Alicia Jensen Design

"I had the pleasure of working with Alicia on a project. She was very reliable , and saved me a lot of money and time with her guidance and expertise."

"We had such a good experience with Alicia! We were doing a full inside remodel. She helped us and explained everything step by step. We found Alicia and AJD to be very professional and personable. Also, the contractor Alicia recommended to us was very high quality and also very professional. To top it off, her contractor, was actually the middle of the road with pricing. But we trusted Alicia and were not disappointed!! We can't wait to work with Alicia again!"

"I worked with Alicia on our kitchen remodel and she was a saint! So sweet, professional and fun to work with. She was upfront about costs and had amazing ideas! Couldn’t recommend her enough! Thank you Alicia!!"

"Save yourself a headache. Save yourself wasted money. Save yourself wasted time.... Avoid. Avoid. Avoid. We were given only her suppliers as options for finishes, appliances, etc, most of which were twice as expensive as they are for similar quality through other venders (which we found out by going out on our own with the blue prints and getting our own quotes, since she only offered us quotes from her vendors that no doubt give her a commission for the sales) We asked Alicia multiple times throughout the design/planning process if we should get a contractor out to look at our space (we are converting a garage into a Junior ADU) to ensure that the project was feasible and could be done within our budget. She repeatedly told us that contractors don't get involved until we are in the permitting process and closer to the start of the project. When the plans were "complete" Alicia told us that we had gone to permitting. What we found out days later was that we had in fact not gone to permitting, but rather she had sent the file to a "permitting company" who told her that they would need 4 sets of printed plans to submit, stating that Santee only accepted plans on paper. The printing cost us an additional $200+, and when we looked on the City of Santee permitting site, it clearly stated that they were no longer accepting paper plans as they were transitioning to an online permitting portal in the next week. Once we entered the permitting process, Alicia arranged for us to get bids only from 2 contractors that she worked with. Fortunately, we decided to get some bids on our own, and had 3 additional contractors come out to look at the space, and review the plans. This is where the wheels really fell off, and we realized that we had been misled from the very beginning! 1. Alicia had an engineer review the plans and complete the engineering portion of the blue prints without relaying any information on the project, or having them look at the space. When we had our own contractors review the plans, they noted several things that the engineer had written into the plans that dramatically increase the price of construction and were completely unnecessary by city code, or any functional reasons. Some of these issues included that he wrote that we would need an entirely new roof for the whole house - even though had he asked, we had the roof replaced just 4 years ago, and the construction did not involve the roof in any way. He also added an entirely new slab over the existing slab, that would not only take away about 5" of the height of the space, but also add an additional $6000+ to the project. 2. Title 24 was not done correctly. For example, our plans called for a mini split unit in the new ADU, as we wanted it heated and cooled separate of the main house, however despite the mini split being on the plans, the Title 24 reviewer also put that we would need to connect ducting to the main house central AC/heater. 3. Early in the design process, we made sure to point out to Alicia that the current garage had curbing that extended beyond the current stud walls, and she ensured us that would not be an issue, that they would just fur the walls out to account for it. The problem is that SHE DID NOT ACCOUNT FOR THAT IN THE DESIGN MEASUREMENTS, causing her design and all the plans to be off by over 40 sq. feet in a total space of 350 sq feet, Making the whole design useless. When we notified Alicia of all of these concerns via text, and told her that we were having to completely start from scratch, being unable to use anything she had provided us, rather than reaching back out to us to discuss and try to make things right, the only thing she did WAS SEND US AN ADDITIONAL BILL! All in all, we paid her over $10,000 and are not able to use a single thing she did for us! Save yourself the trouble, and AVOID HER! In the end, we found another company who is able to do plans, engineering, title 24, permits, and all-inclusive construction for half the price quoted by any of the contractors she works with."

"Absolutely fabulous! Alicia Jensen is who I used for my new kitchen remodel and who I will use again, without hesitation for my future dual bathroom remodel. I would highly recommend her as she is a very professional and extremely knowledgeable about materials, building codes, design ideas, and most importantly, an expert in the software needed to make official blue prints and view renderings. She truly listens to what you want and it was certainly reflected in her designs! She even gave me a great idea to move the fridge to another wall and it gave me a ton of pantry space! Genius and functionality? Sign me up! The whole process took about a month of back and forth with decisions and I was very pleased with the how it all came together so seamlessly in the end. As you can imagine, after the design was finalized, we had multiple contractors involved. From the electrician, to the plumbers, the handymen, and of course the cabinet maker. I simply printed copied of the final design plans and everyone used them without any issues! It was a huge sigh of relief to have the actual plans and not have to guess at critical dimensions or have one off number that could mess up things like a domino effect! Home remodeling can be a stressful time but I can say whole heartedly that this was the easiest, most stress free part of the entire process!"