Living Design
Simply
Spaces
Wondering about our process?
One of the questions we get asked most often is what is our process? It's so important to us that we are on the same page as our clients from day one.
The first thing to know about our company is that we always work as a team at Simply Spaces! You'll be assigned a primary designer to work with you and our two other team members will consult and help throughout the project. You'll always have someone here to help you out and an extra set of eyes going over our work! Bonus - that time does not compile if you have more than one designer working on your project. You get charged the same hourly rate even if we all are helping on your design - three for the price of one!
We don't charge for travel time within 50 miles of our Kirkland office. You only pay for our active time on the job. If you live further away we will discuss travel charges, or even design virtually - we have completed projects from New York to Hawaii!
Although we get asked quite often, contracts are not our style. We find that your decision-making impacts the time spent on your project more than any other factor! And we can't estimate your thought process, as much as we'd like to. We bill on a monthly basis with a detailed description of what your time was spent on so you know exactly what you pay for.
The design process is a little more involved and we're happy to break that down as well - take a look below!
Design Phases
Meet & Greet
Measurements & Concepts
Contractor Intro
Presentation & Refinement
Selection Process
First introductions! We meet you, you meet us, and we decide if we're a good fit for your project. This is a great time for general ideas to flow and for us to check out your style.
Do you already have a contractor you work with? Do you need one? We have a team of people to help back up our work and we're happy to meet your team too! This introduction is key to the rest of the process.
Once we know we have a good team and how our communication process will work we get to dive into the design work. We'll come measure your house (or collect your as-builts) and dive into conceptual floor plan work.
We get a general idea together of what you want and work together to refine your plan to exactly what you need! This process can take some time depending on how many renditions we do and how many rooms we're touching.
Woohoo! We have a beautiful plan you love! Let's fill it in now - we go through cabinets, countertops, appliances, plumbing fixtures, tile, flooring, hardware, light fixtures, furniture, paint, accessories, and more! Whatever your job calls for. We take field trips or bring the materials to you depending on your needs. Our starting point here is the item with the longest lead time and we work our way down from there.
Compiling
We'll put everything we've done so far together into a physical binder and/or a digital copy for you and your contractor. This involves double-checking, cross-checking, and a lot of little detail questions so we don't miss a thing.
Budget Meeting
Hand Off
Site Visits
Photography
Don't worry about your contractor getting all the info from you! We keep in touch during the design process and at the end of it we present everything to them. This ensures they get you the right bid with every detail they need!
Did we mention we always start with the *dream* design? We love doing everything we can to design exactly what you want! We'll have your budget in mind from the start, but in every project there are tweaks to be made. Sometimes a few, sometimes a lot. We work side-by-side with you and the contractor to assess the final number and refine it to your goal.
One of our favorite parts! We will mostly be out of the picture by now but we love to check in that the contractor's work is going smoothly. We'll always be on call for any final touches and tweaks as construction goes along.
You can't get away that fast! After your project wraps up we'd love the opportunity to stage and bring in our photographer to document the design. If you're lucky your project may even be entered into an NKBA design competition!
