These steps offer a broad foundation in how to get started if you are thinking about renovating your home.
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Gather your ideas
• Watch renovation shows (but don't trust the timelines as a lot can happen during commercials).
• Visit web sites that show renovated areas which are similar to what you have in mind for your renovation.
• Visit showhomes in the city to get ideas.
• Research professional renovators to find one who has all the credentials with a proven track record.
Meet your chosen renovator for an in-home consultation
• Let your renovator know your thoughts and ideas for your home.
• At this point, a good renovator can also coach you on a good stop / start point for your renovation.
• The key to a successful renovation is to seamlessly incorporate renovated areas into existing areas.
• This meeting should end with aligned expectations on budget and vision of the project.
Are you ready to take the next step?
• Is your budget and the renovator's ballpark price aligned?
• Are you excited about giving your existing home a wash of fresh design and perhaps additional square footage?
• If you answered yes to the above, it's time to begin the process in earnest.
Assure yourself that you are spending prudently:
• A professional renovation is an investment in your home which you will recapture at some point in the future.
Design and detailed planning:
• Work begins by measuring your home, then drafting the plans for your renovation.
• After you approve the conceptual drawings, its time for the specification writer and estimator to meet at your home to define, with you, the details of your renovation.
• With this meeting complete, the team can now document the project by writing a detailed scope of work and calculating the fixed contract price.
Good to Go:
• Upon your request to begin the renovation, the next step would be to meet with the in-house interior designer to select all the products and colours for your new renovation.
• Once products that are required have been selected, the team will begin the work on Dormer extension in site.
• Depending on the scope of the renovation it might be necessary to find an alternative residence to live in for the duration of the project.
• Check with your renovator if they offer accommodations.
• As the homeowner, you should be kept in the loop every step of the way.
• A professional renovator will handle all the hurdles of the renovation to keep your stress to an absolute minimum.
Define your career. If you are a doctor, you diagnose and treat peoples' ailments. If you are a hairdresser, you cut, colour, perm, and style hair. If you are a police officer, you uphold the law, investigate crimes, and in general protect the citizens of the district in which you work. Most careers can be at least briefly described by almost anyone. If you have one of those careers, you are very lucky.
Before I entered the work force and opened my own design firm, I never would have imagined that I would be getting calls to mend curtains, remove stains from carpets, find out why one bulb in a chandelier will not work... I am an interior designer -- I design interiors; but I can recommend a seamstress, carpet cleaning company, electrician... Then the dreaded question comes, "What do you mean you design interiors?"
Once-upon-a-time-ago I thought that to be an easy question to answer. Somehow, I now find it easier to explain to a child why the grass is green.
Rather than trying to define interior design, I have taken to explaining the process of designing an interior.
I analyze, ask questions, draw, review the budget, draw some more while asking more questions. Slowly, what started off as sketches develop into floor plans and other technical drawings. Some of the drawings get coloured in. I help my clients make informed decisions regarding the use of space, materials, products, colour, lighting, layout, construction methods, other professionals... The drawings/plans then go to contractors and specialty contractors. I review the submitted process with my clients -- one submission is higher, but that is not necessarily bad because the others are each missing things. A contractor is selected, the contract signed and the work begins; I'll be there routinely while the work is in progress. I basically act as a representative on my clients' behalf, as well as a protector to my own design. Time schedules are reviewed frequently, problems that arise are handled in such a way that my clients may later know the solution but not the headache involved to understand and work out the problem. The work is wrapping up, only the finishing touches are left but I am already preparing a list of things that have to be finished, repaired or touched-up.
What had been a noisy, dirty, smelly construction site has now fallen quiet and already been cleaned. I walk around looking at and examining the full-size, real thing of all the drawings I had done weeks, if not months, ago. Back at the office, I edit the deficiency list started a few days before and send it to the contractor and clients. The job is soon completely finished, but my work is still not done.
My clients call, happy with the finished space. There are some last minute questions concerning maintenance of some of the new items, where to find certain decorative things and accessories that suddenly have importance, placement of these things, and so on.
About two months later those clients are likely to call again. The voice on the other end sounds either a bit annoyed or even slightly panicked. The tile grout is crack in one area on one wall. It's probably just because everything has had the time to settle; I'll come by to see it, then contact the contractor.
Define my career. I am an interior designer. I am an analyst, an artist, an educator, an interrogator, a project manager, a site supervisor, a purchaser, a space planner, a specifier, a decorator, a technician, a draftsperson, a troubleshooter...
But can I help a client plan an outdoor project? Can I design a cabana or gazebo for a client's yard? Can I design custom furniture or lighting? Work with other professionals to provide technical drawings for things that do not fall into the scope of work of an interior designer? Work with clients and their real estate agent to help in the selection of the perfect home or commercial space to meet their needs? Provide consultation services to do-it-yourselfers? Handle the enlargement of a building? Work on new constructions as well as renovations? Plan the enlargement or relocation of a kitchen or washroom? Do I know the building code? Can I help obtain renovation permits from the municipality? Design spaces for use by people with physical disabilities?... Yes, and more.
In a rush, I sometimes describe interior design as the career that fills the gap between architect and decorator, but the accuracy in that statement is something even I have debated. So I am still left without a solid definition of my own career.