General contractor in Barnegat and on Long Beach Island, New Jersey
Decks, painting, doors, windows and bathrooms. A small crew that does the work itself, on houses that take more weather in a year than most houses take in five.
(609) 622-5647Free estimates.
10 years on the tools — and the person who quotes your job is on it.
Long Beach Island and mainland Ocean County. Beach Haven, Ship Bottom, Surf City, Harvey Cedars, Barnegat Light, Brant Beach, Loveladies, Holgate, Beach Haven Terrace, Barnegat, Manahawkin, Stafford Township, Waretown, Forked River, Tuckerton, Little Egg Harbor, Toms River — and everywhere in between.
Alex Vega, owner. Vega Construction LLC, Barnegat, New Jersey.
Who you are actually hiring
Alex Vega owns Vega Construction and is on the job himself — ten years in the trade, based in Barnegat and working the island and the mainland around it.
Vega Construction is a small crew out of Barnegat. That is not a disclaimer — it is the whole offer. The person who comes to look at your house is the person who prices the work, and then the person doing it. Nothing gets handed off to whoever was available that week, and nobody on site is seeing your job for the first time.
Ten years in the trade, most of it on houses within a few miles of here. That matters more than it sounds like it should. A contractor who works inland can build something perfectly correct and still watch it fail early out here, because the things that destroy work on a barrier island are not the things that destroy work fifteen miles west.
Registered as a home improvement contractor with the New Jersey Division of Consumer Affairs, and insured. The registration number is at the bottom of this page and you can check it yourself in about thirty seconds.
What we do
Five of these have a page of their own with the detail. All of them are work we do ourselves.
Decks
New decks, rebuilds, and the repair of the framing underneath that a resurfacing job is not going to fix. Built for salt, sun and a boardwalk’s worth of foot traffic in July.
See decksPainting
Interior and exterior. The prep is the job — a coat of paint on a surface that was not ready is a coat of paint you buy twice.
See paintingDoors
Entry doors, interior doors, sliders and the rot around the opening that turns up once the old one comes out.
See doorsWindows
Full-frame and insert replacement. We are not tied to one manufacturer, so you pick the windows and we install them.
See windowsBathroom remodeling
Full remodels, tub-to-shower conversions, tile and vanities. We look at what is behind the tile before we price the job.
See bathroomsKitchen remodeling
Cabinets, counters, tile and the carpentry that makes all of it fit a room that was never square to begin with.
See kitchensCarpentry
Trim, framing, built-ins and repair. This is the trade the rest of the list is built on.
See carpentryFlooring
Installation and replacement, including the subfloor repair that has to happen first when a floor has been wet.
See flooringBuilding here is not building fifteen miles west
Same materials, same code, completely different set of things trying to undo the work.
Rain does not fall on a barrier island so much as arrive sideways. That single fact changes how a wall has to be put together, because everything designed to shed water running downward is being asked to stop water travelling across.
Salt does the rest. It finds fasteners, hinges, locks, balances and brackets, and it works on them constantly whether anyone is in the house or not. Hardware that would last twenty years inland does not, and specifying it as though it will is the most common way a good job goes wrong early.
And then the houses sit. Closed up, humid, unheated or barely heated, for months at a time — then run hard for ten weeks. That cycle is brutal on paint, on grout, on anything that was sealed and never checked again.
None of this is exotic. It is just the local condition, and it is the difference between work that is technically correct and work that is correct here. It is also why we would rather tell you on the first visit that something needs doing properly than write the cheaper number and see you again in two years.
What we plan around
- Wind-driven rain, not just rainfall
- Salt on every piece of metal in the assembly
- Sun off the water on south and west faces
- Months closed up and damp, then a hard season
- Sand and grit in everything that slides or swings
- A booking calendar that does not move
One contractor, one crew, one number to call
Most of what goes wrong on a renovation goes wrong in the gaps between trades.
A bathroom is four trades in the smallest room in the house. A deck rebuild turns into framing, then carpentry, then paint. A window job becomes siding and trim before it becomes a window job. Almost nothing on a house stays inside one category once it is opened up.
When those pieces belong to different companies, each one arrives, does its part, and leaves — and the seam between them is nobody’s. That seam is where the leak lives, where the schedule slips, and where you end up standing in the middle trying to get two people to agree on whose problem it is.
Here it is one crew and one person accountable. The same people who take something apart are the ones who put it back. When something turns up behind a wall, you get one phone call from one person who already knows the whole job, not three explanations that do not match.
It also means our schedule is honest. A small crew can only be in one place at a time, so when we give you dates we are not hoping a subcontractor confirms them.
What you get in writing
- What is included, item by item
- What is explicitly not included
- What happens if we open something up and find more
- Whether the job needs a permit
- Start and finish dates, not a season
- One name and one phone number
If the house is a rental
Then the work has a deadline that is not negotiable, and it is not the one on our calendar.
A rental house takes a year of wear in ten weeks and then sits. Decks, paint, bathrooms and doors all age on that schedule, which is why they fail sooner here than the same things fail on a house somebody lives in.
It also means the job has to be finished, clean and photographable before the first booking — not around it. A renovation running into June is not an inconvenience, it is lost weeks you cannot get back.
So we work backwards from your calendar. Tell us the first booking and we will tell you honestly whether the work fits before it, and what we would have to start by. If it does not fit, we would rather say so in November than discover it with you in May.
Most owners out here book this work for the off-season for exactly that reason. The quiet months are when the good crews are available anyway.
How we schedule around bookings
- We work backwards from your first booking
- Off-season dates set in advance, not on a waitlist
- An honest answer if the job does not fit the window
- The house left clean at the end, not “almost done”
- Photos of the finished work if you need them for a listing
- One point of contact the whole way through
Recent work
Different trades, same crew.
How working with us goes
Step 1
You call, text or send photos
Either language. For a lot of jobs a few photos are enough for us to tell you roughly what you are dealing with before anyone drives anywhere.
Step 2
We come and look
Free, on your schedule. We look at the thing you called about and at the things around it that decide whether the fix lasts.
Step 3
Scope and price in writing
Itemised, with what is not included stated plainly, and with what happens if we open something up and find more. You can hold it next to anyone else’s quote.
Step 4
We do the work
Same crew throughout, dates we actually committed to, and the site left clean. You deal with one person from the first call to the last.
If you do not live here
A lot of the houses out here belong to people who are two or three hours away, or further.
That changes what you need from a contractor. You cannot drop by to see how it is going, you cannot meet somebody at the house on a Tuesday afternoon, and you are being asked to trust a written quote for work on a building you will not see until it is finished.
So we work the way that situation actually requires. Photos as the job moves, not only at the end. A written scope detailed enough that you can follow it from wherever you are. And a straight answer when something is found, with pictures of it, rather than a phone call asking you to approve a number you cannot picture.
You are also not chasing a company. One number, one person, and that person has been on your job. If you call about something we did in March, you are talking to somebody who remembers it.
How we handle a remote owner
- Photos during the work, not just after
- A written scope you can follow from anywhere
- Anything found is documented before it is priced
- Access arranged with you, however you prefer
- The house secured at the end of every day
- English or Spanish, whichever is easier
Where we work
Based in Barnegat and working the island and the mainland around it.
Long Beach Island
Beach Haven, Ship Bottom, Surf City, Harvey Cedars, Barnegat Light, Brant Beach, Beach Haven Crest, North Beach, Loveladies, Holgate, Beach Haven Terrace, Spray Beach, Haven Beach
Southern Ocean County
Barnegat, Manahawkin, Stafford Township, Waretown, Ocean Acres, Tuckerton, Little Egg Harbor, West Creek, Mystic Island
Northern Ocean County
Forked River, Lacey Township, Toms River, Beachwood, Island Heights, Bayville, Seaside Heights, Seaside Park
Questions people ask before they call
The ones that come up before there is even a job to look at.
Are you licensed and insured?
We are registered as a home improvement contractor with the New Jersey Division of Consumer Affairs, and insured. Our registration number is at the bottom of every page on this site, which is where New Jersey requires it to be.
You can look it up yourself on the state’s site in about thirty seconds, and we would rather you did — with any contractor, not just us.
Do you charge for an estimate?
No. We come out, look at the work and give you a written scope and price at no cost. If photos are enough to answer your question, that is free too.
How soon can you start?
It depends on the season and on what the job is. Out here the calendar matters more than most places — the good months to do the work are the quiet months for the island.
Call and we will tell you honestly where you would fall. We would rather give you a real date than the date you want to hear.
Do you take small jobs?
Yes. A door, a room, a section of deck, one bathroom. Not everything has to be a renovation, and a small job done properly is how most of our bigger ones started.
Do you do the work yourselves or subcontract it?
We do it ourselves. That is the point of hiring a small crew — the people who priced the job are the people on it, and there is no gap between trades for problems to fall into.
Do I need a permit for my project?
Some work needs one and some does not, and New Jersey draws that line fairly clearly. Replacing something with a similar thing in the same place usually does not. Moving things, adding things, or altering the structure usually does.
We will tell you which side your job falls on before you sign anything, and when a permit is needed we handle it as part of the job. Your town’s construction office has the final say on any individual project.
Can you work on a house I am renting out?
Yes, and we will schedule it around your bookings rather than through them. Tell us your first booking date at the estimate and we will work backwards from it.
What if you find something once the work starts?
We tell you, with photos, before anything else happens. And because the written scope says in advance what happens in that situation and how it gets priced, it is a conversation you already agreed to the shape of — not a surprise.
¿Hablan español?
Yes. Hablamos español. Call, text or send photos in either language and you will get an answer in the same one.
What our clients say
Everything above is us describing ourselves. This part is not.
Straight from our Google profile
Not selected, not edited. These are the reviews on our Google Business Profile, shown here as they were written.
Tell us what needs doing
Call, text, or send a few photos. For most jobs that is enough for us to tell you what you are looking at before anybody drives anywhere.
Vega Construction LLC · New Jersey Home Improvement Contractor · Barnegat, NJ · Serving Long Beach Island and Ocean County