The people
Six of us, all employees, most here for a decade or more. If Inés drew your kitchen she will be there when the cabinets go in, and if Rajan filed your alteration package he is the one who answers the building engineer.
Founder and principal
Licensed home improvement contractor · with us since 1998
Marco is a third-generation carpenter who spent fifteen years building other people's designs before deciding the drawings were the problem. He still writes the difficult estimates himself and still walks every project the morning it is handed over.
English, Italian, Spanish
Design director
Interior architecture and space planning · with us since 2006
Inés runs the studio and the material library. She is the reason our kitchens work for the way people actually cook rather than the way a showroom photographs, and she is unusually willing to tell a client that the thing they saw online will not fit.
English, Spanish, Portuguese
Director of construction
Site management and supervision · with us since 2003
Conor owns the schedule. He sequences every trade, holds the line on the details a faster crew would skip, and is the person who decides that a wall really does have to come down before the cabinets are ordered rather than after.
English
Head of the cabinetry studio
Cabinetmaking and architectural millwork · with us since 2011
Mei-Ling draws and details every piece of joinery we build, and inspects everything that arrives from the partner houses before it goes anywhere near an apartment. If a drawer front is a millimetre out, she is the one who sends it back.
English, Mandarin, Cantonese
Permits and building approvals
Filing representative, alteration agreements · with us since 2014
Rajan prepares the permit filings and the co-op and condo alteration packages, and deals with the building engineer so you do not have to. He is the reason our schedules start with the approvals rather than assuming them away.
English, Nepali, Hindi
Furniture and sourcing lead
Procurement, trade accounts and installation · with us since 2017
Aïsha manages the partner-house relationships, the trade accounts and every lead time on the project. She receives, inspects and stores each piece so nothing arrives damaged into a half-finished apartment, and she styles the room on the last day.
English, French, Yoruba
Why it is the same faces
A great deal of renovation in this city is built by crews assembled that morning by somebody who has never seen the apartment. It is cheaper, and it is why so much of this work has to be done twice.
Our carpenters are employees. They are paid for the day rather than by the job, which removes the incentive to rush a scribe or a mitre, and they have worked together long enough that Conor does not have to explain how we do things every Monday morning.
Free survey, written quote, fixed price
Tell us the room, the building and roughly what you are hoping to spend, and we will tell you honestly whether those three things are in the same place. The survey and the written quote are free, and the Design Study fee is credited in full against a build contract.