pleasure to work with both Shanta and Krishna. Communication was excellent and they were always respectful, courteous, and trustworthy. This was especially important to us as my wife works from home most days and was concerned about hiring someone who would be in our house a lot while she was there. We echo the comments of some of the other more recent reviewers in saying that Shanta and his people demonstrated the highest integrity at all times and can’t imagine where the comments from Donna C. came from. If you are looking for a contractor who does the highest quality work while maintaining the highest standard of care then Shanta is your guy.

Shanta is one of the more knowledgeable and trustworthy builders I have met in my 30+ years of contracting experience. He has helped me address many challenging problems, especially in leak detection and dryrot repair situations. Having known him as long as I have, I find it hard to believe anything in the review by «Donna C» from 2008 — he is as fair, honest, and decent as they come.

So we all know how difficult it is to find a good contractor — well, you’ve found him. Shanta is knowledgeable, diligent, honest and works with integrity. I can’t believe Donna C. is referring to the same person, since my wife will attest to how comfortable and respected she felt.
We hired Shanta for a major repair job that lasted about 6 months and was both complicated and fraught with uncertainty. While such a process is always stressful, it was made easier by the fact that we had complete trust in Shanta, and that the trust turned out to be well-​deserved. We even left the country for an extended period while the project was just beginning!
Shanta does not have his own crew, but all the subs who worked with him (including James W.) were excellent.
So, with quality inevitably comes price, and I will say that Shanta’s services are on the higher end of the scale — but the question is do you want it done cheap or done well and with integrity?
If you have a project of any significance, do yourself a favor and call Shanta. I know that if I (god forbid) I had another major repair to do, I would call Shanta again.

Do not use Shanta under any circumstances! He did a small job for me many years ago (repairing some dry rot) that had one of his employees working for a little over a week and charged an outrageous amount of money. He even billed me for eight hours of his own time, though I saw him there only once for about 10 minutes and he never did any work himself. He is also unbelievably condescending toward women — enough to make you sick. I complained to Cole Hardware about him (where I got his name), but don’t think it did any good. The only saving grace was that his employee was a nice guy and seemed to do a reasonably competent job — hope he was able to find a better position.