Q. What kinds of projects do you do?
When I started Daley Design + Build in 2018 we focused on building new homes. That all changed last spring when we decided to start a dedicated Renovation Division of our company since we had one large renovation project going in Indian Hill and constantly had people asking whether we do smaller projects. Renovation projects are a totally different animal from new construction as they tend to go two steps forward and one step back as you work through the integration of old and new. These projects need more staff management time than new construction projects, and we also have a foreman and several carpenters on staff to self-perform a number of pieces of our renovation projects. Our dedicated renovation team gives these projects the time and attention that they need to be successful.
We have renovation projects in our pipeline right now that are big, small and everything in between. The most important thing for me, which we do on all of our projects, is to figure out all the details upfront so that when we’re putting the budget together, the budget is based on real material and labor proposals. We believe that aligning expectations on a realistic project cost before construction starts is one of the most important parts of any project.
As with all of our projects, we execute them in an open-book, cost-plus manner as we view these as our customers’ projects not ours — we’re just facilitating. Our customers can see any document they like that is associated with their project.
Q. Do you have in-house designers?
I help develop the general design direction for most of our renovation projects, but we do have an in-house designer/selections coordinator as part of our renovation team to act as the liaison between our customers and the rest of our design team partners. Renovations are interesting and fun projects, especially if we move walls and change floor plans to unlock the true potential of someone’s home. You have to have a vision beyond what is there. Most people walk in and see a room’s arrangement and can’t see past that to what it could be — this is where we excel.
Q. What are the trends for 2023?
With interest rates on the rise, there is a general trend of customers renovating their existing homes instead of moving to a new home with a higher interest rate. People are going to spend less money renovating their current home or renovating a resale home than they would building a new home from scratch. Others are renovating existing homes because they’re unable to find an empty building lot to build a new home. That being said, we’re still seeing very strong demand for new custom homes in the luxury space, so some buyers aren’t letting the market conditions drive their decision making.
Q. Do you have a showroom?
We don’t have a showroom yet as we are just weeks away from starting to build out our future office building at 7115 Miami Road in downtown Madeira. We work closely with Aubrie Welsh Interiors on all of our projects, and they typically collect all of the samples for our projects while we’re developing our style packages. Each one of our projects is so different from the others that we don’t have a selection center, as we rarely use the same products on different homes. We don’t limit our customers selections to any single selections center; our customers’ options are literally anything that exists. There really are no limitations to what products our customers can use.
Q. How many projects do you work on a year?
We’ve got some fantastic houses coming through the pipeline, and the customers are equally great and fun to work with. I tell our team though, that we cannot do every job, and frankly we don’t want every project out there. We just want the projects that are a good fit for our process and quality of construction that our brand is built upon. What we’re selling is unparalleled openness and transparency and not cutting any corners. We’re all about doing things using construction “best practices” which means not only building to code, but beyond code in many respects.
Doing things right comes with a price tag. We’re not going to abandon all of our founding principles of quality and integrity to get down to a customer’s number, because then we’re not ending up with a product we want our brand on. We’re going to do the project right, or we’re not going to do it at all. Our business plan right now with our new construction and renovation divisions is about 12 projects a year: six new builds and six renovation jobs.
Daley Design + Build is located at 7115 Miami Ave., Madeira, Ohio 45243. You can find them at daleydb.com or call 513-315-4447 for more information.