Ever Changing Scope

Going through client testimonials, I stumbled upon a closing paragraph that describes a client's changing attitude to the scope of a large renovation project:

 "I still remember something you said at our very first meeting. You said that typically, in whole house remodels like ours, people have a tendency to grow the project as it progresses. Things that aren’t offensive in the old house become offensive as everything around them gets fixed. At the time, I thought that wasn’t going to happen to us. I thought I knew what I wanted. Of course, you were right. I really appreciate your having said that at the beginning. It helped me to understand why I hadn’t gotten it right at the beginning. I guess it was sort of a license to change my mind. It was a license that let us build a house we now truly love."

Support for project scope to expand increases once improvements begin, but in the unmanifested design phase, the opposite is true. Sometimes we are presented with cases of "the incredible disappearing project", where after much deliberation pieces are taken away from the design, until there's not much left. It's as if real physical change provokes the desire to correct and reform, while careful analysis on paper causes trepidation.

 Perhaps this is not surprising. Schematics on paper are ultimately an abstraction, while physical divisions in space become "real". We feel more comfortable as makers, less so as planners. This is the challenge of the process, in a world where we have lost the art of making buildings as second nature. And yet we believe in bridging the gap: by connecting passionate craftsmen to creative designers, clients get to reconnect and directly participate in the art of building and fashioning their own dwelling. There are few things more exciting than obtaining "a license to build a house you truly love".