The goal is not to rush an idea into construction. It is to understand the home, test the possibilities, connect design to cost and products, and develop an aligned direction before committing to construction.
Why This Work Comes First
A kitchen renovation, addition, or whole-home reconfiguration connects layout, structure, plumbing, products, cost, and property conditions. A beautiful idea is only the beginning.
The Lars home remodel design process brings architecture, interior design, estimating, and construction perspectives together during initial planning. That shared work anchors the larger design-build process. Measured information, visible design ideas, and early cost input help you make informed decisions before plans are finalized, products are ordered, or construction begins.
How The Commitments Work
The Design phase and construction phase do different jobs. Separating them gives the project room to be measured, designed, reviewed, selected, and priced—with clear communication at each decision—before the homeowner signs a project and build contract.
Discuss the home, goals, desired scope, timing, investment expectations, and early questions about project fit.
Authorize the professional discovery, design, selections, visualization, estimating, and scope work defined for the project.
Document existing conditions, compare concepts, review decisions in the showroom, and refine the direction with cost and construction input.
Choose whether to proceed from the aligned design, scope, pricing basis, responsibilities, and remaining stated conditions.
The Lars Difference
Your Project Coordinator or Consultant keeps goals, feedback, and next decisions visible through clear communication. Architecture, interior design, estimating, product, and construction perspectives work from the same developing plan, so you are not left to reconcile separate vendors or competing information.
The Design Agreement
Each stage builds on the information developed before it. The exact deliverables are governed by the Design Agreement, but the purpose stays consistent: make the project more visible and more specific before construction begins.
The Five Phases
From first discovery to an informed construction decision.The work begins with your home as it exists. Lars listens to how you live, photographs and measures relevant spaces, documents visible conditions, and identifies the questions that need professional study.
Appliances, plumbing, cabinet layouts, light fixtures, finishes, and product lead times can affect clearances, mechanical needs, and layout. The team brings those design choices into the conversation early enough to inform the plan.
Multiple concepts appropriate to the agreed scope are studied against priorities, property constraints, and investment comfort. Design and estimating perspectives develop together instead of meeting after the plan is finished.
The selected direction becomes more specific through plans, coordinated selections, estimating, and visualization. The goal is to make connected decisions visible while they can still be refined.
Lars presents the refined direction, listens to your final feedback, and brings the approved design, scope, and pricing basis into alignment. The construction agreement is a later commitment built from that work.
What The Work Produces
Documentation, visualization, selections, and pricing tied to the specific project.Measured information about the home's relevant existing conditions creates the base for design, estimating, and consultant coordination.
Floor plans and concepts help you compare circulation, adjacencies, clearances, room relationships, and the practical tradeoffs between directions.
When included in scope, three-dimensional views make scale, sightlines, cabinetry, materials, and spatial relationships easier to understand before construction.
Appliances, plumbing, surfaces, fixtures, cabinetry, and finishes are connected to the layout so product decisions do not live in a separate conversation.
Showroom meetings at key milestones give you a clear place to compare options, respond to the work, and align design intent with scope and investment realities.
The developed design supports a more detailed understanding of what Lars is being asked to build and the pricing basis for the construction agreement that follows.
The project agreement controls the exact documents, meetings, visualization, selections, pricing format, and professional services included.
Measure. Visualize. Experience.
Plans are essential, but different views answer different questions. Lars uses measured information and scope-appropriate visualization to help homeowners understand both the existing home and the proposed direction.
FARO scanning records visible rooms, openings, surfaces, and spatial relationships in high detail. That digital record supports existing-condition documentation and gives the design team a stronger base for studying change.
FARO supports the team's field work. It does not replace every verification, destructive investigation, engineering review, property survey, or agency record that a project may require.
A 3D home design makes a plan more tangible. You can review scale, circulation, openings, cabinetry, lighting, and room relationships while the design is still open to informed feedback.
Renderings are decision tools, not a substitute for the final drawings, specifications, physical samples, availability, approvals, field conditions, or signed project scope.
When VR review is included in the Design Agreement, you can experience the proposed environment at human scale. It is another way to notice relationships that may be harder to understand from a flat plan.
VR availability and the level of visualization depend on the project and agreed scope. The experience supports review; the approved documents and project agreements control the work.
Value Engineering With A Purpose
Value engineering compares ways to reach your goals while architecture, scope, products, and construction approach can still change together.
Lars may protect a signature feature while simplifying something less important, solve circulation differently, change a product, or reduce structural complexity. Your investment range guides those choices without promising every requested feature will fit the total budget.
Can the goal be met by improving circulation, storage, openings, or room relationships before adding more square footage?
Could a different span, opening, roof, or framing approach preserve the intent with a more practical path to construction?
Which appliances, fixtures, cabinetry, surfaces, and finishes deserve priority, and where could a different choice protect the larger plan?
What belongs in the core project, what is optional, and what could be reconsidered without losing the reason for remodeling?
Value engineering improves the quality of the decision. It does not guarantee that every requested feature can be delivered within a particular investment range.
What You Will Understand Next
Feasibility does not mean claiming certainty where none exists. It means making the knowable decisions visible, stating the remaining conditions honestly, and giving the homeowner a stronger basis for the next commitment.
You understand the selected concept, how feedback changed it, and why it responds to the way you want the home to work.
Visible property conditions, spatial limits, product requirements, and known approval questions have been brought into the planning conversation.
The design, selections, and scope of work create a more specific basis for materials and labor, and for construction pricing, than an early range or untested idea.
You also know what still depends on engineering, permits, agency review, concealed conditions, product availability, or later field verification.
Why Homeowners Choose Lars
The team that develops the design remains accountable for turning it into construction-ready scope. Lars backs that process with experience, change-order performance, and a written schedule commitment.
“The entire Lars team was outstanding. I worked closely with in-house Senior Interior Designer putting together a comprehensive design plan, and with Project Manager Paul Harte throughout the entire construction process. Both are top notch professionals.”
A V. — whole-home renovation
Continue Into Architecture & Engineering
The same Lars team carries the approved direction into Architecture & Engineering through plans, estimating, consultant input, permits, and approvals, then into the construction phase. Interior Design stays connected, coordinating materials, finish selections, procurement, and installation information with that developing plan.
The Design Agreement is the paid commitment that begins professional discovery and design work. It defines the services and deliverables for your project, which may include existing-condition documentation, as-built plans, concepts, interior design, selections, estimating, visualization, and scope development. It is separate from the construction agreement that may follow.
Major remodeling projects connect architecture, structure, products, permits, cost, and household priorities. Studying those decisions together gives both the homeowner and builder a more specific basis for deciding whether and how to move into construction. This pre-construction work can reduce avoidable uncertainty and costly mid-project changes without pretending every concealed condition or agency requirement can be known in advance.
FARO digital capture records visible geometry and spatial relationships in high detail. Lars can use that information to support existing-condition documentation and the base used for design. It does not replace every field verification, engineering review, property survey, destructive investigation, or record search a project may require.
Lars develops multiple concepts and schedules structured design reviews appropriate to the agreed scope. The Design Agreement controls the exact deliverables, review cadence, and level of development rather than a universal number applying to every project.
Most Lars projects move from signing the Design Agreement through End of Design in about three months. The project timeline varies with scope, homeowner feedback and selections, consultant or engineering needs, and findings from due diligence. Permitting and construction follow separate timelines, and the Design Agreement and project schedule define the milestones for your home.
Three-dimensional visualization and VR may be included when they are useful and identified in the Design Agreement. These tools help homeowners understand scale, sightlines, circulation, cabinetry, materials, and room relationships. Final drawings, specifications, samples, approvals, field conditions, and the signed scope still control construction.
The Lars team presents the current plan and concepts, explains the decisions and tradeoffs, and gathers your feedback. The showroom allows layouts, appliances, plumbing, cabinetry, surfaces, fixtures, and finishes to be discussed together. The team then refines the direction according to the agreed design process.
Value engineering means comparing design, structure, product, and scope approaches to preserve the priorities that matter most while working within the project's investment parameters. It is not simply choosing the least expensive option, and it does not guarantee that every desired feature will fit a particular budget.
That decision comes after the design and feasibility work has developed an aligned direction and a more specific scope and pricing basis. The construction agreement—not the Design Agreement or an early verbal range—defines the approved construction scope, pricing structure, schedule commitments, allowances, exclusions, and change process.
Bring Us The Questions
You do not need a finished plan. Share what is not working, what you hope could change, and the investment range you are comfortable exploring. Lars will help determine whether Design & Feasibility is the right next step.
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