Hidden Gems: Meet Al TeMan of T-Man Construction

Today we’d like to introduce you to Al TeMan.

Hi Al, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
In the early 80’s, when I was living with my heavy metal hair band, ‘Roadrunner’ in a small Marin County apartment, I had my first dose of gnarly, professional construction.
Our bass player was a foreman at a ‘house jacking’ company and he got me a job.
We basically crawled around all day underneath houses in damp, foul-smelling dirt and had to dig deep trenches into the mud. It was hard, grim work. We filled hundreds of 5 gallon buckets with sticky mud and dragged them outside into the light. Then we would haul in these massive beams, place the jacks underneath them and lift the house up in the air! Impossible, right?
I hated it at the time but it was the only job that allowed me to keep my enormous, Rock and Roll ‘hair-helmet’.
Looking back, I couldn’t have asked for a better introduction into the world of construction.
When you lift up a house, there are so many things you need to learn; disconnecting plumbing and electrical, building forms, pouring concrete, reframing and then reconnecting the house to the footings, plus all the cosmetic work that’s needed afterwards inside the house as well.
An unexpected benefit of this brutal job was that all those hours of crawling under a house was equal to doing a million push-ups a day! I was suddenly seriously buffed and my newly enhanced, muscular ‘construction posture’ served me very well during all those wild and shirtless heavy metal gigs!

A few years later, I moved to Los Angeles, and worked for several different contractors while trying to learn how to become a real carpenter.
That’s how I met my mentor, Dave Tourje, owner of the legendary Alpha Structural.
He was and is an amazing guy, literally one of the coolest people I’ve ever met.
A true artist, rock and roller, gnarly skateboarder and a freakin amazing Contractor and visionary.
He encouraged me to get a contractor’s license and start my own business.
I’ll never forget his kind, wise tutelage and generous spirit.

In the early 2000’s, I had a good run building high-end recording studios and post-production facilities. As a musician, it was immensely satisfying to bring these beautiful, perfectly functioning recording studios to life. I had many VERY cool, sophisticated customers and I worked with the best studio designers in the world. As I used to say (in a bad James Bond accent), “My client list would dazzle you”. A short list of my clients included Tom Petty, Katey Sagal, The Goo Goo Dolls, Tom Hanks, Olivia Newton John, Dave Stewart, Rick Rubin, Glen Ballard, Sarah McLachlan, Phillip Noyce and Nancy Cartwright. I once had Ringo Starr shake my hand after watching him test out a massive drum room that I built. Because of the high windows in the drum room, he said it reminded him of Abbey Road Studios, where ‘they’ (the Beatles) were down here in the room and ‘them’ (the producer and engineers) were up there, through the windows. Unbelievable!

I heard that if you want to be happy in your work, you should figure out a way to get paid doing things you loved to do as a child.
When I was a kid, all I ever wanted to do was build forts. After school, that was pretty much all my brothers and I did on a daily basis. In trees, in bushes, in caves…it didn’t matter where!
All these years later, I’m still theoretically building ‘forts’.
In that regard, I was very lucky. I really love what I do.

Most of my free time is spent playing music. I’ve never stopped playing and trying to make the perfect song. For the last 18 years, I’ve been writing and performing with my amazing girl, Leslie Knauer.
Our band is called, FABU-LESLIE & The T-MAN. Check us out on TikTok. We’re killing it, haha! Playing music and releasing new material together is still very exciting. It’s so gratifying to feel as if we are still getting better and better as we go.

We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
It’s been a pretty smooth road and again, I’ve been very lucky.
I’ve never had any major catastrophic injuries to myself or my employees and I’ve had amazing customers and I get to built so many exciting things.

Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your business?
These days I’m busy with residential remodels, boutique kitchens and bathrooms. The kitchens and bathrooms I’ve been building lately are truly gorgeous! I’ve put together a great team of tested and talented subcontractors and I have an awesome designer.
I also do lots of property rehabs for real estate agents as well as helping people get their own houses ready for sale.

What do you like best about our city? What do you like least?
There used to be no better place to be in the whole world to live than Hollywood in the 80’s.
Unimaginable fun!
My brothers Howard, Eric and I lived in a giant mansion in Laurel Canyon (the same place where the Red Hot Chili Peppers recorded “BloodSexSugarMagic”) and we just RAGED! So much music and weekly parties. It seems like a dream. So many wild jams with all our local rock stars participating.
Even though those crazy days are gone, I still love LA.
Now it’s a bit dirtier, hotter and harder for people. Traffic is even more insane. Hollywood seems to have lost it’s communal musical spirit, but LA is my home and it always will be.

I moved to Silver Lake in 1994, after the Northridge earthquake destroyed my rental house.
I bought a condemned 1909 Craftsman for nothing and spent 4 years improving it, using only exquisite salvaged items that I picked up during the massive rebuilding of Los Angeles.
After the house was completed, I had so much great stuff left over that I helped open ‘Silver Lake Yards’, an architectural salvage yard, off Sunset Blvd.
My house truly is my calling card as a contractor. It has been featured in many design websites and newspaper articles.
In 2015, Airbnb chose us (along with 2 other Airbnb hosts) to participate as contestants in their international, ‘Most Unique Listing’ award, which was to be held in Paris. They flew us out and paid for our whole trip!
We never found out if we won or not because on the night of the awards, Paris was shut down by the terrorist attacks! But winning didn’t matter. Just to be considered for this lofty award was mind boggling.
I served on the board of the Silver Lake Chamber of Commerce for about 10 years and while there, I got to know and work for many of my neighbors and neighborhood business owners. Several are still good customers. Most of my work is still done up in these beautiful hills.

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