Who do you hire first - the architect or the builder?
Who Do You Hire First: The Architect or the Builder?
Hire your architect first. A good architect scopes the project, explores a few design directions, and gets rough builder pricing on each one before a single final drawing gets made. That sequence protects you from over-designing something a builder later tells you is unaffordable, or under-designing something that could've been so much better. This applies to renovations and additions; new home construction follows a similar sequence, which I'll cover in a future post.
I say this a lot: I wouldn't want an architect building my house, and I wouldn't want a contractor designing it. We each spent years getting good at one thing, not both. So, before a builder can tell you what something costs, they need to know, even roughly, what's actually being proposed. That's the architect's first job. (See a picture of "the Architect" below on a recent trip to Boston, Cambridge and Harvard Yard with the family)
What Happens at the First Architectural Meeting?
This is a feasibility conversation, not a design commitment. Plan on one to two hours, on-site, walking the property together. If you have a survey and any deed restrictions handy (sometimes they're buried in your closing documents), bring them. It saves a step later.
Most homeowners show up with a handful of ideas, and a few of them usually contradict each other. That's completely normal. The more you bring to that first meeting, the more useful it is. My job at this stage is to sort through what you're describing, tell you which directions show real promise, and give you rough cost parameters, not a number you can build a budget around yet, but enough to know whether the project is worth pursuing further. By the end of that meeting, you'll know if what you're picturing is realistic.
How Do You Decide What to Actually Build?
This is usually the hardest step, and it's where a lot of projects either get it right or waste months. If your scope is small and simple, one concept might be all you need. But most renovations and additions benefit from exploring a few directions before locking anything in.
This is where I introduce homeowners to what I call, for lack of a better name, the "Small, Medium, and Large" approach:
| Option | What It Is | Purpose |
|---|---|---|
| Small | The medium option with a piece removed | Shows what you save by phasing something out (a master suite renovation, a detached garage, etc.) |
| Medium | Your best, most promising idea, developed into a rough floor plan (rooms and rough sizes, nothing more) | Confirms the concept actually fits the site |
| Large | The medium option expanded with design moves you likely hadn't considered, which often becomes the version that makes the whole project worthwhile | Shows what real design expertise adds |
By the end of this step, you're not choosing blind. You have three distinct, realistic options, sketched enough to price. (see a sample below of a "small" floor plan for a house in the Myers Park neighborhood in Charlotte)
Time to Get a Builder Involved?
Once you have those three rough concepts in hand, it's time to bring in a builder (or better, two) to price them out. Some builders will give you a number on the spot, and that's fine for a gut check, but I'd recommend paying for their time and asking for a more thorough estimate instead. A rough guess costs you nothing and is worth not too much more than that.
At this stage, don't expect precision. You're looking at ranges, something like $150K for the small option, $200K for medium, $400K for large. The value isn't the exact number; it's understanding what each level of ambition actually costs, before you've committed a dollar to final drawings.
(See below for a hypothetical estimate from a hypothetical builder for, you guessed it, a hypothetic project)
What Happens After You Have the Rough Numbers?
Now the architect goes back to work, but with a real budget attached to real design intent. Maybe you pick the medium option outright, or maybe you land on a combination of medium and a couple of moves from the large version. Either way, design continues from here with something most projects never get early enough: confidence that what's being drawn and what it costs to build actually match.
This is also where I'd point you toward our blog post, Evaluating Cost Per Square Foot, and Understand the Cost of an Architect in Charlotte, NC if you want to get ahead of the budget conversation before that first site visit.
