From bare lot to finished structure — one crew, start to finish.
FRAMO manages new construction the way a general contractor should: permit set through frame-out, foundation through final inspection, without handing your project between three companies that don't talk to each other. Single-family homes, ADUs, and multi-story wood-frame buildings up to five stories, built to your engineered plans — or coordinated with ours.
CA General Building License #1138219 · Bonded $25,000 · Workers'-comp insured
5-story wood-frame build, mid-construction · Los Angeles
Five ways a project starts from nothing
Which one you need isn't just square footage — it's the permit path, the structural system, and how many stories the lot can carry. Here's what each one actually involves.
Single-Family Ground-Up
A full custom home built from a graded pad on an approved architectural and structural set. We run the entire structural scope — foundation coordination, framing, dry-in, and rough-trade sequencing through final frame inspection — as one accountable crew.
Best on: owner-occupied custom homes on an approved lot
ADU / Second Unit
Detached and attached accessory dwelling units built to the City of LA's ADU ordinance — the fastest-growing segment of ground-up work on infill lots, usually moving through a simplified plan-check track instead of full structural review.
Best on: rental income or family housing on an existing lot
Multi-Story Wood-Frame (Type V)
2- to 5-story wood-frame apartment, condo and mixed-use shells. This is where engineered lateral design matters most — shear-wall schedules, hold-downs and diaphragm nailing patterns get followed to the engineer's plan, not approximated.
Best on: developers and investors building density
Light Commercial / Tenant Shell
Ground-up commercial shell-and-core work, structurally complete and ready to hand to a tenant-improvement contractor for the interior build-out — foundation, frame, and dry-in delivered as a clean structural baseline.
Best on: owners and tenants needing a structural shell
Spec / Investment Builds
Builder-owned ground-up projects built to a target buyer spec and a fixed calendar, with the schedule transparency an investor needs to plan carry costs against a real construction timeline, not a guess.
Best on: builders and investors working to a resale timeline
Same lot, six stages later
Structural deck and rebar stage on the left, framed and sheathed roof deck on the right. Drag the handle across to see the stage change.
Real FRAMO jobsite photography — no renders, no stock. Confirm final matched before/after pairing for this page before launch (see the HTML comment at the top of this file).
Six layers, every one of them inspected
A wood-frame wall is doing more than holding up a roof — it's the lateral system that keeps the whole building standing in an earthquake. Skip a connection here and the failure doesn't show up until the ground moves. This is the build-up on a typical LA wood-frame wall section.
Governed by CBC/CRC Chapter 23 (wood) and the project engineer's shear-wall and lateral schedule. Every connection inspected before it's covered.
Six stages on the website, eight on the jobsite
Scroll the sequence
Plan
Permit set review, structural engineering coordination, and plan-check response with LADBS before anyone breaks ground.
Prepare
Site prep, temporary power and water, material staging, safety fencing — the unglamorous week that keeps the rest of the schedule from sliding.
Foundation Handoff
Foundation poured and cured, verified dead-level and dead-square before the first sill plate goes down. Same crew as the foundation pour, so nothing gets lost in the handoff.
Frame (Build)
Walls, engineered floor systems, shear panels, and roof structure go up to the plan, not to habit.
Dry-In (Enclose)
Roofing, windows, doors, and weather-resistive barrier. The building is watertight before a single finish trade starts.
Rough MEP Coordination
Plumbing, electrical, and HVAC rough-in scheduled and inspected inside the open frame, before drywall covers anything up.
Finish
Framing punch-list closed out, structure signed off as drywall-ready.
Deliver
Final framing inspection, certificate-of-occupancy support, closeout documentation, and a walkthrough where we point out exactly what was built and why.
Which build type your project actually is
Side by side, in the terms that decide it. Bring us your plans and we'll tell you which column you're in.
| Build type | Single-Family Ground-Up | ADU / Second Unit | Multi-Story Wood-Frame | Light Commercial Shell |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Typical stories | 1-2 | 1 (detached) | 2-5 | 1-3 |
| Structural system | Conventional wood frame | Conventional wood frame | Engineered shear-wall / diaphragm system | Wood frame or hybrid, per engineer |
| Foundation pairing | Slab or raised — see Foundations | Slab-on-grade, typically post-tension | Post-tension slab or podium deck | Slab or spread footing, per soils report |
| Permit path | Standard LADBS plan check | Simplified ADU plan-check track | Full plan check + structural review | Full plan check + structural review |
| Typical timeline | 4-6 months, foundation to dry-in | 2-4 months, foundation to dry-in | 6-12+ months depending on stories | 3-6 months depending on scope |
| Best for | Owner-occupied custom homes | Rental income or family housing on an existing lot | Developers and investors building density | Owners and tenants needing a structural shell |
The plan set decides. We execute it to code.
Built to the current code cycle
Every structure is engineered to the 2022 California Building Code and Residential Code as adopted by LADBS — not a generic national default, but the version LA's own inspectors are checking plans against.
Lateral design sized for LA's seismic zone
Shear walls or moment frames, depending on the engineer's call, sized for LA's seismic zone rather than approximated. Engineered lumber — LVL, PSL, I-joists — goes in wherever a span calls for it instead of oversized dimensional lumber.
Envelope built to Title 24 before it's covered up
Envelope assemblies are built to meet Title 24 energy compliance before insulation and drywall go on top, so it isn't a problem discovered at final inspection.
LA infill lots are our normal
Setback and height limits, an existing foundation footprint to work around, an ADU sharing utilities with the main house. We work out of Van Nuys and build within roughly a 60-mile radius, and we've run this exact plan-check process with LADBS enough times to know which submittals get flagged.
What owners ask before we break ground
On a FRAMO ground-up job we run the full structural scope — foundation, framing, dry-in — as one accountable crew, and we coordinate directly with your GC or architect on everything else. If you want us as the GC of record for the whole project, we scope that separately; ask when you request your estimate.
Foundation to dry-in usually runs 4-6 months for a single-family home, 2-4 months for an ADU, and 6 months to a year or more for a multi-story wood-frame building, depending on stories and site complexity. We give you a stage-by-stage schedule with the estimate, tied to the 6-stage process above, not one number for the whole project.
Either. Most ground-up clients arrive with an approved architectural and structural set already in hand, and we build to it. If you don't have plans yet, we can point you to the engineers we work with regularly so the structural set is buildable from day one instead of getting redlined at plan check.
Scale and permit path, mostly. An ADU is almost always a single story on a simplified plan-check track under the City's ADU ordinance, so it moves faster and costs less. A full ground-up home or multi-story building goes through standard plan check with full structural review — a longer, more document-heavy process — but it's the same crew and the same 6-stage sequence either way.
Four things, in roughly this order: square footage and number of stories, the structural system your engineer specifies (a 4-story shear-wall building costs more per square foot than a single-story ADU), site access for material delivery and equipment, and how much of the site needs prep before you can even start. We itemize these on the estimate so you can see where the number comes from.
Ready to break ground?
Send us your plans — or tell us what you're picturing — and we'll walk the lot, price the six stages, and give you a schedule you can actually build a timeline around.
framoconstruction.inc@gmail.com · 15321 Saticoy St, Van Nuys, CA 91406