A couple of hours at your place. Walking the house, talking about what's working and what isn't, and sketching. You keep the sketches, a written summary and the guide.
The most common thing anyone says to me on the phone is a version of “I don’t know where to start.” It is usually said apologetically. It should not be. It is an accurate description of the actual position, and the whole industry is arranged for people who are further along than that.
Every other route into this asks you to have decided something first. A builder wants a plan to price. A fee proposal wants a brief to scope. Both assume a project already exists. What does not really exist anywhere is a way to spend a small, defined amount of money to find out whether there is a project at all.
So that is what this is. A phone call, then a couple of hours at your house. We walk through it, talk about what is working and what is not, and I draw while we talk. It is $750 plus GST. You keep the sketches and a written summary, and the cost comes off your first invoice if a project follows.
You’ll be better informed after a conversation with an architect.
It answers the question standing between a person and a project — 'is what I'm imagining even possible, and roughly what would it involve?' — for a fixed, modest fee and no further commitment. If it becomes a project, the fee comes off the first invoice.
Being shown your own house by someone who can see it properly. Clients describe this as the moment the fog lifts. Watching an architect draw is genuinely affecting, and the hand-drawn sketch is an object people keep — it makes the possibility physical in a way a PDF never does.
The equivalent conversation happens free, in an hour, standing in a driveway, with no record of it afterwards. You leave with an impression and nothing in your hand — no sketch, no written summary, nothing to show the person who was not there. Three weeks later you can remember that it felt promising, but not why.
A couple of hours at your place. It is $750 plus GST, and it comes off your first invoice if it turns into a project. The sketches stay with you when I leave, which matters more than it sounds — the drawing is the thing you show the people who were not there. Be clear about the limits, though. Two hours will tell you whether the idea is possible and roughly what shape it takes. It will not tell you what it costs to build.
More and more do, and the reason is worth saying plainly. The free version of this happens standing in a driveway for an hour, and it is the most valuable thinking in the whole process being given away as a sales activity — which means it is rushed, unrecorded, and shaped by wanting to win the job. Paying a modest fixed fee changes what it is. There is time, there is no pitch at the end, and you leave with something on paper. Mine is $750 plus GST for a couple of hours at your place, credited against the first invoice if it becomes a project.
A phone call beforehand, so I arrive already knowing the address, the zoning and the overlays. Then about two hours at your house — walking through it, talking about what works and what does not, and sketching while we go. You keep the sketches, on paper, that day. A written summary follows: what I saw, what I think the real problem is, which options I would consider, and what I would want to check before going further. And the guide. All of it is yours whether or not you ever work with me again.
Not precisely, and I would be careful of anyone who claims otherwise after two hours. What it can give you is a range, and a clear sense of which direction is the expensive one — whether you are in the territory of moving two walls or of raising the house. A real cost picture needs measured drawings, a planning check and usually a builder's or quantity surveyor's input, which is Stage 01 work and costs more. The session's honest job is to tell you whether the thing you are imagining is possible and what scale of project it is. That is usually the decision people are actually stuck on.
If you have a feeling rather than a plan, yes — it is built for exactly that position. If you already know precisely what you want and only need it drawn and approved, skip it and start at Stage 01, or take it to a good building designer. And if what you really need to settle is whether to renovate or move, do that arithmetic first. A sketch of a house you are about to sell is an expensive souvenir.
No, and that is deliberate. There is no proposal waiting at the end and I will not chase you. Some people go away and do nothing for a year, which is a reasonable outcome. Some decide the project is not worth doing, which is a much better outcome than finding that out several stages and many thousands of dollars later. The worst result of those two hours is not that you hire somebody else — it is that you spend $80,000 on a project that was never going to work. If you do want to continue, the next step is Stage 01, quoted separately, with the $750 taken off.
If you would rather start small, the First Sketch Session is two hours at your place. You keep the sketches, and there is no obligation afterwards.