If you're building a new home or working on a large project, read this before signing a contract…read morewith Inside Stories.
We hired Inside Stories for a large new construction home that had not yet broken ground. Before signing, they spoke extensively about helping with critical early decisions like cabinetry, tile, plumbing fixtures, accent walls, lighting, and courtyard design, all things you need early to work with a GC, build a realistic budget, and secure a construction loan.
After signing, it became clear that none of that information would be released until we paid for furniture through them. That timeline does not work for new construction. Furniture is selected last, while cabinetry, fixtures, lighting, and finishes are needed much earlier. By the time their process allows those details to be released, it is too late to be useful.
Their milestones may work for small projects, but they are not structured to support large new builds. We were effectively paying for design services we could not use when we needed them.
Their business model also appears heavily dependent on furniture sales. Specifications and usable documentation are withheld until furniture is paid for, creating a situation where clients are financially committed before receiving meaningful deliverables. In our case, it felt like the process was designed to trap us financially before giving us anything of real value.
We paid a $10,000 deposit and an additional $15,000 design payment. When we terminated the contract after realizing the process would not work for our project, Inside Stories acknowledged they had only performed $4,950 of billable work.
By their own accounting, this meant they owed us a negative balance of $20,050. However, they refused to return this overpayment, claiming they were entitled to keep it because they had supposedly provided significant "intellectual property."
This is bogus in my opinion. The contract says nothing about forfeiting refunds due to IP, and what they gave us was a PowerPoint that mainly consisted of inspiration images, some provided by us and some selected by them. Regardless, it does not seem proprietary or usable to me, and it provides no real value to our project. These were just reference images meant for them to work from, not something we can build from or use. I even reverse image searched several images and found them on other websites and Instagram, not anything suggesting original IP. We cannot build from it, budget from it, or use it in any meaningful way.
Even more frustrating, they admitted the work completed totaled only $4,950, based on hourly rates they set, not us, yet they still insist on keeping over $20,000 beyond that amount.
Our advice: be extremely careful. Make sure milestones are tied to specific, usable deliverables, and understand that under their model, you may pay substantial amounts long before receiving information you need to move your project forward.