Ron Cohen

Ron is helping us with our remodel and we are very pleased with his work. He takes his time to understand the scope of the project, asks many questions to ensure we get what we want and is very dedicated to quality. We brought him in mainly for finish carpentry and cabinet installation. As a bonus he helped with minor drywall repair and tile work. I wish we had found him earlier in our project as he has well-​rounded carpentry skills that would be great from framing to finish. Ron is pleasant to work with and always has a smile on his face. He is proud of his work, for good reason, and seems to really enjoy his work. He is respectful while working in our home and we are thankful to the Unilocalers who helped us find him!

Ron is a very skilled carpenter and he did a remodel on my house in Pacifica. He did an excellent job installing the new kitchen cabinets, installing travertine tile flooring, a new sink and relocated the dishwasher, as well as other related stuff. Like alot of homes my place is not perfect in dimensions, but he made it look perfect. I hired him again to frame out new windows and do finish carpentry on that project with crown molding, and he and his assistant Gordon do great work. I think his best trait is he really listens and pays attention to what you want, and works with you to make it look great.

Ron is absolutely great to work with, we had a great interaction and great experience with our first project with him. And we definitely intend to work with him again.
We’ve been struggling for a while to find a good way to access a small loft which opens to our dining area. A full blown staircase would take up too much space, and the barebone ladder was very difficult to use. After much research, I found pictures online of wooden retractable ladder, which was perfect for our space!
The project required a lot of thinking outside the box, being a total custom job, which involved building a metal hinge from scratch, and very accurate measurements and execution, so that the ladder slides open without noise or effort. Ron brainstormed with us, and came up with an excellent solution, and saw potential issues way before starting any work.
The work was done quickly, in about 3 days of actual work, plus some coordination with a welder etc. We are very happy with the results, and use the ladder every day!

I had two closets that sat across from each other in a short hallway between a bedroom and bath. I wanted to convert the area into a «walk through» closet. The interior of the closet was being handled by another firm. On the bedroom side, I wanted a modern sliding barn door.
Since the two closets needed a header to support a door, I knew I needed a professional. Ron Cohen was that professional. Not only professional, Ron is a seasoned, old-​world craftsman, a rare breed in these days of flippers and quick-​fix «construction» dudes.
Ron came to the house, walked through the job site and listened! After taking measurements and a bit more chatting, he explained what he thought was needed. I also showed him some unused space in my other spare room. It was a 4×3×4 space above a door high up that would be perfect for storage except it had no doors and was high up (yikes). Ron and I discussed what I wanted— doors and a library ladder for getting up there — and to look decorative. He suggested re-​using the doors from the closets I was redoing — perfect!
We arranged a basic project outline and he promised to send a bid which he did over email. The bid was accepted and in no time Ron was on the job. He really worked with me – and added some lovely, decorative black walnut to the door jamb, the door, and the closets.
Ron transformed my builder-​grade hallway closets into a mini-​high-​end walk through closet. Love, love it!
He also re-​used my old closet doors to build a new mini-​storage area for my luggage and winter jackets. The library ladder I wanted now serves to safely let me climb to the storage or to replace the battery in the smoker alarm. And it will soon double as a cool bookshelf when not in use.
Ron is fantastic. If you want innovative execution with old-​world carpenter expertise and quality workmanship, you should definitely seek him out.

I called Ron out at the last minute to replace two 4×4 posts inside fiberglass columns on our porch. We were in the process of having pavers put in our front yard when they discovered the rotting posts (after having nearly destroyed the bottom of the columns). Not only was Ron able to replace the posts, fix the brackets, replace the stucco, and salvage the fiberglass columns, but he also fixed the bottom of the columns (saving us the time and headache of having to replace them), removed and replaced the pavers surrounding the posts (to make the repair), got us a new gutter drain (which had also sustained damage during the paver process and no longer fit against the column with the new paver size), re-​painted everything, including the threshold into the home (which was filthy after the pavers were put in), and consulted on a few other items (including a portion of the pavers that the landscaper is going to come back and fix).
He finished the job much faster than he had estimated and was clear about every step of the process. He was on-​time for every meeting we had and his estimate was by far the best we received. We were very pleased with our experience and we plan to use Ron for all of our general contracting needs.

We recently had Ron build us a corner bench for our kitchen. He did an excellent job. He was diligent in getting measurements, responsive and timely, and was great at sharing thoughts and ideas without being overbearing. Ron is so easy to work with and get in touch with.

Ron did some repair work to our house in Menlo Park in January 2013, and he was fantastic to work with. He was extremely clear in communicating timelines and arrival times; he was more than fair with his pricing; he’s just a nice guy who made the whole process a pleasure; and his work was excellent. I highly recommend Ron.

One of the best decisions we made in our huge remodel was to bring Ron into the team. He is reliable, communicates well, and does great work. He takes instruction as well as works independently. Top quality workmanship, punctual, neat, invests in his own tools. He gave worthwhile advice when we were taking bids from other subcontractors i.e. sheetrock, electrical, painting. I will certainly hire Ron on the next project.

Contacted Ron Cohen of Nest about designing and building a custom art case and media cabinet during a remodel at my home. After having three of the highest Unilocal recommended local finish carpenters /​cabinetmakers come out to my home and listening to them talk repeatedly about how in demand they are and receiving very little in the way of design ideas (including how they might tie in to our existing stairway and make the pieces look built-​in), or explanation of how they constructed their bids, Ron was a breath of fresh air.
He has over 20 years of experience as a finish carpenter and general contractor. Ron proved to be honest, organized, creative, courteous and absolutely capable. He helped us with design ideas, listening to us first and then quickly crafting simple, elegant solutions and identifying opportunities to improve on our concept (which was mainly balancing design element and cost).
Ron prepared a bid that was very clearly broken down into its material and labor components. Instead of giving us a vague, broad range on material costs he nailed the bid down to within $ 100 (!) of the actual cost — on a project than ran into the thousands — and his labor bid was spot-​on as well. On labor — he’ll tell you how much time he thinks the job will take as well as his rate — something none of the other bids would specify and I can see why: when looking at how long it took Ron to complete the job it became apparent that the others were padding an additional 30−40% into their rates as (unnecessary) «labor». Well, that — or the ‘best’ guys in the business all work at a glacial pace. I don’t know about most people, but I’d much rather have someone tell me a project is actually going to take 20 hours at $_​x_​/​hour, than pretend it’s 40 (or more) hours at some fraction of that. That just rings of dishonesty to me and it was exactly what I got from those three other ‘high-​demand’ bids.
Ron was on time to the job site every day, stuck to his planned schedule (important for us as he was one of many moving parts simultaneously working on our home to a deadline), worked around the other crews well and (importantly) kept his materials and worksite at our home organized and clean. He was the *only* contractor we had that would spend 30 minutes at the end of every day putting tools away and actually cleaning up his site — being totally conscious on a daily basis that we were living at the remodel site.
I really can’t recommend Ron enough for remodel work (yes, he does new construction too) — he is the rare contractor that is specific, creative, collaborative, courteous, honest and *actually follows through*. If you have a project, you really should call and talk with him — at the very least you’ll get good ideas and a very straight assessment of what your project will require from a material and labor standpoint.