Renovation Solutions: Design for everyday homeowners

Our message in a nutshell: No, the first step to a remodel is not to call a contractor. Design comes before construction and each professional has their expertise.

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Many of our friends and acquaintances are kind enough to tell us they enjoy reading our columns. Other than that, however, we dont get a lot of feedback. So, it was with interest the other day when we received an email commenting on our efforts.

The author was a man with a personal interest in architecture and a professional background in interior design. His comment was that many of the photographs that accompany our articles left something to be desired in terms of interior design, and he recommended that we considered upgrading the performance of our firms current interior designer.

Many medium and large architectural firms do employ a full-time interior designer or even a whole department of interior designers. Our firm, however, is small and we do not have an interior designer on staff. His comments, however, caused us to think about the philosophy of our firm.

We started our firm to bring architecture to the "masses" to real, everyday people. In our previous firm, we seldom worked with clients with budgets less than $1 million. These clients always used interior designers, and the results were generally worthy of publication in glitzy design magazines. At the same time, we noticed that we regularly received phone inquiries from people regarding how to proceed on remodeling their homes, but their budgets were too small for that firm to serve.

The result was that in 2003, we took a deep breath, left our well-established employer, and started a company designed to help homeowners who want good design in their lives, even though their budgets are more "normal" than those served by most architects.

For the last almost 12 years, we have had the privilege of working with 900 clients and uncounted numbers of "investigators" who have come into our office to find out what an architect does, how much they cost, and why would one want to hire one anyway? We have spent countless unpaid hours educating people about the concept of good architectural design and the necessity of having a master plan before one undertakes a home remodel.

Our message in a nutshell: No, the first step to a remodel is not to call a contractor. Design comes before construction and each professional has their expertise. If you wouldnt be comfortable with us swinging the hammer to build your addition, you shouldnt feel good about a contractor designing it.

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Renovation Solutions: Design for everyday homeowners