Personable, professional, knowledgeable and patient. Pauline took us through five design drafts in response to our random thoughts and uncertainties, giving us some unexpected options, refining design features, and exploring dead-ends that we needed to travel down in order to better understand our own needs.
I have no criticisms, but one or two thoughts about improvements. If Pauline has time, I’d suggest she prepare a written outline for her clients about the process, and about budgeting. I suspect most people haven’t done this before, and it would be useful (and calming) to have a clear idea how things generally progress. Just basic stuff, not only about her service, but about the design and construction process generally. Her verbal advice was comprehensive, but it’s hard to remember everything. One big thing in my case was not understanding that when we spoke about budget, we were only talking about the cabinetry. Based on our own experience now, cabinetry is less than half the cost, the rest being appliances, carpentry, electrical, plumbing, and in our case, floor polishing. Also, I wasn’t exactly clear on what her role was after she’d prepared the final design drawings. In fact, she was still available to assist with getting quotes. Being a dill, I only realised after we’d selected a joiner to do the cabinetry that part of her service was even to review the quotes.
I’d also suggest she provide more detail regarding her relationship with Complete Style Joinery. She was clear she had some connection with them, and she was 100% professional when it came to getting quotes, making it clear that she was in no way promoting their services, but in fact, her relationship with them made the process much easier, and it would have been better to understand exactly what the connection was. In the end, we chose Complete Style based on price, and were thrilled with their work, but that’s a matter for another review. Her professionalism during the quoting phase meant she couldn’t tell us this, but I can now: there were some minor details to fix up after the cabinetry was completed, and choosing Complete Style meant she was available to help sort things out, which she did (like all her work) promptly and completely to our satisfaction. She was there from start to finish.
