Tony Jones seemed pleasant enough when we met him and might be a decent person to get a beer with, but he should be a "choice of last resort" as an architect. If he is the only one available in county, you would be better off paying for someone to drive from another. Terrible communication and even worse service. Deeply unprofessional in a variety of ways.
The primary reason we engaged him was to assess what it would take to move a wall as part of our kitchen remodel. Was it load bearing? If so, how significant an effort would it be to move? If it is going to cost $20K to move it, what are some other options to accomplish our goals for the kitchen? What we got from Tony was basically "Yes, it is load bearing and we will have to see what the engineer says." Multiple requests to gets an idea of the rough level of effort produced nothing more than "they will look at it when they can get to it". When we got the plans and the completed structural requirements there were done to my initial most optimistic drawings. Even at 2019 prices the purchase and installation of the three beams required would have been $20K. Complete fail of the primary reason we hired him. In a couple of hours with an online floorplan program I was able to play around and come up with a design which works and does not move the wall.
Tony seemed like a semi-competent draftsman who was just feeding data into a software application and letting it do the work. He got basic things wrong like which side of the house the electrical service was on. He provided next to no design input and where there was "design" it was without discussion. For example, the plan set he provided included a "lighting plan" for our kitchen. Seeing it in the plans was the first we knew of it, and it had no relation to where our cabinets and island would be. Felt like something generated by a "Create Lighting Plan" button in the CAD software he was using.
I could go on, but I think this is already long enough. read more