Saturday, January 10, 2009

With the economy going crazy, many of us have decided to just stay at home. If you are going to be spending a lot of time at home, your home needs to be a "haven of refuge", a "cocoon" , a place that you love to come back to after a hard day’s work... a place that feels so comfortable and so wonderful - that you never want to leave it!
Today, many people are thinking about remodeling their home to make it exactly the way they want it!
But if you are going to spend some money remodeling, you want to make sure that you are doing it right!
I believe in Specialization of Labor... in order to get the best design for your remodel and make it look fabulous- you shouldn't design the space yourself! You need to hire a specialist to help you design whatever room you are redoing, be it a kitchen, or a bathroom or even simply removing a wall to make your family room larger. My advice is to hire a good, licensed Interior Designer who is also a space planner to help you achieve your goals and dreams- a person with many years experience, who knows the pitfalls and will help you avoid making mistakes...Good licensed Interior Designers are visual people who can see what it will look like in their minds...Most people ARE NOT VISUAL, and can't really see what their project will look like until it is already done, by which point, if it isn't done to their liking, it is too late!
For a fee, Interior Designers will have a CAD drawing made for you of your existing space... and another of the proposed changes...and together you can go over this drawing, make all the necessary changes - even if it takes several re-dos... until you come up with a final plan that really works! Only then should you proceed with your remodel!

I am a licensed Interior Designer with 25+ years of experience - doing Interior Design, Space Planning and General Contracting/Remodeling and I have a great example to illustrate my point. Last week my construction crew began a remodel and removed/added several walls in the entryway/living room/family room and dining room in one of my client's homes- and when she came home to see the changes - she was so happy and excited, that she literally "jumped for joy"! And she said to me " Wow - this looks fabulous! Now that the walls are down, I can see what you mean" but I really didn't see it before... I could never have created such a beautiful floor plan without your help!"
She and her husband approached me to remodel their home by copying a neighbor's floor plan - which they liked well enough- but which really didn't suit their particular needs. By themselves, they couldn't invision anything on their own, so they wanted to copy something they had already seen! But that is not the way to acheive a gorgeous home! Together, we came up with what I thought was a much better floor plan for their home remodel, since they had different requirements from their neighbor -especially the fact that they wanted a TV cabinet to house 2 TV's for the man of the house to watch football in the fall, which the other family's floor plan didn't have room for. Also, the other family had a large closet in the entryway immediately opposite the front door, that was the first thing that you saw when you entered the home - and we both thought that was ugly! So, we drew up a CAD drawing so they could see what I was invisioning, made a few modifications to create a space that was perfect for them (rather than for their neighbors!), then hired a Stuctural Engineer to both make sure that we could implement our new plans and also tell us what size beams etc. we needed, and then we began to implement those plans! What a difference specialization of labor and a little bit of forthought makes!

If you have any comments or questions about this blog
please call me at my office 713 464-0055 or on my cell 713 269-6909
or email me at beverly@vosko.com or bvosko@sbcglobal.net or check out my website
www.vosko.com for a gallery of pictures of my work, my resume, and more information!

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