We contacted Renaissance (RR) early '21 to add a bay to the garage, grow the master bath & expand the patio. We used RR previously to combine 2 condos, and Chad, his dad & the designer were hard working, focused on our condo job, and we wound up with a terrific finished product
Unfortunately, our experience was poor this time & we wound up not actually doing the job. This after paying a large deposit for design work. During the design with RR, starting in Jun '21, we had a very bumpy ride. It was plagued with poor communication, lack of attention to detail, inability to effectively make cost trade-offs & questionable design decisions.
Part of the work was adding a garage bay to our attached garage. The front of our house has the garage as a front facing gable off a hip roof running the width of the house. The side of the house opposite the garage also has a nice larger gable. So, we were surprised when the design RR showed us for the garage bay was a separate gable next to the existing gable with a cricket between them, instead of creating a single cohesive larger gable incorporating the existing garage & new bay. RR even said [paraphrasing] that their design w/cricket looked like it had always been a part of the house. Appearance issues aside, the RR proposed design also created potential water & snow problems. We suggested a single larger gable & RR did change the design to that.
Another part was a larger covered patio & bath extension behind the house. RR had some interesting designs for this, though, again, they had 2 abutting gables w/a cricket between them which we had to get changed to a single more pleasing gable. We also requested the underside of this gable over the bath & patio to be vaulted for headroom as our house is very low and vaulting would be much more usable. The was discussed with the designers & person drafting, so we thought it'd be incorporated. But, alas, months later, we discover it isn't: The flat ceiling is less than 8 feet high & RR has drawn in ceiling fans that would clearly not work & would be a safety hazard.
We also gave the exact model of tub we wanted which would come from a RR supplier in July '21. Yet, in early '22 RR asked for this information twice more. Once even asking if we wanted the larger or smaller model. This after we already had specified the exact tub and also expressed need for a large tub (I'm 6'2") & RR designers said they would take these wishes into account. We also repeatedly mentioned our desire to have more closet space in the bath addition, yet that kept not showing up in the design.
In early '22, RR mentioned we would need to pay a charge to Idaho Power & told me to them. I called Idaho Power & they didn't know what I was talking about. Ultimately, I got shuttled to a contractor that RR had talked with. I found out that RR didn't understand what this was for. We also got a drawing from RR showing a dozen lights being placed in one single garage bay! While certainly that would be nice and bright, it obviously is overkill with unnecessary cost. A more attentive design would have avoided us even having to have that discussion!
Later RR shares with us costs that have gone up substantially & we have a single large # that, due to their business model, we can't break down (because RR refuses to do that) and make informed cost trade-offs. They did suggest a package of items we could eliminate to reduce cost, but again these showed an ongoing lack of understanding of necessary design elements (such as eliminating the rear garage door which would be our only practical access to the back yard now) & again didn't assign costs to these items to allow us to make trade-offs. There are numerous additional examples, but you get the idea.
RR tried to attribute these issues to the fact that we were traveling during the winter & had remote communications. But the simple fact was that the communication, design, attention to detail, etc, issues were there from the beginning & simply continued. The remote communication itself was fine & Zoom worked well.
At this point we stopped the project as it was clear we couldn't trust the design, communication and cost aspects of the project. We felt like for the almost $11K design deposit that the design work missed the mark; that our requests weren't formally noted; that costs for key items weren't identified in a practical manner. It was clear that continuing would lead us further into a disaster. It was unfortunate that we paid almost $11K for this bad experience which we clearly weren't getting our monies worth, but we are glad we are now avoiding further problems that continuing with RR would have likely brought. It is a sad end because based upon our earlier project w/RR, we had high hopes.
You may have better luck w/RR, it certainly isn't the same company as in 2011. If you're considering RR, you will need to be aware of these issues & plan to compensate for them. If that works for you, then RR may be OK. read more