As Home professionals we can talk about "decision-point failure" and add systems and processes that stops it from happening with our Homeowners’. Homeowners like you are often looking at the professional to be able to use our experience to properly prepare and guide you through your project.
Except the problem sits in front of our systems and processes. It's outside our scope. Designers, Contractors, Design Build Specialists, we sell a solution. We Build.
It starts with the first phone call, you have a solution in mind, a beautiful new kitchen (or any other project we screen for) and we jump into action to execute. High level or not we trust that the project has been tested against your life plan and passed. It's not our job to coach you on your choices and many of you would recoil if we tried.
Only in hindsight well into design, planning or construction do the cracks appear.
Three that haunt me to this day?
🧭I’ll never forget working with one young beautiful couple, new baby on the way, and mid-project they separated. The home didn’t fit their relationship no matter the color of the walls.
🧭No sooner had the paint dried when these homeowners realized the location wasn’t where they wanted to spend their retirement and our very custom kitchen, made just for them, became a photo on a listing agreement. (Lucky new owners!)
🧭the final ghost in my closet is the empty-nestors well into finishing their basement until they realized they needed an aging in place solution for a parent and this house had none to offer.
I believe there is room for a third place because I believe the solution sits in front of the project. I've seen it a thousand times over 25 years.
The Solution.
Home Decision Mapping is a process where homeowners test the premise without expectation or costs of design, planning, or construction.
Clarity before Construction is the result, Regret-Proof Decisions is the outcome.
Without, you our homeowners are subject to drift, you follow the process laid out and under-building, over-building or worse yet fixing the wrong problem becomes the expensive regret down the road.
🧭Easy to do before the expensive hire
🧭Easy to walk away from a decision that doesn’t hold water
🧭Education you can only get with an experienced guide
The hardest truth I've learned over 25 years is a project can be beautiful, solve all the wants and needs of my client and yet there can still sit regrets. I call them blind spots, some they can easily live with and chalk up to experience, the "if only type". It's the big ones that haunt me; they leave a mark.
📢If you’ve got a major home decision causing sleepless nights I’ve loved to hear about it in the comments below.