Chris Stately, General Contractor

Chris Stately began his contracting career in 1986 while in Southern California and acquired his General Contractor License in 2005. He continued to grow in his love for creating wonderful living spaces in Sonoma where he has ideal opportunity to combine his passion for traditional style and craftsmanship with the modern state-of-the-art solutions.

Chris Stately grew up with a tradition of craftsmanship on both sides of the family. As a boy and into his teens, he worked with his paternal grandfather, Martin Stately, a master craftsman, who apprenticed as a boy with master builders in his native Italy. In Southern California, Martin Stately was a general contractor who specialized in projects requiring “old world” levels of skill and attention to detail. He worked in glass mosaic tiles, stone, and wood. He made original mosaic murals that can still be seen at the Mission at San Juan Capistrano, California.

On Chris’ mother’s side, his great grandfather, Mr. Lowe, was a master stone carver and lead sculptor on the entrances to the Lions Gate Bridge in Vancouver, Canada, built in 1938. Besides stone carving for public buildings in Vancouver, he created many cemetery monuments and statues.

Learning and Apprenticing

After learning the construction trades first hand with his grandfather, Chris worked for other contractors in Southern California and Sonoma County until starting college at Sonoma State in 1993. Continuing the family tradition, he spent the summer of 1994 studying marble sculpture with Lynn Streeter in Pietrasanta, a town on the coast of Northern Tuscany, Italy. Pietrasanta is famous for its marble quarries and for the teaching of stone carving since the Renaissance. He graduated from Sonoma State with a BA in Sculpture in 1997.

Working as a Stage Hand

Chris put himself through school working for Industrial Light and Magic as a construction coordinator from 1994 to 1999. After college he worked through Local 16, the Stagehands Union, on movies like Star Wars Episodes 1 and 2, Men in Black, Bicentennial Man, and for many San Francisco Opera productions.

Becoming a General Contractor

As the local movie industry slowed in the early 2000s, Chris started doing handyman work around his hometown of Sonoma. Within a year and a half, he had so much work that he got his general contractor’s license. Since then he has acquired his own crew, so in addition to foundations, framing and finish carpentry, he can provide plumbing, electrical work, stone and tile setting, and fine architectural detailing.

Call Stately Construction, Inc. today at (707) 235-2024 or fill out our Contact Form to schedule your FREE consultation or to request a FREE estimate!