COO Guillermo Alcantar (left) and CEO Julio Luna, Founders of United Interior Contractors, LLC, offer a 100% satisfaction guarantee on each drywall job.

United Interior Contractors, LLC places drywall on all types of ceilings, aiming for complete customer satisfaction.

Julio Luna and Guillermo Alcantar, drywall experts and Founders of United Interior Contractors, LLC (UIC Drywall), focus their business on respect and trust as they pursue the American Dream and fulfill their mission of forming communities of service throughout the Vancouver, Washington, and Portland, Oregon, metropolitan areas.

“We’re not just hanging drywall,” Julio says. “We’re helping families. We’re helping build homes and businesses. We are grateful for our team. We tell them we came here for a dream and ask them what they want or need, then help them get it in every way we can. Our clear mission is to form a community of service, honesty, commitment and caring.”

First friends and soccer mates, Guillermo and Julio decided to go into business together in 2014 and have been moving full speed ahead ever since with UIC Drywall. Each oversees his own areas of expertise. Guillermo, Chief Operating Officer (COO), who has been hanging drywall since he was 17, maintains project and inventory quality control, and manages the UIC Drywall staff and the subcontractors brought in on larger projects. As Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Julio is responsible for planning, marketing, business operations and administrative tasks.

Satisfaction Guaranteed

“We were clear about our goal from the beginning,” Julio says. “We already had been doing this independently for years and agreed to bet everything on creating our first company with a list of potential clients and the best specialized drywall hanging and finishing collaborators. Really, we got into the business because a lot of people would tell us that drywall contractors didn’t finish the job or didn’t do it right and wouldn’t respond to their calls to come back. We offer attention to detail, quality and excellent service. With our experience, we know what needs to be done. And our customers can trust us to do it.”

With the slogan, “Drywall Specialists Ready to Rock,” the UIC Drywall team sees its core work of hanging drywall sheets as an art. “It’s very common in our field to hear someone say, ‘Let’s rock’ when they refer to installing drywall. We use it figuratively. For us it is an art, a movement that gives joy, like rock and roll music.”

While the company’s core expertise is drywall projects, from simple patchwork repair to entire homes and commercial buildings, UIC Drywall has added insulation, framing, acoustical ceiling installation and interior painting services to its capabilities.

“Each of our projects integrates our collective expertise and engages our full attention,” Julio says, “We have the best personnel in the business and very little turnover. Our professionals have more than 18 years of experience in the field, so we can provide excellent service and total satisfaction to our customers. We offer a 100% satisfaction guarantee on each job. Our people know that the company is their second home. We encourage them to excel in their areas of expertise and to always believe that anything is possible.”

Pro Projects

Prompt service keeps UIC Drywall projects on schedule. According to the founders, the company satisfies the most exacting standards in the construction industry today. But this wasn’t always the case.

About a year after UIC Drywall was formed, the company was hired to hang drywall in the four-story, 100-unit Hampton Inn & Suites Hood River hotel in Oregon. “At one point during the project,” Julio explains, “our customer told us we weren’t doing the job right and we had 24 hours to fix it. We decided we’d show them we could do it, and we did. It was a painful lesson and very stressful, but in the end, we felt we had accomplished something really good. We learned a lot about what we could do with that project.”

After that experience, the team went on to complete several successful apartment building projects in Portland, including the Gooseberry Apartments at NE 148th Ave. and Glisan St., and Kenton Commons, large townhouse lofts that merge design, technology, elegance and comfort. “The Kenton Commons customer put his trust in us and really liked what we did,” Julio says. “We love our customers and the projects they bring us. We’re always thankful for the opportunities.”

Mission to Serve

In 2018, UIC Drywall acquired an indoor soccer arena in Vancouver to support its mission of helping others. More than 1,000 people use the arena’s facilities every week.

“Despite being winding, the path you want to take always leads you to the light as you walk step by step thinking of the common good,” Julio says. “Our mission is to serve others. We’re weaving support chains and helping build dreams, creating awareness in young people of the importance of taking care of their bodies, eating well, exercising, creating healthy habits. Soccer is one of those sports that is so easy to play you don’t feel like you’re working out. It makes us happy to see people having fun.”

In keeping with their mission to serve, the UIC Drywall founders continue to keep an eye out for real estate opportunities they can purchase and fix up, thus helping improve the community. “We’re building a community of people helping people,” Julio says. “It doesn’t matter if you’re our customer or a worker. We’re helping each other do anything we can by providing jobs or by doing the work. When you’re a customer, you have the peace of mind that even though there might be a lot of challenges during the construction phases, when UIC is on the job site, they can rely on us to do an excellent job. Most of all, we want them to know we care about their project. We communicate that to everyone who works with us because they know we’re working for them as well.”

According to Julio, “Our goal now is to grow the company with different trades so we can build a system where we can help our community grow even more. We want to help people who, like us, only need the opportunity for someone to believe in them and their potential. Our objective has been to offer a perfect service and become the best in our field. We want to recognize each of those who are part of this company. We are a family that takes care of each other. Whoever works directly or indirectly with us becomes an important part in setting a solid foundation at United Interior Contractors. Dreams do come true.”