Process
How a house gets made.
Every project runs the same seven phases, in the same order. You will always know which one you are in, what we need from you this week, and what lands at the end of it.
01. Discovery
A call, before anything else.
Every project opens with a Discovery Call: thirty minutes, by phone, at no charge. We talk about the house, what you want to change, when you need it finished, and what you are prepared to invest. We ask direct questions and we expect direct answers, because vague scope is the single largest cause of a project going badly.
02. Commission
The retainer, and what it buys.
We take a limited number of projects each year in order to give each of them the time and attention they deserve. The retainer is $5,000. It books you into our calendar, safeguards our bandwidth for your project, and is credited against your final invoice.
03. Immersion
We learn the house, and we learn you.
Early in the design process you will share a considerable amount of information about you, your family, and the way you like to live — through questionnaires, meetings, and brainstorming sessions. Where you eat when nobody is watching. Which room everyone ends up in. What you have tried and abandoned. What you would never live without.
04. Concept
One direction, presented whole.
We present the concept as a single coherent scheme — layouts, materials, palette, furniture direction, and the reasoning behind each. Not a menu of options for you to referee. Options are how projects lose their point of view.
05. Specification
Everything named, priced, and ordered.
Finishes, fixtures, cabinetry, lighting, plumbing, hardware, appliances, furniture, and textiles — specified by name and documented in a schedule your contractor can build from and your budget can be measured against.
06. Coordination
Someone holds the line while the house is being built.
If you do not already have a contractor or builder you love, we will recommend contractors we have used in the past who know our process. We are equally happy to work with any contractor or builder you have used previously. Either way the contractor contracts directly with you rather than through the studio, so the build money and the build warranty sit between you and the person swinging the hammer.
07. Installation
You come home to a finished house.
Everything we have bought for the house has already been delivered to our receiving warehouse, Delivery by the Falls, inspected there, and held until the house is ready for it. Then it arrives in one coordinated run: delivery, placement, styling, art, and the last details, followed by a walkthrough together and a punch list we close out.
How long does all of this take?
Time commitment depends entirely on scope. A consultation is a matter of weeks. A renovation runs four to six months of design and six to eight months of construction — ten to fourteen months in total. A new build runs twelve to eighteen months. During the Discovery Call we gather enough information to give you a real answer rather than an optimistic one.
We book a limited number of projects each year, so the practical constraint is usually the calendar rather than the construction. Design work currently begins eight to twelve weeks after a project is booked.
Tell us about the home.
Every project starts the same way: thirty minutes on the phone, no charge and no pitch. You tell us about the house and what is not working in it, and we tell you honestly whether we are the right studio for it. Most of our clients come back afterwards — for the next room, or the next house, or the one by the lake. We would rather begin something that lasts than close something that does not.
Or call (216) 236-3883
Monday to Friday, 9am–7pm