Recently, I was involved in a discussion regarding if it was worth paying a designer or having your contractor “just do the drawings” for a kitchen renovation project. The discussion involved a number of different opinions from the absolutely you need a designer to be your advocate, or the cabinet supplier can do all of the design work you need for free (it’s not really free, it’s just hidden in the cabinet price) and tile stores can offer assistance for those items or perhaps your contractor has even offered do the design work for you.
Not all designers, contractors, or suppliers for that matter, are created equally. Some specialize in only a certain part of the solution and are experts at that while others do an ok job with a variety of tasks. While there are multiple ways to achieve a kitchen or any other renovation, at Custom Dwellings we find that planning is the first step- it is a professional service that comes with a cost. What do we mean by that? Well, when you visit a mechanic because something’s wrong with your car, you may have an idea of what’s not working quite right, but you probably are not exactly sure of the solution to fix it. Your mechanic is more than likely going to have to do a little bit of investigative work to figure out how to fix it defining both the labor and parts needed and will charge you a diagnostic fee which may or may not be waived if you proceed with the repair.
The same concept applies to your home, and to assist in making informed choices we offer a feasibility study. It is the first step for clients who are not quite sure which of several projects they should undertake or if their budget is realistic for the work they want done. This is where leveraging a design/build firm can be a perfect fit from start to finish. While we can lean on resources such as the cost versus value report for the Metropolitan Atlanta area as a guideline for what our local market conditions are in today’s remodeling dollars with labor and materials- this aggregate data isn’t specific to your unique home.
Let’s go back to the diagnostic fee analogy- equating to our feasibility study. It does take time but it is money well spent- with a small financial investment in this investigation we can help you define your project scope, establish a realistic budget coupled with a buildable design solution. In the feasibility study we work with a limited bucket of our team’s hours to draw upon for documenting the existing structure at a basic level and producing the most preliminary drawing possible to run real numbers against. This feasibility study is not a full-blown estimate for your project but it is a reality check long before you are deeply vested in a design solution with no regard to actual $. There are numerous variables to consider in a renovation or new build- products to select and nuances to your home that ultimately would be further investigated in a more comprehensive design phase.
The preliminary step of the feasibility study gives you a solid handle on the unknown long before committing to construction and can help with the initial financial planning for your investment. Are you ready to see what we can do for you?