A year ago I started working at a St Louis residential remodeling firm, Dana King Design Build Remodeling, and I’m finally ready to start sharing what my day-to-day has been like in my first year working at a remodeling firm and what I’m learning!
To be completely honest, I don’t see myself returning to full-time blogging anytime in the foreseeable future. However, I’m investing in some much-needed updates and re-designs to my website (coming soon), and my friend and web developer encouraged me to share some updates and things I’m learning in the residential remodeling world. No pressure to post or keep up with social media or SEO, just every month or so share on my site, whatever I want.
Today I’m going to share a little tour around our studio located in Olivette, Missouri.
Dana King is the owner, and is actually a long-time friend of mine, and her studio, Next Project Studio, is the part of the building where that we interact with clients, but also is a collaborative space. That collaborative studio space displays/features innovative products that we might use in a project, and it also is rented out by local organizations or businesses that need a space for events or workshops. The offices side of the building is where the remodeling part of the business is.
When you first walk in, you are met with a corner mini-deck display featuring Millboard (below). Millboard is a new composite decking and siding material that has very realistic wood textures, doesn’t heat up to dangerous temperatures like other composite decking does in the sun, and has a unique technology that closes around their special screws so that no screw heads are visible. They also have a flexible bullnose for steps, so you can achieve a rounded edge on steps. It can be mitered, glued, and shaped. This product has been around for over a decade in the UK, just more recently breaking into the US market.
As you shift to the left from the mini-deck, you see the rest of our studio:
On the other side, you will see our Invisacook display — it is installed under this Neolith porcelain waterfall countertop. Neolith (porcelain) is gaining in popularity as a countertop surface material because technology and artisans are able to create incredibly realistic looking veining (much better IMO than a lot of quartz options), but there are no issues with heat like other man-made countertop materials (quartz). Additionally, because it is a man-made material, there is greater stain and scratch resistance than natural stone materials like marble, quartzite, or granite. So you get the heat resistance of natural stone, but the durability of quartz.
The only thing to consider with Neolith is the material thickness– it is much thinner than standard stone slabs, so in order to get the similar 3cm thickness of stone, the fabricators have to miter the edges (with an epoxy material to fill in the seam) and not all fabricators are skilled enough to do this well. Because of this extra labor involved, the overall cost is pretty close if not more than the median price of marble.
However, this thickness makes it ideal for Invisacook, because the burner sits below the material (it’s an induction cooktop). On natural stone, the fabricators would have to carve out a place for the burner to fit into because the recommended countertop thickness for proper function of Invisacook is 10-20 mm thick. Neolith porcelain is 12 mm thick.
Turning around back towards the windows, you see the “living room” as we call it. This pic below was from last spring, but a few improvements have been made since then.
A picture frame was added to The Frame TV, and Bang & Olefsen book-end speakers.
Backing up into the studio space still facing the windows, you can see on the right side an island and some shelves for material display. We have lighting controlled by Josh ai (a more secure alternative to Alexa or Siri), that can change to any color and any quantity of kelvins, to mimic different times of the day. This helps us demonstrate to clients how different paint and material samples look in different lights.
Below is another TV we use for presentations. All these cabinets also hold samples of often-used materials (like cabinets finishes).
Entering through one of the doors, you see our back offices where the project managers offices are.
These offices connect to a corridor with more offices, featuring this giant paper mache hammer, created by a local artist.
And here is me, after I was taping off the size of art and lamps over a buffet a client was considering. Sometimes painters tape does the best job of showing scale! 😉
And in the corner of the office space adjacent to the “living room”, is Dana’s office, where we often having meetings with clients.
That’s about all! There are a few more spaces we have finished off and I don’t have pictures of, but this gives you an idea of how my first year working at a remodeling firm as been! Let me know if you have any questions! xo, Rachel
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