The Rusk Guide to a Great Renovation

Step 1, Look at pretty pictures

The whole reason to renovate is to live in a place that you love.  Function is essential, but beauty is even more important. It will make you love to be home.  It will make you look forward to having people drop by.  You will be enthusiastic about the moment when the doorbell rings.

So, rather than starting with what you need (we’ll get to that) start with what you love.

And the images and objects  you’ll collect of what you love should include a wide variety of things.  If you secretly love Fruitloops, you should include that.  This file should include textures—old wood or stainless steel or feathers, it should include interiors, bathrooms, kitchens, living rooms, furniture, fabrics, colors, animals, children, people, food.  What’s important is also not to censor yourself.  You may be planning on a very contemporary interior, but you may love the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles. 

Then, start collecting the pictures and objects from the rest of your family. 

There are very few of us that live in a vacuum.  We have a constituency and if that constituency isn’t happy, we won’t be happy.  So the purpose of this collection, is to start finding overlap.  What the things that you really like, that your partner or spouse really likes, that your children also really like….ok, tolerate and may even secretly find ok.  We’re looking for a place that everyone likes, including our friends and extended families.

While we can’t please everyone, if we start to focus on the things we truly love, we will be able to give the professional designer inspiration.

Because that’s the point of this exercise.  You are going to commission a work of art; a special work of art that makes you very happy every time you see it because it has things worked into the design that you like.

Great interior design comes from inspiration, and the source of that inspiration is all the things you love.  You will then speak to interior designers and  architects and you will show them the things you love and you will watch them very closely.   Do they like the things you like?  Are they inspired by them?  It is not fun to work on design with someone who doesn’t like the things you like.  It will be forever frustrating.  Likewise, it’s not fun to work with someone who shares your taste, but not the taste of your spouse.  The most important step in your whole renovation or construction project, is finding someone who loves many of the things that you and your spouse loves and is inspired by them to create something that you love. 

You may like places you’ve seen, and other projects that a particular architect or designer has done, but these projects are the result of another inspiration.  Your home should be particularly inspired by what you and your family or spouse or friends love.  So start with pretty pictures.

The Rusk Guide to a Great Renovation

Step 2 Choosing your design professional

Deciding on a design professional, is like choosing your restaurant.  It’s a commitment to a style.  Sure, you could ask for, and maybe even receive a burrito at a bistro, but their heart may not be in it.  Choosing a contractor, is more like choosing the line cook.  That line cook in the French restaurant may make a mean burrito, but a restaurant usually has an identity, a particular style and aesthetic, and price point. 

So do design professionals.

Again, we’ve all been at the diner and eyed the 35.00 lobster dinner, and if we were wise, swerved back to the hamburger.  Buy a hamburger at white tablecloth restaurant, and it may well be fantastic, but it’s probably going to be three times the cost of the hamburger at the diner.  The difference is at the white tablecloth restaurant, the specification for the hamburger is different.  Different cuts of meat were used.  The attention to the preparation was different.  The roll was sourced differently.  And the skill of the shef who made that hamburger is likely considerably different, as was their training.

So, the question is just what kind of hamburger do you want? 

If this is the first home you’re buying, it will not likely be your dream house and its location, size and amenities may not be your final choice.  So, it’s investment value will likely be very important to you.  As a result, the design you choose may not want to be idiosyncratic because you’ll want the maximum number of people to be interested in your house for resale.  There is a limit to this (see the last article about picking things that you love) but just as you’re looking to overlap taste with your family and find something everyone likes, when designing a house you expect to sell within the next ten years, you may well want to consider “potential buyers” to be the other constituency you need to please.

The important word in the last paragraph was “potential buyers”.  Taste varies around the country, and what works great with a demographic in Park Slope Brooklyn will not be the same as 5^th Avenue or Tribeca. 

On the other hand, if you have found your dream house, or you are fortunate enough where the investment aspect of your project is not of concern, then your choice of design need only please you.

Good design begins with what you love and then moves to what you need and how you live.  This includes the most prosaic considerations like who gets up first and where do they get dressed to the most estoteric lifestyle questions, like when entertaining, where should the children be and what is the impression of the family you are communicating.  I believe strongly that the client and how they want to live is the inspiration for the project.  But as owner, you are the “producer” of the project, and it’s up to you to pick the talent who can deliver this home for you.

In high end residential renovation, which is the work we do, there are architect led projects and designer led projects.  In architect led projects, often the architect is chosen first and may recommend the designer or the designer may be someone they work with often.  Sometimes, a family member will make the interior design choices, sometimes it’s a designer who regularly works with the family, sometimes its someone knew that is recommended in.  But in Architect led projects, the architect is designing the spaces, the styles, the molding or architectural detail, cabinetry, lighting and often the furniture placement .  The designer is designing color, fabric, floor covering and window treatment. 

In designer led projects, the designer often leads the project.  Designs the lighting, the architectural detail, the cabinetry, etc. with an architect often then developing the detailed drawings for the project.  Some designers do these drawings themselves, and only rely on an architect to file the plans, other designers lean heavily on the architect to realize their vision.