Home Renovation Part 12: Beware of Unwanted Help

You should be ready to receive unsolicited help offers from people you interact with. For example, the sales person in the tile store may volunteer to redesign your living room. They will try to convince you that your idea of the project is faulty, and they could produce a much nicer result that what you had in mind.

If you work with an architect, you probably have a pretty good idea of the final result. The problem with this unsolicited help is that it may be quite expensive. The people who volunteer to help you may present a bill for $100 or so per hour of work, and they may claim that they worked more than 10 hours after getting your verbal approval.

Before accepting any designer help, ask for his/her hourly fee and an estimate for the amount of work. Please also ask your new designer to get your explicit approval if he/she work more than a set number of hours that you agreed upon ahead of time. Also beware of an interior designer doing an architect's job (they are not allowed to do so). NJ law requires a signed contract for every project costing more than $350 (I did not verify this threshold).