A home in the Sweetwater Place community in Spring Valley, CA, is treated to fascia work by a Six Star Framing Concepts crewman. The company framed 122 two-story homes there in 12 months.

A member of the Six Star Framing Concepts joist crew completes the flooring in one part of the framing construction project.

Six Star Framing Concepts (Six Star) specializes in transforming a concrete slab into the complex skeletal structure that will eventually become single or multifamily housing or commercial buildings in the fast-paced construction industry of Southern California.

Leading the company of 185 full-time and 247 part-time piecework employees is the husband-and-wife team of Erick Donahoe and Linda Raymond-Donahoe. Together, they bring to the company a depth of construction experience, executive leadership skills, appreciation for their employees, commitment to speedy and quality service—and often laughter.

“It can be like controlled chaos out there, so we like to surround ourselves with people with a good mood and a good sense of humor,” Linda says. “It helps.” Six Star, based in Oceanside, California, specializes in single and multifamily construction framing work in the midst of a long-term housing shortage in Southern California. The situation is made worse because there are not enough workers for the framing jobs needing to be done—now or in the future.

The state has mandated a new regional housing plan that requires municipalities to collectively zone for more than 1.3 million new homes by the end of the decade. The added factor is the continued increase in cost for owning or renting a home.

“There’s no framing like Southern California framing,” says Linda, who is in charge of Six Star’s administrative operations.

Six Star is frequently called on to frame prefabricated, mass-produced homes. For those projects, the company performs conventional wood framing at a pace of eight houses every eight days, given overlapping crews’ responsibilities. Multifamily projects take longer, but in this region’s expedited timeframe, new residents can begin occupancy within three months. Often, entire developed neighborhoods are complete within 11 months.

Linda says the entire home-building process is streamlined in compliance with state regulations that require specialty crews that work on each house. This ensures there is always work going on to build as many homes as possible in this troubled housing market.

“We do everything that’s wood,” she says, adding that the singular focus still requires savvy attention to the various aspects of the challenging building environment. The company’s tagline is “We Are Good With Wood.”

“We also want to stay informed about issues like affordable housing, walkability of neighborhoods and quality housing that actually improves neighborhoods—all part of the industry standard of a 20-year plan to improve older neighborhoods and update aging infrastructure, as well as build local tax bases in order to increase funding for schools,” she says.

Core Strengths

Linda says construction is in her blood. The California transplant, originally from Massachusetts, had family members in construction on the East Coast. Various circumstances caused her to switch careers and enter the building industry.

“I came from the executive side of the beauty industry, but after our teenage son, Gage, passed away, I decided I needed a change,” she says. “I was having a problem coping with the loss, struggling to leave the house and talk to people.”

Her husband, Erick, told her he would create a job for her. Together, they started Six Star Framing in 2018. She spent a year researching the field and implementing a strong business foundation, legal structures and various necessary insurance policies. She immediately saw the joy and feeling of accomplishment in developing the future of Southern California’s housing, as well as seeing homeownership opportunities extended to people who normally would be shut out of the market.

The framing business was nothing new for Erick. He had racked up nearly a lifetime as a framing construction tradesman. He got into the business as a 15-year-old, working mostly in the nonstop production framing side of the business. He began as a pieceworker, stacking roofs. Next, he was promoted to the role of foreman. After 13 years, he obtained a contractor license. When he left his foreman job, he met a multifamily contractor who gave him the opportunity to bid on all the projects. The launch of Six Star Framing Concepts would come next.

Meeting the major player in the multifamily builder segment proved to be an opportunity that would change the future of Six Star’s business. That contractor saw that the business was prepared for real contracts and ready for launch, and he gave Six Star the opportunity to bid on all of their upcoming projects after completing a few smaller projects under budget and ahead of schedule. Because Erick has skills in budgeting and closing jobs under budget successfully back then, Six Star uses a competitive formula that calculates every aspect of preparation needed before the first nail is driven. As her husband had promised, Linda was exposed to the many aspects of the framing business. She went with him to multiple sites and even grabbed a hammer or a nail gun occasionally. She also sought and found support from a business mentor through the San Diego District Office of the U.S. Small Business Administration. “I’ve always known a lot about his job, but I wanted the experience. And then I coupled that with lots of research,” she says. “That’s how my mind works.”

After six months of that approach, she decided that her gifts should be applied to the administrative operations side of the business instead of in the field. “I’m the executive; he covers the job site work,” she says. As for titles, he is the Principal Owner and she is the Business Manager in charge of operations.

Framework for Success

The husband/wife team attributes their success to knowing their business well and striving for quality at every turn. Raising six children together also honed their teamwork skills.

Six Star prioritizes intensive pre-job planning with the general contractor. They review the future structure’s layout, scheduling tables, lumber lists and any other plans related to the framing phase. This thorough approach helps to eliminate unnecessary cost overruns and delays.

As a carpentry contractor, the company adds to typical framing work such specialties as roof- cutting and stacking, rough carpentry, stair-cutting, building roof and floor trusses, and other solutions to construction challenges. While the majority of its work is residential, Six Star also tackles projects such as office buildings, commercial buildings and shell buildings in which the company constructs the shell of a structure that will eventually be sublet to a number of independent businesses, each deciding the interior finish work for each space.

The company strives to build a solid working relationship with the general contractor. This ensures each job site features comprehensive safety measures, job site supervision, and fast and comprehensive completion standards.

Six Star serves the areas of Los Angeles, San Bernadino, San Diego, and Orange, Riverside and Imperial counties.

Hiring and retaining quality employees is vital to their success, Linda says. “We need a large, skilled pool of dedicated labor to do what we do, and we’ve been fortunate to find and keep good workers. Everybody works very hard, and they believe in what they are doing while dealing with the chaos and rush of the market.”

She attributes her husband’s personality and humility as one reason why the Six Star crew is dedicated and easy to work with.

“Erick has had eight men working with him—dating back before we started Six Star—for 15 years who have come up through the ranks and are now foremen who we helped train,” Linda says.

Six Star is proactive in searching for new hires and has an interest in grooming the next generation of workers in the trades.

“Skilled trades are the way to go, so you learn and be patient, and you start by sweeping out the dirt on a project site. Next you’ll be running a production framing crew and perhaps even a company,” she says. “No matter what, entry into the trades translates to making higher dollar wages.”

Six Star’s new focus is work with entities such as the Building Industry Association of Southern California (BIASC). The company plans to participate in the Building Industry Technology Academy, a four-year high school program to encourage youth to consider homebuilding careers. Six Star also plans to partner with BIASC to establish a similar program at two nearby community colleges—MiraCosta College in Oceanside and Palomar College in San Marcos, California.

Residential Projects

Six Star takes seriously its role in the difficult housing market. As its crews continue their pace, creating the skeletal framework for hundreds of homes each year, the mission continues to be their motivation.

“We’ve done a lot of work for KB Home,” Linda says. “With them, we’re building homes that allow people who would normally have a great deal of difficulty breaking into the outrageous Southern California housing market to do so. It aligns with our values as a company: Home ownership is not a privilege; it should be accessible for all.”

KB Home projects are examples of work requiring Six Star to have great flexibility. The homebuilder gives buyers latitude in personalizing their homes by offering choices in homesites, floor plans and design features.

One recent project with KB Home is Sweetwater Place, a community of 122 two-story houses in the unincorporated Spring Valley area of San Diego County. The neighborhood, built in 12 months, offers homes with up to five bedrooms and three baths, ranging from 1,800 to 2,100 square feet.

Six Star has worked with KB Home to build residences in communities including Paseo Del Mar (93 three-story units) in Irvine, California; Lighthouse (44 three-story single- family homes) in Stanton, California; and Magnolia Square (108 three-story units) in Buena Park, California.

The continued commitment to framing homes in such a challenging market has not been easy, but it’s always rewarding, Linda says. “Growing the company from a bootstrap approach over the years and even through the challenges of 2021—not to mention severe lumber shortages and price hikes—is actually a source of pride and motivation.”