My wife and I purchased a property in Auburn that already included house plans. We only wanted to…read moremake some modifications to the existing floor plan and structure, so we hired Golden State Design & Engineering and worked with William Petlinsky.
We brought the original plans to our first meeting, explained exactly what we liked, and discussed the changes we wanted. We then signed a contract for approximately $23,000, which included a full set of plans, Title 24, landscape plans, HOA submission, and permit submission to the city.
A couple months later, we had another meeting and noticed the project had already gone far off track from what we originally requested and well beyond our intended construction budget. We spent hours trying to redirect the design back toward our vision.
After another 4-5 months of little progress and repeated follow-up emails, we scheduled another meeting. Once again, the plans were nowhere near what we wanted and still far beyond budget.
At that point, the contract had already been paid in full. During that meeting, William told us they had spent too much time on the project and requested an additional $4,000 due to "extra square footage." However, we had provided the original plans from the beginning, and the square footage had never changed.
Trying to move the project forward, I paid the additional $4,000. At that point, we were $27,000 into plans that still did not reflect what we asked for.
I later arranged a meeting with William and my contractor to see if we could salvage the plans and make them workable. After about an hour, William stated that any further revisions would cost another $10,000.
That would have brought the total to $37,000 while we were still stuck in the design phase without completed plans.
I explained that this felt unfair because the original contract had already been paid in full, plus the additional $4,000, yet we still did not have finalized plans that matched our requests. His response was that maybe we should "sell the land and cut our losses."
At that point, I decided to terminate the relationship and hire a new designer.
We lost approximately a year and a half, $27,000, and were left with incomplete plans on a flash drive.
This was an extremely frustrating and disappointing experience. I would strongly encourage anyone considering this company to carefully review all terms, pricing, and expectations before committing.