Because getting it right matters

If a light fixture is supposed to be centered, I want it centered. If we spent time determining the right height for a pair of sconces, I want them installed at that height. If the drawings show tile running all the way to the ceiling, I want to see tile all the way to the ceiling.

Am I going to notice if something is off?

Unfortunately for everyone involved, probably.

But here’s the thing. Construction is not perfect. It never will be.

Homes are built by human beings. Mistakes happen. Things get missed. A wall isn’t exactly where we thought it was going to be. A product arrives damaged. Something we designed on paper runs into a condition in the field that nobody could have anticipated.

That is all part of building a home.

What matters to me is what happens next.

The best projects are collaborative

I love working with great contractors and tradespeople who care about the finished home as much as I do.

Some of my favorite conversations on a jobsite start with, “Ashley, we have a problem.”

Great. Let’s look at it.

Maybe something can’t be built exactly as we drew it. Maybe a contractor sees a better way to accomplish what we’re trying to do. Maybe we need to move something an inch, change a detail or rethink the plan entirely.

Those conversations don’t bother me. That’s collaboration, and honestly, it’s one of my favorite parts of the job.

Sometimes the contractor’s solution is better than mine. Sometimes we compromise. Sometimes I look at something that didn’t go exactly according to plan and say, “You know what? This is completely fine.”

And sometimes I say, “No. This one matters. We need to fix it.”

Those aren’t my favorite conversations.

I know what it means to tell someone something needs to be moved, changed or redone. It means more work. It may affect the schedule. Nobody wants to hear that the tile they just installed needs to come back down.

I certainly don’t enjoy saying it.

But I also won’t avoid a difficult conversation when I know the end result matters.

Someone has to protect the big picture

By the time one of my projects reaches construction, we have usually spent months making decisions.

Nothing exists in isolation.

The height of a fixture relates to the cabinetry below it. The cabinetry relates to the countertop.

The countertop relates to the backsplash. The backsplash relates to the window. We’ve thought about proportion, sightlines, materials, function and how everything works together.

So when something changes in the field, sometimes what looks like a small change isn’t actually small.

If we collectively decide to change the design, wonderful. Let’s change it.

What I don’t want is for an important design decision to disappear simply because something was misunderstood, someone forgot to ask a question or it became easier to do it another way.

That is part of why I’m still there during construction.

My job isn’t finished when I hand over a set of beautiful drawings. I’m there to help carry those decisions all the way through to the finished home

I want this to be fun for my clients

Here’s the other part of this that matters enormously to me: building or renovating a home should have some fun in it.

Yes, construction can be stressful. There are budgets, schedules, a million decisions and inevitably a few surprises.

But I don’t want my clients spending their evenings studying elevations trying to figure out whether their sconces were installed at the right height.

I’ll worry about the sconces.

I want my clients dreaming about the first Thanksgiving around their new dining table. I want them excited when the stone they’ve been waiting months for finally arrives. I want them to walk through the house during construction and start imagining their family living there.

Part of my job is carrying the details so they don’t have to. And sometimes that means having a conversation they’d rather not have themselves.

I think about the next 20 years

There are absolutely compromises in every project.

Sometimes the budget tells us no. Sometimes the house tells us no. Sometimes we discover something during construction and have to completely rethink what we planned.

That’s okay.

Good design isn’t about refusing to compromise. It’s about knowing where compromise is okay and where it will change something that really matters.

I think about that a lot in terms of longevity.

Construction is temporary. The home isn’t.

Something that feels like a big inconvenience on a Tuesday afternoon during construction becomes pretty insignificant when you think about living with the result for the next 10 or 20 years.

I don’t want my clients standing in their kitchen five years from now looking at something and thinking, I wish we had just fixed that.

I want them to think, I’m so glad we did it right.

The same goes for quality. I want materials that hold up. I want craftsmanship that lasts. I want the big decisions we make today to still feel good years from now.

That doesn’t mean choosing the most expensive option every time. It doesn’t mean chasing some impossible version of perfection.

Although, admittedly, I do really love perfection.

It means caring enough to know which things matter.

It’s because I care

At the end of the day, these aren’t my homes.

They’re my clients’ homes.

They’re making an enormous investment, not only financially, but emotionally. They’ve trusted me with a place where their kids will grow up, where friends will gather, where holidays will happen and where ordinary Tuesday nights will eventually replace all those months of construction. I take that trust pretty seriously.

So yes, I’ll notice when something isn’t centered.

I’ll ask the question. I’ll have the uncomfortable conversation when I need to.

And I’ll also be the first person to say, “This is completely fine. Let’s keep moving,” when it truly doesn’t affect the finished home.

I don’t expect construction to be perfect. I don’t expect the people I work with to never make mistakes. I certainly make them too.

But I do expect all of us, myself included, to care enough to make something right when it matters.

Because 20 years from now, no one is going to remember the extra afternoon it took to move that fixture.

But my clients will still be living with where we put it.

And yes, I hope it’s perfectly centered.

 — Ashley