Designing is the process of crafting a vision based on your needs, dreams and budget considerations. Sometimes this can be a simple concept requiring no more than a basic sketch. Other times it requires multiple drawings, specifications or even models to fully develop the ideas.

Step 1: Initial Site Meeting - typically we do not charge for this visit because we want to get a better sense of your needs and our ability to meet them without the pressure of money already being spent. If it makes sense to move forward, we will develop a first set of ideas to review with you. Basic sketches and written descriptions can be part of our effort to help determine if we are the designers best suited to help you achieve your goals.

Step 2: After we review the initial ideas with you, there are four possibilities:

1. You love the ideas and are ready to move straight into cost estimating or ...

2. You like the ideas but feel a more fully developed design is needed. In this case we may move into a design phase with agreed upon fees and timetables, or ...

3. You are not sure and would like to explore more or different ideas, so it may be back to the drawing board, or ...

4. It might be apparent that it is time to stop. You have no obligation at this point to go any further.

Step 3: Once a design is complete and a scope of work is defined it is time to prepare cost estimates. These will not be "to the penny". Even though we have many years experience and are good at estimating, it is still just an educated guess. Projects are broken down into line items; each with a cost range from low to high.

As a job is built you can expect some items to come in low, other will be high and most will end up somewhere in between. By addressing all the potential costs upfront, with careful planning and monitoring there should be no major surprises except for how much better it all turned out than you ever imagined.