Quality control on a luxury custom home requires a builder who holds subcontractors to a defined standard and is willing to redo work that doesn’t meet it. This means inspecting every trade’s output before moving to the next phase. In the Santa Barbara Estate, builder John McDonough of Kingdom & Co. described having stucco crews return to redo sections that didn’t meet the owner’s expectations. The level of detail extended to hand-cut tile corners, hand-painted mosaic work and exposed beam ceilings where no plywood is visible from below.