Meet Martin and Kendall Armenta

About Martin

Martin Armenta came to Texas from Sinaloa at the age of five, and spent his teenage summers in the rock quarries north of Austin, catching cut stone as it came off the line. It was hot, punishing work, and it left him certain of one thing: he wanted to run the job, not just work it. He came up through the building trade the long way after that — apprentice, then superintendent, then running jobs that weren’t his own — and somewhere along the way he arrived at the conviction that has organized his working life ever since: that a house is not a pile of tasks but a sequence, and that nearly all the time you save can be found in the way you optimize the order you choose to do things.

He has never been one to argue his own worth; he would rather let the work make the case. His first promotion to superintendent came not because he asked for it, but because another firm tried to hire him away — and his own boss, seeing that, understood what he had. The best of the companies he worked for treated its people like family: it promoted from within, helped pay for his schooling, and threw real parties for its crews, and it became the quiet blueprint for the company he would one day build. He learned as much from the ones that didn’t. Most of all, he learned to tell people the truth early, even when it costs him the easy yes — that a budget will not stretch to the picture in their head, that a wall cannot come down, that a whole house is a season of a life and not a matter of weeks.

He built for others for years — commercial buildings first, and then custom homes, where the finish work is the entire point — before he and his wife, Kendall, founded Crafted Hills Construction in 2022, working out their first bid on notebook paper at the kitchen table. Today they run it themselves, remodeling houses across Cedar Park, Leander, and the greater Austin area, and Martin is still the man you will find on the site, doing the work he came up doing. He lives in Jarrell with Kendall and their children, and builds, as he always has, in the order that things are meant to be done.

About Kendall

If Martin runs the build, Kendall runs everything around it — the billing, the schedule, and every conversation a client has from the first walkthrough to the day the keys come back. She is, in practice, the person you actually talk to, and she works from a simple conviction: that a renovation is one of the more disruptive things a family ever invites into its home, and that no one should have to wonder what is happening inside their own house, or where their money has gone.

That last part became a rule the hard way. In the early days they would do the work and settle up afterward, and a few months in they found they could no longer say quite where the money had gone. So she made a rule that has held ever since — every change written down and priced before a hand touches it — and the result is that her clients are never surprised by a number. Increasingly, she is also the eye behind the rooms themselves: the one who sits with a family to draw out what they actually want, and who shapes the selections and the design as the work goes. It is the part of the job she has grown into, and the part she is still growing.

She and Martin built Crafted Hills together in 2022, the two of them at the kitchen table with a bid worked out on notebook paper, and they run it the same way still — just the two of them, with no one to hand a client off to and nothing that happens without one of them knowing. It is, in the fullest sense, a family business: something they are making with their own hands, in their own way, for the family they are raising in Jarrell.

On site

The owner is the one on your job

The subcontractors on your project are mostly the same people Martin has built with for ten years. He is on site with them rather than checking in from a distance, and he meets the inspector himself.

Most people are afraid to pull permits. We pull them. A remodel permit in Austin takes about a month, and Martin knows the inspectors well enough to know what each of them wants to see.

Straight answers

The truth, before you sign

Martin will tell you what cannot be done before you sign anything, and he will tell you how long a job really takes. A whole house is usually a season of your life. We would rather say that at the bid than halfway through.

On payment, the money follows the work. You pay $500 at signing, then draws tied to stages that are finished, and we do not take our own final payment until you have walked the punch list with us and signed off on it.

Working with your designer

If you are working with a designer, we build what they drew. You keep your designer. We handle the structural side, the permits and the inspections, and we flag anything that will not work before it is built, not after.

The Enfield owners came to us with their designer and finished plans. We opened the kitchen, sized the header for the new window, and coordinated the engineer. Houzz ran the finished kitchen as Kitchen of the Week.

We are not trying to be your designer. If you do not have one, we will connect you with someone we trust. Either way, the drawings are the plan, and we build to them.

Tell us what you’re thinking about

People usually think about this for a year or more before they call anybody. Calling early is easier than calling late. Nothing has been ordered yet.