How We Work
THE DESIGN CONSULTATION PROCESS
The design process we use begins with phone and E-mail communication. We generally assign prospective clients a fair amount of homework before the first meeting. Our goal is to be efficient but unhurried during the design process. We ask that you bring a good survey of your property (ideally showing lengths & compass headings of property lines, building setbacks and easements), a few digital photos of the site and of key furnishings and artwork you will want to have fit in your new home. We also suggest that you and your partner go through your collection of images from magazines, websites, and design books with different colored post-it notes with comments representing the different personalities that will live in the home so we can understand your preferences and try to fit the home design to your family and pets. If you use a website like Houzz or Pinterest please don’t count on being able to pull up the images from them at our meetings but do copy & paste them into a Word, Acrobat or PowerPoint document and add notes as to why you wanted to share the image with us. We will ask you to develop lists of the types of spaces and activities you will want your home to accommodate. (Encourage your family members to pick a post-it note color and express their thoughts and feelings about the design process if appropriate, best to get them on board and enthusiastic from the start!)
The initial concept drawing is a starting point only though so please let us know what you like and what you can do without. This won't hurt our feelings - it is essential to give us both positive and negative comments on the ideas we propose to you as part of helping us align our suggestions with your preferences. As we get close to your final design, we also can prepare a set of draft specifications, product selections and construction details to give you and your prospective builders an idea of how much to budget for the project. It's important to understand that a well-crafted home can be beautiful and comfortable with inexpensive details and selections just as easily as with top of the line finishes. The same floor plan can price out very differently based on selections and specifications.
Preliminary drawings can take anywhere from two weeks to six months. Working drawings and selections take about one or two months to prepare. These are momentous decisions you will be wrestling with. Our goal is to design something that will fit you well for many, many years. For most of us our home is the biggest investment we will make in our lifetimes. We want you to feel that you can stop the process and step back if you need to. Transparent and clean communication is our goal in all we do. We want to leave you feeling glad that you chose us to be your designer.
We no longer charge a percentage of the construction budget but instead charge a simple $100 per hour rate for design time and engineering. We pass printing costs straight through with no mark-up. We only bill for the first meeting if you decide to go forward with signing an hourly design contract to design your home with us. We’ve found that the time it takes to design a home is more dependent on the preparedness and communication skills of the client than the size of the construction budget and it serves all of us to reward clients who are prepared to make decisions and compromises with each other.
We are interested in designing buildings with value, durability and energy efficiency as well as elegance of design.
Let’s build something exciting!
Michael & Beth
