Beware. Colleen Mahoney, the principal and owner at Mahoney Architects earned my trust in November,…read more2021 by relating to our remodel objectives and budget. I've done two large remodels in the past so am experienced with the process.
As far as remodels go, this was considered on the small side and largely consisted of opening up the kitchen to the living & dining room and opening up the space to the outside. We allocated a budget of $230,000 for this project. Colleen said that was reasonable and estimated her architectural services would run 10% of the total budget or $23,000. She assured me that her firm was excellent at managing their services to a budget.
Short story is Mahoney Architects completed about 35% of the project for 100% of their estimate. Their invoices reflected rework and unnecessarily working on designs that did not meet project objectives and could have been easily resolved by talking to the client. Perhaps worse, is that Colleen never saw an issue with her invoices. A more detailed account follows.
Mahoney Architects started the project on Nov 16, 2021, measuring the house and drafting the As Built Drawings in AutoCad. Because of a bookkeeper error, I did not receive the November invoice until Dec 30. At $5,926, it seemed high but after I asked how much of the project that invoice represented, Colleen emailed that it represented "20 - 25%." That projected total architect fees of $23,704 - $29,630, which is higher than the original estimate, but still in the ball park.
On Jan 7, 2022 I received the December invoice for $18,098. I was stunned the two invoices totaled $24,024. There was no communication that their billings were already over the estimate. All that had been completed was As Built Drawings (Site Plan, Floor Plan, Elevations, Cross Section of Floor Plan) and two design sketches that did not meet the project objectives. We still did not have a workable Design nor Construction Documents (Demo Plan, Floor Plan, Electrical/Mechanical Plan, Interior Elevations, Exterior Elevations). After I requested that all work stop until we had a discussion, Colleen took 6 days to write me a formal letter in which she listed everything they did and said it was all appropriate. She never acknowledged that they were over the estimate. She estimated that it would take at least another 100 hours or roughly $19,000 to finish a design and create the construction documents.
We met to attempt to come to a reasonable resolution. But Colleen could never answer why the As Built Drawings were so far above the estimate, nor did she acknowledge or recognize why a client would be worried about that. There was no project scope increase and measuring and drawing the existing house is the most predictable part of a remodel project. In the end, I paid her firm $20,426 for the release of the four As Built Drawings. A very expensive lesson for being too trusting on what I was sold.
