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Hope everyone had good holiday weekend! It’s hard to believe this summer is halfway over! Time flies when you're having fun I guess... or when you're extremely busy. I have definably been learning a lot about owning a residential design firm, it can definably be overwhelming sometimes; but it's been good to see the design world from a more realistic perspective. There are so many things about the residential industry that cannot be taught in a classroom. Collaborating with other disciplines is the biggest thing. Most of what Ellen does is collaboration; we hardly just sit down and design. We are always moving around, pulling options for clients or on the phone talking to a contractor or installer. A lot of the time, the contractors will stop and talk with us in person about the job. Because of the friendly relationship Ellen has with her main contractors, they don’t even need to call. They just pop in on a lunch break to discuss projects. It's very casual.
We communicate designs to contractors mostly with drawings and picture packets. On new construction homes, where most of the materials will go, is already marked. Our job is mostly to tell them that the tile will be offset, if the wood floor herringboned, and how to finish the ends of the tiles showered walls. The builders hire their own contractors; we just give them tile drawings of the floors and showers. Remodels are more extensive. The contractors Ellen uses for most of her jobs, know how she likes things done and make sure things are up to her standards. One current project we have is a bathroom remodel and the couple wants to replace their shower/tub with and walk in shower and get new cabinets. Jessica and Ellen draw up plans to show how the new shower will be set up. Since this is a complete remodel, Jessica used sketch up to draw model of the shower to show the clients so that they would get a better idea. Jessica does elevations and tile drawings to show the details. They had some trouble trying to figure out the best way to enclose the shower and how the tile selections the client wanted would work, so they collaborated with the contractor for the job to figure this out. They also collaborate with a cabinet installer to do CAD drawings of what the cabinets will look like. (Ellen does not use computer drafting; almost everything is done by hand) She tells them what kind of cabinets she is envisioning and they send her drawings and they will go back and forth to figure out exactly how the cabinets should be set up. Everything is then shown and explained to the client for approval. If they don't like an idea they collaborate to figure out what would work best for the client.
Most of we do is collaboration, it's probably the most important skill to have in this industry. There is much that cannot be done by one designer alone. Making your client happy is the main objective of design and that cannot be done without understand what they want and what they like.