The Remodeling Design Process
For more good reading, check out our complete articles index.
At StarCraft Custom Builders we provide the
Sketch your ideas. Put as much information on paper as you can. A large box of crayons can help you form ideas of how various colors will look together.
full range of traditional design-build services: design and planning assistance, construction and administration services. They begin at the project's inception and continue through closeout. By working with you from the conceptual stage we are able to provide a coherent, comprehensive package that is best suited to your specific needs.
Design takes place in three phases.
• Concept Formation: Gather as much information as you can about the space to be remodeled. Get ideas, write them down. Create a folder of pictures from magazines, printouts from web sites, and any other information that helps you visualize what you want. Develope a concept of how it will look and function.
• Concept Plan: We then take your ideas and develop a "concept plan" and preliminary budget. This plan is an overview of the project showing how the elements will be placed in the space and what the project will look like when it is done.
• Construction Blueprints: Once you have approved the concept and preliminary budget, we then produce the final working drawings from which the project will be built.
Information Gathering and Concept Formation
Identify Your Likes and Dislikes
Since you are already thinking about remodeling, you probably have a good perspective about what you don't like about the existing space. But it is also important to understand what you do like, and what you therefore want to preserve. Retaining the features you like is just as important as fixing the aspects you do not like.
This computer-drawn full-color view shows how this finished prarie-craftsman bath will look.
Ask yourself questions about your requirements and jot down ideas on paper.
If planning a kitchen, discuss the existing kitchen space and layout with all the primary users of the kitchen in your household, listing the good and bad points of your current kitchen. Investigate the traffic patterns in and through the kitchen. Analyze the day-to-day meal preparation tasks. Try to formulate a "normal" daily meal preparation routine. Find out about your family's desire to do more in the kitchen. Is there an area of interest, such as baking, that you would like to do more of if the space or facilities were available?
Get a good idea of what works and does not work in your current kitchen. If the wall phone is located between the sink and range, and this works for you, then you probably want to keep it in this location. What could be done to improve it? Maybe a shelf beneath the telephone for the phone book and a note pad would make it even more convenient.
For a bathroom determine what about the existing space works well. Is there adequate storage in or adjacent to the room in convenient locations? Are vanities and sinks at a comfortable height for all members of the family? Is there adequate light? What is the best feature of the room? The worst? Is access from adjacent rooms adequate? For some ideas of what may be included in your remodeled space, take a look at the articles listed in the sidebar to the right.
Keep a notepad in the space to be remodeled. As you are using the space, jot down any thought or idea that occurs to you.
Do Some Basic Research
Before you start your formal planning, you should have a very good idea what you want your new space to look like — the cabinets, flooring, mouldings, countertop — and have decided on a basic palette of colors. Research all of the information about new products and features on the market. Good ideas are available on the Internet, in magazines and in design books at the library. If you find a picture of a room or an idea you like, clip, copy or print it and put it in your concept folder.
Organize Your Requirements for the Space
List the features the space should include and order them by priority. A good working breakdown is:
- Cannot do without
- Important but willing to negotiate and
- Nice, but not necessary.
Don't be afraid to dream big. You don't know you can't afford it until we put the sharp end of the pencil to paper. We just may be able to work it in.
Carefully Measure the Space
If you are remodeling an existing space, measure the space. If you are combining rooms into a larger space, measure both rooms. Sketch out a rough plan showing all measurements. To learn how to accurately measure a room, check out How to Measure Your Kitchen.
The Concept Plan
At this point, it is time to begin formalizing your ideas into a design. The concept plan is a series of designs intended to arrive at a point in which all of the features that you want to include in a space are incorporated into the space in a buildable design. Although we speak of it ofen as a plan, it is actually a series of plans, each one edging closer to the final design.
The first step is an initial planning meeting, preferably in your home. The purpose of that meeting is for you to share your ideas with us. We will spend most of the time listening to you — asking questions when appropriate for clarification. We will need your priority list, any photographs or drawings of items you would like in your remodeled space, and your sketches and drawings. We will also remeasure the space and make notes on potential construction problems.
Some definitions
Although we typically refer to a set of drawings for a project as its "plans", technically the term "plan" has a narrower meaning.
A Plan is the view of a space from the ceiling looking down at the floor. It shows how objects are positioned on the floor of the space.
An Elevation is the view of the space looking at one wall or perhaps a portion of a wall. It is a view of a vertical dimension of the space and shows how objects are positioned on a wall.
A Perspective Drawing is a photo view of the room, it shows how the room would look in three dimensions from a particular viewpoint.
With our notes and your ideas folder in hand, we will create a preliminary floor plan that allocates features to the space available. This sounds more formidable than it is. It is merely a process of putting things that go into a space onto the floor of the space to see how the objects in the room will go together.
Once we have a workable floor plan, we begin looking at elevations to see how objects fit vertically. For example, in a kitchen design, we will look at elevations of each wall of cabinets. Here is where we adjust the height and depths of objects. We may go back and forth between plans and elevations several times to look at different options and tweak the design here and there.
Once we have a plan that includes the features you want, complies with the various design guidelines and building and safety codes, and is "buildable", we start costing it to develop a preliminary budget.
At this point we are ready to present the design to you. We will print out the floor plan, an elevation for each wall, close-up elevations of wall features if warranted, and one or more full-color perspective drawings. The perspective is a full-color, photo-realistic image of how the space will look when it is finished.
Our sophisticated computer drawing programs even let us look at a designed space under different lighting conditions. This stark white all-tile bath turned out to be just too stark for our customer who opted for a much softer design.
Many manufacturers of cabinets, fixtures, countertops, flooring and other products will provide us with graphic models of the exact items you have chosen for your space, in the precise colors you prefer. These models enable us to make the perspective as accurate as possible. Using a series of perspective drawings, we can walk you though the finished space, showing as much detail as you want to see.
When we present the concept drawings, you will probably have one of three reactions.
• You will love the concept and want to build it right away (rare).
• You will hate the whole thing and wonder why you ever hired us in the first place (also rare).
• Or you will want to make changes to the design.
The concept plan is an evolving plan. It's fine-tunable. We now begin refining the drawings to make the changes required until they match as closely as possible to the vision in your mind's eye.
This is the point at which adjustments are made to fit your budget, your lifestyle and your physical characteristics. You probably have many more ideas for the space than can be fit into the space or into your budget. Here is where we begin paring down and refining. For studies of how we handled concept design in two individual cases, take a look at Adapting a Kitchen to a Budget and Adapting a Kitchen to Human Dimensions and Movement.
Eventually we will reach a point at which the concept works for you and the budget is something you can afford. Now we start working on the construction drawings and final budget.
The Construction Blueprints and Final Cost Estimate
When you have approved the concept, we can then set about creating a firmer cost estimate. This is where the detail planning really starts. Creating a cost estimate requires us to identify all of the materials that will be used, and determine the labor required for the project. If necessary we will obtain preliminary estimates from sub-contractors such as plumbers and electricians to see what their part of the project will cost.
When the project's estimated cost meets your approval, we can begin drawing up the final construction plans.
Unlike the concept plan, which is basically, a project overview sketch drawn on a computer, the construction plans are very detailed. They show the exact placement of every wall, wire, pipe, outlet, fixture, cabinet and switch in the remodeled space.
The blueprints are the drawings the various trades use to actually build the space. They will include detailed construction plans, elevations of every wall; hardware, fixture and cabinet schedules; materials lists and detailed written instructions where required for additional guidance.
A typical construction blueprint will contain ten to thirty pages of drawings and text.
Once we have reviewed the blueprints with you and you have approved them along with the final budget, we can begin construction.