Renovation Horror Stories (Part II)

“#%}#%!!! We never even thought about that. Now what?!? ”

“Are you #%}# kidding me?!? There’s no place for my flat screen, desk, or ‘fill in the blank’ now?”

“Please help! Our builder needs our decisions now…and you seriously can’t start our job this Tuesday?”

Wake up sleeping beauty. You snoozed at the very costly renovation or new build wheel when you should have been in high-octane-detail mode and with an interior designer as your advocate, guide and steward.

As a result, now your end results either went off the rails or are about to any second. Your stress level is rising.

To be clear: Your builder did his job. So did your architect. But they are not trained in, or practicing daily in, the maddeningly detailed interior design trenches. And you never hired an interior designer during your planning stage because either:

• Your budget was too squeezed
• You were trying to save a few bucks
• HGTV has so dumbed down interior design wise that you understandably over estimated your own ability

You hire nutritionists, personal trainers, accountants, lawyers, speech therapists, and other “discipline or knowledge specialists”.

Renovation or new build time is NOT the time to overestimate your spatial design and planning expertise.

Here’s how you know if you need an interior designer on your team in the earliest planning stages of your renovation or new build:

• You’re spending between $25,000 -$17.4 million on your project and prefer not to have a $25,000-$17.4 million mistake on your hands.
• You don’t want an ounce of disappointment on the back end due to design detail oversight on the front end.

If you are playing in the renovation waters of $250,000 or under and are truly budget squeezed at least do yourself the favor to hire a good designer in a limited capacity in the earliest phase to review your plans, your preferred end use and the resulting required functional room layout needs.

She will get the door swings right for you, adjust room entry points if needed, review electric, HVAC, windows and other details so they will not be In the way or creating restrictions

When they do pose problems she can flag them to the builder/architect.

Together they will problem solve on your behalf.

I cannot even count how many times I have been called into a construction or renovation job when it’s too late.

Hire the right team of specialists, at the right time to get the right results. Your dream results. Hire early. Hire well.