Advantage Home Contracting.

Overview

If you have driven Rio Road in Charlottesville, you have probably passed the building without knowing its history. It was once the old DMV, then Walker Auto Repair, and for a while it sat as a rundown eyesore. In 2006 the company that would become Advantage Home Contracting bought it and rebuilt it, partly as a working office and partly as a demonstration: here is what we can do to a tired building. A decade later, in 2016, they expanded and renovated it again. That impulse, to take something worn and make it right, is more or less the whole business in one address.

Advantage started in 2000 as Advantage Handyman Services, with a plain enough goal, to be the company a homeowner could call for repairs and projects without wondering whether the work would hold. Over the years it grew into eight divisions and rebranded to Advantage Home Contracting. It is locally owned by the Castrina family, and it serves Charlottesville, Albemarle County, and the surrounding areas from its shop off Rio.

What they do

The range here is unusually wide, which is the point. On one end is the one-hour handyman visit, the drywall patch, the fixture swap, the door that will not close, the gutters that need clearing. On the other end are full additions and master suites, design-and-build construction, and whole-home renovations. In between sits most of what a house needs over its life: kitchen and bathroom remodels, basement finishing, interior remodeling, hardwood floor refinishing, roofing and siding, doors and windows, and custom decks and screen porches, plus repairs to the decks and porches that already exist.

Painting is its own division, interior and exterior both, with weather-resistant finishes for the outside work down to the shutters. What ties it together is that the company keeps the work in-house. Their team of design and building professionals is licensed, and they do not subcontract or outsource, which is the difference between one crew you can hold accountable and a rotating cast of unknown trucks in your driveway.

How the work is run

A few structural details set the tone. Every job, from that one-hour handyman call up through a kitchen, basement, or a full addition, is overseen by a partner in the company with at least twenty years of experience. The company keeps an engineer, a draftsman, and a designer on staff, so a project can move from a pencil sketch to a real plan without leaving the building. Their professionals carry a minimum of ten years of experience, and the work comes with a 100 percent guarantee and no markup on material cost.

The reviews left by customers tend to describe the same things in different words: crews that show up on time, clean the site before they leave, and stay pleasant through weeks of living alongside strangers in your house. One homeowner had all three bathrooms gutted and rebuilt to their own design choices. Another watched a three-car garage become a finished office with a kitchen, a bathroom, flooring, and a fireplace. Several mention the owner himself stopping by to check the job. The tile work draws particular praise, one reviewer calling their tile setter an artist, which is the kind of specific compliment that is hard to manufacture.

The company holds a Better Business Bureau accreditation and has picked up local honors over the years. By its own count it has served more than 15,000 customers and completed over 40 million dollars in remodeling projects, numbers that mostly tell you it has been at this a long time and at real scale. Advantage also offers two free hours of handyman work to disabled and retired military homeowners, a small standing gesture toward the community it works in.

Visiting and getting an estimate

The office is at 516 Brookway Drive, Charlottesville, VA 22901, and the phone is (434) 817-7222. Hours are Monday through Thursday, 8:00 AM to 4:30 PM, Friday until 5:00 PM, closed Saturday and Sunday. Estimates are free, and you can request one by phone or through the Advantage Home Contracting website, which is also where the portfolio of past kitchens, porches, decks, and basement conversions lives if you want to see the before-and-after work before you call.

One practical note worth setting expectations on: the company draws a service radius around Charlottesville and Albemarle, and takes on the surrounding counties within reason. If you are on the far edge of that map, it is worth asking up front whether your address is in range before you plan around it. For anyone inside it, though, Advantage is the rare contractor set up to handle both the small nagging fix and the wall you have been thinking about taking down, without handing either one off to someone else.

More trades & home services in Crozet

Trades & Home Services

Airflow Systems Inc.

Home-services contractor in the Crozet area.

Trades & Home Services

Albemarle Heating & Air

Home-services contractor in the Crozet area.

Trades & Home Services

Alpha and Omega Home Improvement Contracting, LLC

Home-services contractor in the Crozet area.

Trades & Home Services

Beck Cohen

Home-services contractor in the Crozet area.

← Back to the Crozet business directory