And so we begin...

Yesterday, me and my partner, M, signed a building contract with Commonwealth Builders in Vienna, VA to do an extensive renovation on our home in Falls Church, VA.  WOOHOO!

This decision was a loooooong time in coming and, M, did a lot of the research on the building firms for this project.  This process has been in the making since around August of 2008, when we started doing the initial research.  We found a list of the top design/build firms in the Washington DC area from Washingtonian magazine.  We narrowed down firms from this list, we immediately eminated any firm that didn't have a web-presence, because we didn't have a way to evaluate the company.  We eliminated some because it appeared that they were WAY our of our league price-wise, sticking to firms that seemed to have done work on modest, mid-20th Century homes like ours.  Beginning last August, we interviewed 4 design/build firms; CASE, Gilday, Levine Group, Commonwealth, we later attended an open house of a house in our neighborhood, that had been remodeled by Sun Design, and we added them as the Number 5 firm to evaluate. Sun has been marketing aggressively in our neighborhood.

All these firms were fine and would probably do a fantastic job, but for us it came down to a decision between CASE and Commonwealth.  Commonwealth won for these reasons:

1. Customer Experience - They had they best customer interviews, M interviewed customers from CASE and Commonwealth, and we talked to the homeowners of a SunDesign project and of these we felt that the Commonwealth customers seemed the happiest with their overall experience.  CASE customers didn't trash them at all, but overall Commonwealth customers seemed more satisfied.  
2. Price - Commonwealth included more in their estimate than either CASE or Sun.  For instance, they were the only firm to include a hardscape patio that we'd thought we wanted at the time.  Sun's estimate came in lower, but they didn't make an allowance for replacing our 26 year old HVAC system, and Commonwealth did.   In the end, we felt Commonwealth was being more realistic than the other two firms.
3. The Vision Thing - Commonwealth's architect, Susan Peirce, actually did a prelimiary drawing for us, without us paying anything.  CASE also did, but we were more impressed with Susan's vision than with CASE's.  Susan's drawing, though it was rough, had a "WOW" factor that was missing from the CASE designer's drawing.
4. Sales Experience - Sun was more aggressive than Commonwealth, but we didn't have an idea of what they could do for us, other than the examples we'd seen them build for other clients.  We liked the CASE rep we dealt with, she was also a talented designer, but we were concerned (based on customer interviews and our on observations) that we'd be more own our own for this project with CASE than we'd be comfortable.   For instance, when we asked her about the patio, she said, they didn't do that kind of work, but we could hire some of the workers to do it as a separate project.  Commonwealth strictly forbids this hiring of their subs. Finally, we really liked and bonded with our sales rep for Commonwealth, Vicki.  She's a bubbly and exciting person, and is a very talented sales rep.
5. Small Firm - Commonwealth is a Virginia based, husband/wife firm with less than 20 full time employees.  M and I felt that we'd appreciate the individual attention of being one of a handful of clients, rather than one hundreds of ongoing projects.  For instance, our CASE rep was in the middle of 7 projects, that sounded to us like she was spread thinner than the Commonwealth contacts we spoke to.  

So there you have the decision making process as it goes.  Next I'll post our current space and our problems with it, that we hope to fix with the project.

Stay tuned,

CC