Alpharetta, Georgia · Since 2004
Remodeling should feel exciting, not stressful.
Design and construction under one contract, one team, and one fixed price — so you never have to referee an argument between your designer and your builder.
What "design-build" actually means
Most people hiring a remodeler do not know that hiring one firm instead of two is an option. It is worth two minutes before you look at anything else.
One contract
You sign with us, not with a designer and then separately with a builder. There is no seam between the drawing and the framing for a problem to fall into.
One team
The people who design your project are in the same weekly meeting as the people who build it, from the first sketch through the warranty walk. Selections happen during design, not during construction.
One accountable party
When something in the field does not match something on the page, that is our problem to solve. You will never be asked to decide which of two companies is right.
The other way to do this
Design-then-bid is a legitimate way to remodel a house. It just puts a different set of things on your desk. Here is the honest comparison.
Who you sign with
- Design-build, with us
- One contract, with us.
- Design, then bid
- Two: one with a designer, one with a builder.
Who is accountable when the drawing and the field disagree
- Design-build, with us
- We are.
- Design, then bid
- You are, between two companies.
When you get a real price
- Design-build, with us
- At the Fixed-Price Proposal, before construction, from the people who will build it.
- Design, then bid
- After design is finished, from bidders who did not design it.
What happens if the price comes back higher than expected
- Design-build, with us
- The design and the investment are reconciled during design, in one room.
- Design, then bid
- The design goes back for revision and the schedule restarts.
Who makes the selections, and when
- Design-build, with us
- A Selections Coordinator, during design, before construction starts.
- Design, then bid
- Split between the designer's specifications and the builder's allowances.
Who is on site
- Design-build, with us
- Our production manager and your project manager, both of whom were in the design meetings.
- Design, then bid
- A superintendent you meet after the bid is awarded.
Who takes the warranty call in year three
- Design-build, with us
- Us, for five years.
- Design, then bid
- Whichever of the two companies you can reach.
Eight kinds of project, one contract
Grouped by the kind of work involved rather than by room, because that is how a scope gets written. The rest — cabinetry, mudrooms, aging-in-place work, historic houses — is usually part of one of these rather than a project on its own.
Kitchens
Layout first, then everything else. Most of our kitchens move a wall.
Primary Baths
Layout, then drainage and structure, then the surfaces.
Guest & Hall Baths
Small, old, and constrained — which makes them interesting, not minor.
Whole-Home Renovation
One design, one permit, one mobilization, one mess.
Home Additions
A structural project wearing a decorating project's clothes.
In-Law & Guest Suites
A small house inside a house — including the parts people forget.
Basement Finishing
Water, moisture, egress, ceiling height and mechanicals — all five, first.
Screened Porches & Outdoor Living
The roof tie-in is what separates original from bolted on.
What we are usually asked for
Almost every project here started as a room somebody already had and could not use. The move that fixes it is nearly always structural, and it is nearly always decided before a single finish is chosen.
Recent work, by room
Kitchens, baths, additions, basements, outdoor rooms and whole houses — the kinds of project we are asked for most, photographed rather than described.
Kitchens
Layouts opened up, walls moved, cabinetry built to the room.
Bathrooms
Primary suites, guest baths, and curbless showers that read as design.
Additions
New square footage, tied into the old house so it reads as original.
Whole House
One design, one permit, one mobilization — the entire plan reconsidered.
Outdoor
Screened porches and covered structures built to the house, not onto it.
Before & After
The same room from the same position, either side of the work.
Six phases, in order, every time
Two of them are where money changes hands. Both are marked, because every competitor buries them and we would rather you knew before you called than after you signed.
Discovery
We come to your house, walk the space, listen to what is not working, and talk honestly about range and timing before anybody draws anything. It is free, it happens at your house, and it ends in writing.
Design Agreement
PaymentFirst payment — the design fee
We put the design phase under a signed agreement with a defined fee, a defined scope of drawings, and a defined number of revisions. You own the drawings. This is the first time money changes hands and we would rather you saw it coming long before you got here.
Design & Selections
Measured drawings, layout options, structural review, and then selections — tile, cabinetry, fixtures, finishes — with our Selections Coordinator, inside the design phase rather than after it. That single sequencing decision is the reason our projects finish closer to their original schedule than they otherwise would.
Fixed-Price Proposal
PaymentConstruction contract — the payment schedule starts here
We price the drawings we produced, with the trades who will do the work, and hand you one number with the scope attached. It is a fixed price with an itemized scope, not an estimate — and it is the first number we will ever ask you to sign.
Construction
One production manager and one project manager. Weekly written updates. A schedule you can see. Change orders in writing, priced, and signed before the work happens — never after.
Warranty Walk
We walk the finished project with you, close the punch list, hand over manuals and the warranty document, and come back at eleven months to look again before the first year closes. Uninvited.
What a project here usually looks like
We publish this because a first meeting that ends in a number nobody expected wastes an afternoon for both of us.
$60,000
Our minimum project. Above it we work in four published investment ranges, each one set out with what it typically includes.
We publish all of it, and we say plainly who we are not the right firm for.
One project, all the way through
What the house was, what changed structurally, and the decisions that got made long before a single finish was chosen.
Before
After
A 1920s kitchen and butler's pantry
The kind of project where the drawings are a hypothesis until the plaster comes off. This was a 1920s house with a kitchen that had been remodeled twice already, and the second remodel had closed off the butler's pantry to make a laundry closet. Opening it back up recovered eleven feet of run and a window nobody living there had ever seen.
Framing in a house of this age is not where anybody's drawings say it is. We opened three exploratory areas during design rather than during construction, which is why the proposal carried a contingency and the schedule did not move when we found the header over the pantry opening had been cut.
The butler's pantry had been a laundry closet for forty years. Nobody had seen that window.
Decided in plan, judged in the hand
A renovation is argued about in drawings and then lived with at arm's length. Stone, metal, timber and tile are the four decisions that get made last and noticed longest, so they are specified in design rather than chosen in a hurry in month four.
Sixteen people across five functions, under one contract
Design, estimating and production are separate disciplines inside one firm rather than three companies on one job. That is the structural claim this whole site is making, and it is the reason there is one contract to sign and one number to call.
It also means the person who drew the detail is in the same Monday meeting as the person who has to build it, which is where most of the problems in this trade get caught or created.
In a client's own words
We ask at eleven months, not on handover day
On handover day everyone is delighted and nobody knows anything yet. Eleven months in, a client has lived through a winter with the room, run the appliances, opened the drawers a few thousand times, and can tell you what actually holds up. That is the version worth recording, and it is the reason we come back at eleven months in the first place. We would rather wait for somebody who has the year behind them and is willing to sit in front of a camera than stage one.
We work inAlpharettaMiltonRoswellJohns CreekDunwoodyEast CobbSandy SpringsCummingMarietta
Nine towns, and the list is short on purpose. Everything past about twenty minutes from the studio stops being a design-build relationship and starts being a drive.
Tell us about your house.
A Discovery visit is free, it happens at your house, and it ends with a written summary of scope and a realistic investment band.
