A Look At Our Remodeling Guidance Services.

The housing market is still pretty active here in Katy, TX and we are still getting calls everyday from prospective clients who are trying to decide whether they should buy a new home or stay in their existing home and take on a renovation.

New construction of new subdivisions seem to be popping up all around us here and most of our trades people are busy with renovation projects.

Many of these homeowners are not necessarily looking to do a full design project, but would like to have some design guidance along the way, so they know they are making good decisions.

Remodel in Mandeville Louisiana. We Helped Client With Complete Color Selections For Interior and Exterior, and Full Furnishings

Our Remodeling Guidance Services have always been great way for homeowners to work with us for what they need with their new construction or renovation projects, without the full commitment of a full service project.

Our Remodeling Guidance Service could be for DIY-ers who are managing their own project, clients who are working with a GC for renovations or new build, or for your design selections with your production or custom homebuilder.

Here are the options available with our Remodeling Guidance Service:

Plan Review

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Every great design starts with a solid plan.

Your architect or building designer may have created a great plan for you, but it sometimes takes a set of designer eyes to make sure all your lifestyle needs are taken into consideration.

We not only consider your lifestyle needs, but also how furniture will be placed in your home.

It could be as simple as making sure there are floor plugs in an office or great room, or a dog grooming area is included in the laundry room. Or as major as adding a pool bath for a future pool. We ask the right questions to understand what would make your home as functional and beautiful as possible - not just for today, but for years to come.

Design Details

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Did you know that often times your architect or building designer does not create detailed drawings for certain elements of your design?

For example, they will design a general layout for your kitchen and bathrooms, but they may not call out all the specific details and dimensions. Details like the cabinetry style and overlays, backsplash design, shower design details.

A lot of times, they expect that there is an interior designer involved who will specify the materials and then create detailed designs around the actual materials. A simple example would be subway tiles in a bathroom shower. Your interior designer would select the tile and know how they want it laid out - vertically, horizontally, herring bone, 3x8 versus 2x6 and so on. These details make a huge difference and must be called out on detailed elevation drawings.

We create detailed designs for kitchen and bathroom cabinets, hood, built-ins, other millwork and molding details, tile layouts, decorative lighting layouts, detailed elevations and sections, and much more.

These design details are imperative for the complete and proper execution of your remodel or new build. Without these details, your subcontractors will not know what to do, and when they don't know what to do, they will default to what they typically do. Not what you want when you are spending time and money on a custom design.

Materials and Finishes Selection

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This may seem like the fun part, and it can be, but this can be a very time-consuming and overwhelming process for a homeowner or anyone not trained in this area.

Imagine all the materials and finishes that will be installed in your home, and the fact that they all must coordinate and flow well together, and be functional and durable.

This is an area where your GC or builder will definitely be looking to you for guidance. Either that, or they may persuade you to go with the most basic items that are low risk for them. Builder grade materials is a real thing, and allowances that builders and GC's budget for, often reflects that. It is not that they are cheap - they much prefer to install materials that are familiar with installing, as it keeps them on the timeline and budget they projected.

Things like flooring, wall tiles, countertop, cabinetry, appliances, hardware, decorative lighting, decorative plumbing, paint colors, grout colors, wall texture are permanent or fixed elements of your home. They are the big ticket items that form the foundation of a beautiful design. They need to be selected and detailed in a Spec Book so your GC or builder will have exactly what they need when they need it.

Even if your builder or GC allocates a tiny allowance for these items, our firm is very skilled in applying everyday materials in extra-ordinary ways that won't blow the budget, so it is not always about having a huge remodeling budget.

With this service, we include one meeting with your GC or builder to review the details of the design they received in the Spec Book.

Of course, before the Spec Book is even created, we meet with you for a full design presentation, where we go over every single element of the design, which includes the materials and finishes samples, floor plans and detailed elevations, and very often, 3D photorealistic renderings to help you envision what they actual space will look like after completion.

We also include a couple of slab yard and showroom visits to see some of the tiles and countertop materials in person. Samples of these items are not always true to what you will receive - especially with natural stone countertops, so a slab yard visit is always in order to choose and markup the exact slab you will be purchasing.

Marking up the slab means that we use blue tape to tape off the desired areas where we want the cuts for your countertops.

Procurement of Construction Materials

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We often don't get involved with the procurement of the construction materials for the project, but there are times when the GC or builder would rather not get involved with this portion, and we therefore handle all the purchasing and coordinate deliveries to jobsites.

We like to remain very flexible for our clients, and will include this as an option when needed.

Project Oversight

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This is one area that some homeowners may think they no longer need the help of an interior designer. While some may be willing to hire an interior designer for the materials selection, they figure they can handle this part themselves.

But imagine for a moment that you brought in a top-notch design firm like ours, and we designed a great project that has some pretty complex elements to it, but you didn't opt for the Project Oversight service. While we include as many notes and details as we can, a GC or builder who is not familiar with highly-detailed custom work may still have questions. They will either ask you, or they will default to what they typically do.

When you hire us to stay involved for project oversight, we will make regular visits to the jobsite at critical phases of the project, to make sure the GC or builder and their team have everything they need, and understand all the details of our design. We also check the materials to make sure what we specified is what is being installed.

It is a regular occurrence for wood species to get mixed up (white oak versus red oak is a common one), paint color brands substituted (painters will often default to the paint store they love and will color match, which is not a good idea), tiles substituted, and more.

Contractor Onboarding

This service may become necessary if you don't already have a contractor, or the team we work with isn't available to take on your project.

You would be shocked to know that one of the hesitations homeowners have about taking on a remodeling or new build is their fear of hiring the wrong contractor.

Trust me! It can happen to the best of us. A bad contractor will not announce that he is bad at the beginning so you really have to do your due diligence. But there are many honest and good contractors out there, who can be trusted.

You want someone who is great at communicating, has experience with projects that are similar to yours and has a good, solid team, preferably an in-house team and not day laborers.

With our years of working with some of the best contractors in Houston, we can help you navigate the onboarding process.

We can "coach" you through what questions to ask what contractor, what licenses or qualification to look for, review their proposal, and assess their methods and processes. We can even be present at your initial meetings as you interview contractors.

We will advise you based on what we observe, which can be very helpful as you make your hiring decision.

Our Remodeling guidance services are mostly billed at a flat rate. Some however, are based on an estimated total number of hours presented upfront and any overages are also billed if the estimated hours are exceeded.

If you are even thinking about remodeling or building new, the time is now to bring us in to talk through your ideas and goals.

We are working with a great client now who is only at the dreaming stage. We will assist our client with onboarding an architect and builder.

It is never too early to get us involved. After all, we love making our client's dreams come true.

Powder Room Completed In Our San Antonio Project

Our Remodeling Guidance services can be ordered a-la-carte as needed. Some services go hand in hand with each other and must be ordered together.

You can learn more about our Remodeling Guidance Services through THIS LINK and book a consultation below.

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Wishing You Beauty And Inspiration!

Veronica