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Golden Ridge Construction is a licensed general contractor (License #1149928) serving Millbrae, California, in San Mateo County. We handle kitchen and bathroom remodels, ADUs, home additions, and whole-home remodels across Millbrae.
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey 2024 5-year estimates.
These are planning ranges for typical 2026 projects, not quotes. Every project is priced after a site visit.
Millbrae is small and almost entirely built out, and its housing sits mostly in the post-war decades. Millbrae Meadows is the clearest example: roughly 700 single-family homes built between 1955 and 1964 by the Stoneson Brothers, largely single-story, many with daylight basements, stepping up the hillside for east-facing views.
Capuchino, between Millbrae Avenue and El Camino Real, is mid-century ranch housing on former flower and vegetable farmland subdivided after the war. Green Hills covers the 1940s through 1970s. The Highlands is the exception to the pattern, with early twentieth-century cottages, Tudors and Spanish-style homes.
For a contractor that mix is good news. Conventional framing, accessible foundations and repeated floor plans mean fewer surprises once walls open up.
Millbrae runs permits through its Building Division, with Planning handling zoning questions separately. One local detail is worth knowing up front: the city reviews some permits in-house on a streamlined basis, and kitchen and bathroom remodels with no structural changes are among the types that qualify.
Two Millbrae-specific fees are worth checking early. ADUs under 750 square feet are exempt from development impact fees, but any ADU adding more than 500 square feet of new floor area pays school fees to both the Millbrae Elementary and San Mateo Union High School districts. The city also publishes a pre-approved ADU plan checklist, which is worth reading before a designer starts.
Permit fees and review times change. Check current requirements on the City of Millbrae Building Division building permits page before planning around a date.
The highest-impact change in a Millbrae post-war home is usually opening the kitchen to the living space. That wall is normally load-bearing, so it is structural work with a beam, posts and proper footings — worth pricing as structural from the start rather than discovering it mid-demolition.
Millbrae also sits close to SFO and under the approach, so windows and insulation come up more here than in most Peninsula cities. Replacing original single-pane windows and insulating walls that never had any makes a noticeable difference to both noise and comfort.
In Millbrae Meadows, the daylight basements many of those homes were built with are often the cheapest square footage on the property, because the structure already exists.
Lots in the flatter neighborhoods are generally regular and often deep enough for a compact detached unit with usable yard left. Garage conversions work well on these homes and cost less, with the usual trade-off of losing covered parking.
On the hillside streets, developing lower-level or basement space is frequently better value than new detached construction, because slope adds foundation and access cost. State law requires ministerial review within 60 days for designs meeting objective standards, and Millbrae publishes a pre-approved ADU checklist that is worth following.
Call (408) 418-8376 or visit our contact page for a free, no-obligation estimate, explore our services, and see all service areas we cover.