Design, Design, Design
Know something about your home isn’t working, but you can’t quite name the fix?
Nervous about signing a construction contract before you can actually picture what you’re paying for?
Charleene’s Houses’ design phase helps clients in Northern Baltimore County get rid of that nervousness.
In this post, you’ll learn what the design phase involves, how you see your space in 3D, how finishes get chosen, why we plan the whole first floor at once, and what you approve before demolition ever starts.
What Happens During the Design Phase of a Remodel?
The design phase is where your entire remodel gets decided, on paper, before any demolition begins.
Our whole process runs in four steps, with the first two focusing on design:
- Listen.
- Design.
- Finalize and permits.
- Build.
We then take your design, get the materials and any permits, then begin building. Our team doesn’t just sell designs because we don’t want to hand you something that a different team can’t pull off.
Step 1: We Listen
It starts with a phone conversation about your goals, your budget, and whether we’re even the right fit for your project.
Then we come walk your home with you.
In person.
We’re not doing this deep dive over the phone or having you come into a conference room to speculate about your home.
We watch how your family actually moves through the space, where everyone piles up in the morning, which rooms feel cramped, and which ones sit empty most of the year.
We also take a scan of your existing space, so from day one we’re working from your real home instead of a rough sketch.
The first thing we settle together is the big one: do you actually need an addition, or does a smarter layout get you there?
We don’t want to make you add on to your home if a redesign can solve your space problems.
On that same visit, Charleene or one of our designers gives you honest feedback and realistic budget ranges on the spot.
As Harry Claridge put it in his review: “Within 10 minutes of meeting with Charleene, she solved this for us. A way to have what we wanted and remain within our budget.”
Step 2: We Design
This is where the plan gets drawn, priced, and refined until it matches what’s in your head.
Our design agreement starts at $950 and varies with the scope of your project, and that fee is separate from what you spend on construction.
The agreement spells out exactly what you’re getting: the design scope, the fee, and every deliverable.
Over 4 to 8 weeks, and up to 3 months on a larger job, we produce your custom blueprints, floor plans, elevations, and 3D renderings, and we revise until the plan matches what you pictured.
One designer and one project manager carry your whole job from here.
Your designer guides every layout, material, and finish decision alongside you from real samples rather than a screen.
The subcontractors walk your space in person, and the project manager (your main point of contact) is right there with them to ensure they know what they’re looking for, that there are no issues with the plan, and that you get an accurate price.
This helps make sure that the number you get reflects your real project, and won’t budge unless you change something or we find an issue behind the walls that couldn’t be seen.
And we design to the budget you give us, not above it.
Tell us the real figure, and we shape the whole plan to fit inside it.
Our design-build process vs. a general contractor’s process.
How You See Your Finished Space in 3D Before Construction Starts
You see it because we build a model of your actual home.
A 3D rendering is a photo-realistic version of your future space:
- The island.
- The cabinet color.
- The sightline from the stove to the family room.
That matters more than it sounds.
It turns “I hope this looks right” into “I can see exactly what I’m getting.”
Our designers build these in Chief Architect, then walk you through the whole thing before a single stud comes out.
Choosing Finishes With Real Material Samples, Not Screenshots
You pick your finishes by holding the real materials, not by scrolling through screenshots.
A cabinet color looks like one thing in a showroom photo and something else entirely in your kitchen at 7am.
Screenshots flatten texture, hide undertones, and lie about scale.
Real samples don’t.
We curate physical samples of paint colors, countertops, cabinetry, and hardware so you can see them and feel them in person.
Your designer sits with you through every one of those choices.
By the time you say yes to a finish, you’ve already touched it.
How We Design Around the Whole First Floor, Not One Room
We design your whole first floor as one connected space, even when you call us about a single room.
A kitchen doesn’t live by itself.
Redo it alone, and you can end up with a beautiful new kitchen that still spills into a dark hallway and a dining room nobody uses.
Designing the floor as a whole means the kitchen, the flow, the light, and the rooms around it all get solved at the same time.
This is our master space planning, and it’s where we catch what other firms miss.
We read the floor plan first.
Most families come to us certain they need an addition, and more often than you’d think, the space is already there in a wall that can come down or a layout that can be reworked.
Take a first-floor project we did in Reisterstown.
The old layout was so choppy the family couldn’t host more than 8 people at once. They thought they needed home office and mudroom additions to make their home work for them.
Within minutes of walking the space, Charleene showed them how reworking the first floor could help their home work better for them than any addition could.
We opened the entire floor with 34-foot structural beams, reworked the kitchen and living space, and built in a soundproofed music room.
When Your Selections Get Locked, and Why That Protects the Timeline
We lock your selections at the end of design.
You won’t be choosing anything during construction because that can add weeks to your timeline.
Custom cabinetry runs 8 to 12 weeks from order to delivery.
Stone countertops add another 1 to 2 weeks of fabrication after we template them.
Choose them during the build and the whole team ends up waiting on a delivery truck.
How to make design selections less stressful.
See It Before You Build It With Charleenes Houses
The design phase is where your remodel really gets built, on paper, weeks before anyone picks up a sledgehammer.
Get the layout, the 3D views, and every finish settled first, and demo day becomes calm instead of scary.
Fill out our contact form or give us a call, and we’ll walk your home and show you what we see.
