Good design starts with good information. Here we share honest, process-driven advice on interior design, renovation planning, and furnishing your home well. All written from the perspective of a designer who has seen every phase of the process firsthand. Principal, Margaret Nubuor, over a decade of full-service residential design experience to every project and every post, having worked on historic brownstones, gut renovations, and full furnishing projects across Boston and beyond.
Our goal is simple: the more informed you are going into the process, the better you and your home will be coming out of it. Explore our series on navigating the contractor bidding process, dive into our The Considered Home series for deep dives on the features and decisions that set exceptional homes apart, or browse the full blog below.
What a Designer Does During Site Visits
Most clients assume that once construction begins, the designer's job is largely done. The selections have been made, the drawings have been issued, and the contractor knows what to build. In practice, a renovation is a live process with field conditions shifts, and trades working from their own plans without always knowing how every design decision affects their scope. What happens on site every week, and who is there to manage it, has a direct bearing on how your renovation turns out.
What Is a Receiving Warehouse? (And Why Does Your Design Project Need One?)
The difference between a smooth installation day and a chaotic one often comes down to a decision made months earlier. Here's the logistics step most clients don't know to ask about, and why it's worth understanding before your first pieces start shipping.
What Is Pre-Construction and Why Does It Matter?
Most renovation timelines jump straight from contractor selection to breaking ground. What's missing in between is often the most valuable part of the entire process. Pre-construction is the phase where your design team and contractor sit down together before anyone touches a wall, align on exactly what's being built, and surface every conflict, question, and ambiguity while they're still cheap to resolve. It doesn't get talked about much. It should.
Why Your Designer Should Set Renovation Allowances
Most homeowners don't think about allowances until the bids come in. By then, the numbers have already been set by the contractor, and they're almost never realistic for the finish level you're actually expecting. Here's why that single decision quietly drives more budget surprises than almost anything else in a renovation, and what to do about it.
