It’s tempting to think that hiring a professional means you can leave the entire process up to their experience. While this might be true on a technical level, any professional will be lacking one major qualification: they are not you. Without knowing your needs, taste, lifestyle, or even how you use your kitchen on a daily basis, any designer or contractor will be missing vital information and your project won’t be successful.
Finding a good fit professionally is also critical to a successful outcome, meaning you and your partner will need to think through what’s most important to you in the designers and builders you work with.
Our clients who have had the best experiences and outcomes with their remodels have gone through the following questions before starting to talk to professionals. It’s never too early to start the discussion! Perhaps this is obvious, but your significant other should be part of every step below so that you start the process on the same page and avoid project-delaying conflicts later.
Start With a Needs Assessment
It sounds terribly technical, but the idea is to take a really close look at everything you need and want from a remodel. Start with your primary scope, and then branch out from there to other things that would be nice to include. This is not the time to worry about budget—for now, just put everything down in a list.
This can include hard facts such as an additional bedroom but also think about the softer things like better morning light, where the kids will do homework, or special path lighting for your midnight snack.
Later, with your designer, you can look at costs and start setting priorities and making the necessary trade-offs. But the more your designer knows about your needs early on, the more they can help you create a house you love.
Find Images of Looks and Styles That Speak to You
This is one of the fun parts of imagining your remodel. Using Pinterest, Houzz, and/or design magazines, collect photos that you like and—this is important—write down what appeals to you about the image, so that when you show the designer, they know exactly why you chose it. It might be the color scheme, the furniture style, the room layout, or something specific like the rug. But whatever it is, note it so your designer knows what to focus on.
The Big One—what Are You Looking for in a Designer and Builder?
Each design professional and contractor is going to have their own strengths, so knowing what’s most important to you in finding a collaborator for this endeavor is critical to making a choice that works for you.
Here are some qualities to consider:
Design
Designers can excel at technical design or unique, creative design—which is more important to you? Are they driven by a particular style? Does their work look the same from project to project? If so, they likely have a strong voice (maybe more so than the client’s). If they happen to have a style you like, that could be a good fit. If not, you likely won’t get a design that suits your lifestyle. If their projects have a lot of variety, the designers probably work more closely with clients to let their style emerge.
Budget
When thinking about budget, what feels most important to you? The lowest price? Establishing a budget early and not have it continue to creep upwards? These take very different approaches to achieve. How willing are you to potentially give up parts of the project to keep the costs in check?
Another aspect of the budget discussion is how much work you are willing to do. You can save money by shopping for fixtures and finishes and doing your own interior design, but there are risks, including being responsible for any materials that you end up not liking, that don’t work, or that arrive late or damaged. You can also save money by taking on more of the project management, but again, you run the risk of not having the experience to anticipate mistakes before they happen. Oh, and there’s the value of your time.
Availability
If you have your heart set on a designer, contractor, or design build professional, are they available when you want to start? What if you have to wait six months for them? A year? This happens, and then the question is whether to skip over someone you really like for someone who can start on your schedule.
If you think about these characteristics early and use it to guide your selection of partners, you will be able to weed out companies that aren’t going to be well aligned with you. You’ll be more efficient and more successful in this critical first step.
Living Arrangements
Are you willing to live through your remodel to save money? It will always be noisy and dusty but some projects lend themselves to living through somewhat comfortably compared to others. You and your partner should weigh the pros and cons of living at home versus renting during part or all of construction.
Parsing through all these aspects of your remodel probably feels overwhelming, but our most successful projects have come out of clients working with their significant others to think deeply about all these issues before they started looking for a professional. Those that did were more aware of their role in the process, what they could and could not do, and how they wanted the project to come together. There will still be plenty of questions throughout design and construction, but answering the ones above before starting will give you a big leg up on creating the remodel you want.
