Zume Builders

During the pandemic, we purchased a home in Hillsborough and undertook a major renovation that took the house to the studs. We interviewed half a dozen GCs and were very lucky that we choose Jimmy Cai at Zume Builders to quarterback our project.

Jimmy and Zume Builders were highly recommended to us by two of my colleagues who used Zume as GCs, one major renovation, one new build. He didn’t come with all the fancy marketing, but he was exactly who I was looking for: responsive, flexible, experienced, and most importantly, trustworthy. We started off the process with a fairly modest scope, but as we went through the process, we expanded the scope significantly that we took the house completely to studs and built a new one. Throughout the project, Jimmy was always available to explain the pros and cons, help us with timely revisions, and also proactive in communicating upcoming work. We undertook this whole project right in the middle the pandemic when everybody in America seemed to be building a home yet Jimmy somehow managed to arrange all of the subcontractors to work on the house at the right time. There really wasn’t a time that there isn’t a crew or two making progress on the house, which in retrospect, was amazing. One of the main requirements I had was to finish as soon as practical. I have young kids and a big reason to move was to give them more space as they grow. I wanted to avoid at all cost that we get sucked into all the minute details of a perfect house but spend years building it, while the kids grew up without it. Jimmy understood this acutely and from the day we met him to the day we moved in: 18 months, in the middle of a pandemic, for a large home taken down to the studs!

Jimmy is a trustworthy person, and I cannot stress enough how important that is in our case, as we expanded scope significantly. We’ve heard really bad stories from close friends that they chose GCs (that came with excellent reviews) who underbid the job and when the owners either encounter the unexpected or decide to expand the scope, that’s when they jack up the price, knowing it’s very difficult to change GC mid-way through a project. With Jimmy, we never had to worry – he’s always fair and transparent about pricing.

We have now lived in our home for over a year, and we couldn’t be happier. Any minor issues (not many) we encountered were promptly addressed by Jimmy. If you are looking for a GC who you can trust, understands your need, and always available, be sure to reach out to Jimmy and the Zume Builder team. I highly recommend!

We hired Zume builders in the middle of our project because our previous contractor bailed after doing a terrible job, and Zume build absolutely rescued us from a nightmare situation.

Their sales manager Alan did a very thorough job crafting a quote and walked us through each line item by item. He was very patient and perfectly willing to work with us to modify the contract to our requirement. Because they took over another contractor's shoddy work, there was a lot of extra work on Zume's side to crafted the correct scope of work. We've gotten quotes from 10 contractors, but no one else came close to Alan's level of attention to details on his paperwork.

Jimmy is our GC/project manager. He has decades of experience in the industry. We love the fact he's bilingual and fluent in Mandarine/Cantonese, which makes it easier for our parents to communicate with him. He is very hard working and visit our job site daily, and alert us immediately on any issues or if he has any questions. When a new sub needs to start work, that's usually communicated out days in advance so we know what is and will happen on the. When a decision is required, he always lay out all the available options, explains all the pros and cons, and let us make the final decision. He will come in to inspect all the details in each phase, and even do addition work himself when he finds things not up to his standard. He tracks our job's progress very closely and always know which subs will show up to do what work. Then his sub team will show up on time and on schedule. We had a few other indepedant contractors that worked on single items (roof, backyard) that was hired before Zume, and Jimmy worked closely with them on scheduling without additional charge. Jimmy will also give us recommendation on material purchase, let us know the important criteria to picking equipment and materials, and give us recommendations on stores to visit for purchasing.

Over all, our job finished on time and on budget with minor additional change order, mostly because we wanted to add more things. All inspections were passed first time. We took our house down to studs and Jimmy's team were able to repair all the crappy work left by the previous contractor before proceeding to rebuild our home. We are now moved in and can't be happier with our brand new home. This house use to be the out-dated with mis-matching style and a long list of structure issues, and now it looks like one of those million dollar homes shown on TV completely with new hardwood floor, modern kitchen, and wall-to-wall tiled bathrooms. This remodel turned out even better than I imagined and my family couldn't be happier. Zume isn't the cheapest contractor in our search, nor the more expensive, but they definitely deliver out-standing result at reasonable price.

PS we love the buildtrend.com tool they are using to track invoices and progress. It's very easy for us to make payment and keep track of invoicing, which save a lot of time for both side.

When we first bought our Hillsborough home last year, I was nervous to take on a major remodel. This was our first remodel, my husband and I both work full-time, we have two young kids…and the property was not inexpensive. We had heard dozens of horror stories from friends and family…jobs incomplete, poor workmanship, budget overruns, timelines thrown out the window. For this reason, we did our research at the outset of the project. We interviewed over a dozen contractors of all sized operations, received eight bids, and decided on Zume Builders to oversee the work based on our perception of their work ethic and experience. Best decision ever! Jimmy and his team made our lives so easy! Invoices were sent through a sophisticated online system, work was completed timely (as much as possible given COVID), and Jimmy’s attention to detail rivals my own (which is saying a lot, being a CPA and extremely particular about…everything). He provided regular status updates, answered our never-ending questions (patiently!), and kept to his initial estimate (very uncommon from what we’ve been told!). Furthermore, Jimmy is available ALL THE TIME. I text him in the morning, in the evenings, on the weekend. He always responds! Did I mention that his subs are amazing? Custom carpentry, tile, trim, paint, you name it, they are superb. Friends who are in the business of building residential properties visited and raved about the quality of the tile work. I suppose this is a long-winded way of saying, look no further for a responsible, responsive, transparent, highly technical, experienced, trustworthy general contracting firm. We have already recommended Zume Builders to multiple friends and plan on using Jimmy when we build an ADU on our property next year. Thanks Jimmy, Michael, and Alan for making our first remodel such a pleasant experience from start to finish!

We were creating a second unit in a single family home in San Francisco. There was an existing in-law's unit behind the garage. It was old and in extremely poor condition with materials most likely from the 50ies. Jimmy and Zume (previously MSJ Construction) connected us with their designer, who provided a couple of options. Once we decided on the design, he actively went after the appropriate permits. He was able to help push the permits through with the city (SF is extremely strict) surprisingly much quicker than anticipated. This project was a total gut job and a build of a brand new apt unit behind the garage. As with all constructions there were hiccups along the way but Jimmy always provided the details and costs. He was always conscience of our budget and did everything he could to keep costs down. He never took advantage of our lack of experience by trying to upsell more expensive materials. Since there was no one on site to monitor the progress we found we could trust Jimmy to do the right thing. He would keep us informed and would always respond quickly to questions. We are extremely happy with the quality of work done by his people and he has shown he stands by that. We had an issue with a hot water heater after completion of the project and sign off. We contacted Jimmy about the issue for a referral to someone who could fix the problem and instead he replaced and re-installed a new hot water heater at no cost and that was NO FAULT of Zume. Jimmy is a total professional who cares about what his customer wants. I would recommend ZUME to anyone who wants to have construction done with a customer first mentality.