We are first time home buyers who bought a fixer-upper and sought to renovate it through the FHA 203k loan program. We interviewed 13 contractors and ultimately decided to go with Sergio (Angel Construction). We are very glad we did. He is easy to work with, efficient, hard-working, patient, skilled, honest, and the work done is excellent. We have absolutely no complaints, just praise! After interviewing several shady contractors and after having heard so many horror stories about rehab projects that failed, our expectations of the whole process were low. Although we thought we picked the best contractor of the bunch (Sergio!), we still were sure we would encounter difficulties along the way, or find our project at a complete standstill. Instead, we were extremely surprised with how smoothly the process went. We did a gut renovation of our house, and there were no surprises, no delays (other than working with our city's water department), and we came in within budget and within schedule. I thought this type of success would be not just unreasonable to expect, but impossible. A huge part of this success was Sergio's ability to know at what points we wanted to be involved in the decision making process and at what points we did not need to be involved. I suspect other contractors would use the "decision points" as a way to stall so that they could then focus on a different project (and I've seen this happen so many times before in my own work!). Not Sergio. This project stayed on track, and all of us worked hard to keep it moving forward. For those of you who use Angie's List to find a contractor -- a word of advice. I interviewed 13 contractors, 12 of which I found through Angie's List. Some of the experiences I had were downright negative, but I find that few people post negative reviews partly because it's not worth the time, but also because it's not fully anonymous. Many contractors can tell who called them in for what bid, and I found one of them to be downright hostile to people who wrote negative reviews. Do not treat Angie's List as anonymous reviews but as if you were talking to someone who won't openly critique someone else. In other words, what are the things not said? What are the things written that are neutral in tone? Is there a critique nestled in the middle of praise, and is that one line of criticism a deal breaker? The way Angie's List came in useful for us was comparing what people in general said about one contractor versus another in terms of tone and content, but it was entirely not useful in deciding who would make good candidates initially for the type of work we wanted done. So it's a great comparative tool, but not so great on a one on one basis (especially since we interviewed some real non-starters). And so when we narrowed our 13 potential contractors down to 3 finalists, I scoured the reviews on Angie's List. What set Sergio apart was how enthusiastic everyone was about him. And he deserves all that phrase. We really could not be happier. We will hire him for other projects in the future, I am sure of that, and we recommend to anyone reading this to hire him!