there are many designers on the kitchen forum that may be able to help with this, I suggest you do a cross post, and you may want to clarify the title with "attn designers".

I actually did a cross post on the home decorating forum and have gotten a number of responses, though my fundamental questions about how else to think about compensating designers for this kind of work are not yet answered. Thanks for the thought.

Wow, $150.00 an hour. We hired a designer to help us with our small 8x8 foot bathroom, she charged $60.00 per hour and I thought that was steep! She did purchasing for us, and added a 10% surcharge, but she said (and I felt it was true) that she got better prices for us than we would have gotten ourselves. We ended up paying her close to $2000 which I think was way too much. On the hand, in some ways it was worth it because my husband and I couldn't agree on anything! I would think your designer would insist on charging you for time he/she spent on research even if you didn't use that expertise. We experienced this same issue.
But your total figure sounds wayyy too high and negotiation is certainly needed. Good luck.

I think the problem is that you and the designer let the "final number" drag out and that should have been fixed. I would hold the designer to the original estimate of $3,300 which, in my opinion is a bit too high but I don't know what that was broken out to cover. I work as a designer in another field and people always think what we do is easy. I see no reason why your designer would want MORE money especially if you and your husband said you wanted to search for the items yourself. If anything the designer's time may have gone done. Unless you asked for MORE things to be reviewed as the project went along, the invoice should not be more than the intial estimate.

I can't justify $8,000 at all unless the other part of the job you had her work on was extensive. I would think the 8 x8 bathroom would be about $2,000 if she was not adding the typical 10% mark up if she purchased the items.

Did your $20-$25k budget balloon too? I had a contract with a good CKD AND CBD certified designer in the Los Angeles area for $7,000 and that included a $60k+ kitchen remodel AND a 100K+ bathroom addition. How could any designer justify a design fee that was 40% of the total budget. Even at $3,300 it seems expensive. Unless your budget tripled or you live in Manhattan I think the $3,300 number is pretty fair. It is also his/her fault for not putting changes to the agreement in writing.

- Jim

We paid a designer a flat fee of $1800 to do plans/drawings for us. That price would have included some help picking materials etc. We ended up doing everything else. Another designer that I may work with to help me put the finishing touches on my home bills by the hour: $75/hour. I am confused. How many hours did he spend on your bathroom project? What did he do exactly? I think 3300 sounds excessive for even a 40,000 remodel unless the designer did everything and coordinated with your GC/subs and you didn't even lift a finger except to sign off on things. Was his original plan to charge you 3300 PLUS make a profit on materials he purchased for you? I think that is mind boggling. 3300 should cover a lot. I thought $1800 was a lot and I realize I didn't even need to spend that amount. My cabinet designer could have done what she did. I really want to know what your designer did!! You sound very reasonable, I hope you come to a good conclusion with this.

Thanks to you all for your input. It's nice to know that I am not losing my mind. Since a few of you asked, the budget did not balloon - in fact by doing the purchasing ourselves we saved about $5K on materials over comparable prices that the designer could get (buying on ebay, etc.). We are a few thousand over our target but definitely still in the neighborhood.

I do want to clarify though that the designer IS coordinating with the GC/Subs to get the work done right, including being at my house to oversee work and get bids.

We are meeting tonight and I intend to find out exactly what his original plan was and why that changed, as well as to lay out a few alternative ways he could be compensated and the amounts those generate, pretty much all of which wind up below the $8000 figure. I'll let you know where we come out.

So how did it go?

- Jim