About Us

Santa Fe Trail Builders, Inc. has been building and remodeling custom homes in the and around the Santa Fe area for over 25 years. We take a great deal of pride in each and every project we work on. We believe that the remodel or construction of your home is not something you should dread but an experience that should be pleasant and enjoyable. Our team of long-term employees has been very successful at forging great working relationships with the clients on each of the projects they work on. Because of this, we have been able to stay busy for decades by simple word of mouth recommendations. In one case even building three large custom homes for one client in less than eight years.

David Birnbaum, the Founder of Santa Fe Trail Builders, designed and built his first adobe house in Santa Fe in 1972. Since forming the corporation in the early 1990’s Santa Fe Trail Builders Inc. has built well over fifty homes and remodeled countless others. In August of 2016 the business transferred to its two longest standing employees, Joe & Daniel Lujan. Joe & Daniel now manage the business following the very same ideals that the company was built on. Since Joe and Daniel both worked with David since 1991 the everyday operation of the company was engraved in them making the transition seamless, with the work continuing on as usual. Many of our crew members have been a part of the company for close to a decade, with a couple of our top foreman being with us since 2001. Together as a team, with the best subcontractors available, we have become well known for consistently producing beautiful new homes, additions and remodels of the highest quality.

The Santa Fe area is renowned for its beautiful unique architectural style and details. These include sculpturally shaped unpainted interior plaster surfaces incorporating curves, arches and bullnose corners, round log ceiling beams (vigas), ceiling decking made of trees or branches several inches in diameter (latillas), rounded kiva fireplaces, exposed wood lintels over windows and doors, and carved corbels at support points under horizontal wood beams. We appreciate these traditional features of the local building style and have "the eye" and the skills to utilize them tastefully. Over the years, we find more clients are leaning toward a cleaner contemporary architectural style or a blend of the contemporary and Santa Fe styles, and we have enthusiastically embraced this trend, while still offering the classic Santa Fe style. Whatever the architectural theme, we take pride in the attention to detail which produces perfectly clean lines wherever materials or surfaces meet. We believe that the many perfect details in a room combine to give that space an overall appeal and harmony.

We have specialized in working for out of town clients, in one case never meeting the clients until the day of the final inspection when they arrived to spend the night in their new home. And we have a good number of return clients who have claimed they enjoyed the process and liked the crew so much they wanted to do it again. We like to take the stress out of building or remodeling, and we bring a positive, cheerful attitude to bear when there are problems to be resolved. We hope to get a chance to meet you, and to work with you on your next construction project!