Expertise at Your Fingertips

When you take as much pride in your home as most Eichler owners and other modernists do, you're even more careful about hiring the right home-improvement contractor to upgrade or repair it than the average, reasonably diligent homeowner.

It's no surprise. There are maintenance and upgrade issues in Eichlers that are not present in other homes—brought on by flat roofs, radiant heating, lots of glass, and more—so, naturally, they require different types of expertise than other houses do.

That's where the Eichler Network's new 2016 'Home Maintenance Directory' comes in—lined with 100 service companies with lots of experience working on Eichlers and other mid-century moderns. The 2016 print edition went into the mail this week to the homes of 10,500 Bay Area Eichler owners, and is also posted online in easy-to-read flip-book format.

For many years, certainly up through the 1990s, getting proper home maintenance and repair was a challenge for most Eichler owners because their homes made little sense to so many contractors and technicians.

"Back when we started the Eichler Network in the early '90s, so many Eichler owners seemed lost, operating without service companies they could trust and that had a true understanding of their homes," recalls Marty Arbunich, founder of the company and publisher of CA-Modern magazine.

Arbunich, who points out that the both the Eichler Network and its Directory were created out of that need among Bay Area Eichler owners for qualified contractors and specialists, recalls the trying times.

"There were stories floating around back then about how unqualified service companies would ruin Eichlers because they lacked the knowledge and skill set to work on them. That was a time, I cringe to say, when so many Eichler owners lost their original garage doors to unsightly roll-ups, when all they needed was simple repair and automation."

However, times have changed. Today, says Ron Key of Keycon, Inc., a Mountain View-based general contractor whose been affiliated with the Network since it began, "the majority of Eichler owners really have an affinity for what their modern home is, and then are trying to maintain the integrity of it."

"And, what's more," adds Arbunich, "there are a lot more service companies out there today that understand and appreciate Eichlers and treat them with care. I'm happy to say that we've identified the cream of the crop—what we call our 'preferred service companies'—and you can find 100 of them in the new Directory."

Key's company is among the 40 featured in the Directory's written profiles with accompanying photographs. In addition there are dozens "More Recommended Service Companies' listed, all vetted and deemed reliable by the Eichler Network staff.