Stewart Design

Janet Stewart helped us with our whole house remodel. She is highly skilled, professional and helped us make decisions that moved our project forward when we were stuck which saved us time and money. She has an excellent ability to see what could be done to improve our living space. I highly recommend her!

My wife and I decided to remodel our kitchen and since I'm in construction I felt we wouldn't need a designer or a general contractor for the project. I was right about not needing the general contractor but not right about the designer. Very quickly into the process we were stuck and going nowhere. The layout and type of materials including color selections was beginning to bring stress to the project. That was enough so we decided to hire a designer to help get the project moving forward. The plan was to interview three designers and choose the best fit for our project of the three. We scheduled an appointment with Janet who was the second designer we interviewed (she was also recommended by our neighbor who had used her services a couple of years prior). Within 15 minutes of meeting Janet my wife and I looked at each other and knew she was the one for us. Once we brought Janet onboard our project was moving forward again. She would set up meetings to show us products and materials she felt were part of our overall vision. Her finish design and choice of materials was exactly what we were trying to describe but struggled to put it into words. We are so pleased with everything Janet has done for us and for making this project a fantastic adventure for both me and my wife. We will also be using Janet again for all three of our bathrooms and our master bedroom redesign? She is a joy to work with!

This review is long over-due. We engaged Stewart Design to help with our 700 sq ft extension project. The project included adding a formal living room, a guest room, a guest bathroom and a major remodel of our master bedroom and bathroom for our home built in the 1950s. Rick helped us with the architectural plan and Janet helped with all the design details inside and out including everything in the bathrooms and the lightings, floors, interior/exterior paints, closet systems and many more that's too long to list. Both Janet and Rick are so easy and pleasant to work with. They listened to our ideas and incorporated everything we asked for in their designs. Janet is absolutely amazing. The first meeting with her took about 2-3 hours at our home. She observed our style and listened carefully of our preferences and wish lists. Few days later, ideas started rolling in via emails with tons of her recommendations including plumbing fixtures, toilets, lightings, tubs, counter tops etc. Few weeks after that, we met up with Janet at her recommended tile and stone store and in the matter of one afternoon, Janet completed the design drawings for both our master and guest bathrooms including finalizing on all the tiles, floors and stones for both bathrooms. This would have taken my husband and I weeks to make the selections on our own. Janet understands our tastes and need very well and works super fast. With 2 little young boys (4 and 1 year old) that tie up our hands often, many times we asked Janet to help us make a decision without us being present; and every single time she delivered and we just love everything she chose for us. Janet is so experienced in what she does, she made the entire decision process so easy and enjoyable and the result is stunning! She is also very knowledgeable with the entire remodeling process and timeline, and knows exactly where to find the right products and vendors with the most reasonable pricing. Rick and Janet also recommended our general contractor who turned out to be so wonderful to work with as well. We’d highly recommend Stewart Design to anyone.

Janet is amazing!! She is an absolute delight to work with. I contacted her for help with our lovely old home that was feeling a bit tired. We had done some remodeling, but I had become stuck and didn’t know how to move forward with the project. Janet met with me and quickly got a sense of the project list and my tastes and off we went, always with the assurance that the process would be easy and fun. And it was! We were amazed at how quickly things got moving, and even happier with how quickly things were DONE. In a matter of just a few weeks, our whole house felt refreshed and wonderful. We love the results! We were at the point of wanting to tear out our kitchen and start over, but Janet helped us realize that a complete gut job wasn’t necessary for us to love our kitchen again. We replaced the countertops, cabinet hardware and sink, and gave the walls a fresh coat of paint. For a relatively small amount of money, the results were amazing. The space was completely transformed. Janet also assisted us in refreshing the rest of the house. She has a fantastic eye for color and helped us with suggestions for paint colors for our whole house, even connecting us with a wonderful painter. She helped me select lighting fixtures, window coverings and other design elements. We even found a $15 “scrap” of stone that, in the hands of her talented stone fabricator, became the most incredible bathroom vanity top. I tend to get overwhelmed with making decisions about finishing details and can become almost paralyzed by it. Janet made the process so easy and I was able to quickly make decisions with confidence. At times it almost felt like she could read my mind. She really knows where to go and how to narrow down the choices so that I never felt overwhelmed. She was able to gently guide me without ever losing sight of my tastes so that we really feel that the end result looks like “us”. Janet has developed great relationships in the years she’s been doing this, and was able to recommend trades people for all of the projects we needed. Everyone that she recommended was wonderful. She does a terrific job of project management, keeping everyone on schedule and delivering excellent results. We definitely felt her fees were very reasonable, and the discounts that she passed on to us easily paid for her services. I wish I could give Stewart Design more than 5 stars. I highly recommend Janet and hope to work with her again.

Stewart Design is a wonderful team of professional designers who helped to guide us through our home remodel from start to finish. Our house was built in the 70’s and needed a lot of help to update it, make changes to the look and make it fit within the life style that we enjoy. Numerous walls were removed and shifted, beam that were below ceiling level were pushed up into the attic to let areas flow together, which removed that 70’s boxed in feeling. The kitchen and 2.5 bathrooms underwent significant changes to make them more than functional. While Stewart Design had their ideas they truly listen to our thoughts, likes, dislikes and styling, then they worked to incorporated our lifestyle into the design. They did offer their ideas from the many years of experience, but worked to make sure that the final outcome incorporated our wishes and needs. Like any project of our size there were numerous concept drawings needed before deciding on the final plan. The team at Stewart Design was very quick to make changes which helped to keep the project moving forward. We were able to sit with their team and discuss ideas candidly. At times they made the changes to the plans on the computer display during our meetings and immediately we would see 3D renderings giving us a true sense of what the areas could be. Stewart Design also stays very current with trends in the industry and new products, helping us to incorporate some of the latest improvement ideas, all of which make living in our home more pleasant and functional. Absolutely we woulds use Stewart Design again, refer a friend and anyone considering a home remodel.

The first thing my husband said when I mentioned getting the support of a designer with our remodeling project was "that sounds expensive". I can't tell you how much time, effort, and money we have saved by working with Janet. She has supported us in so many ways. A few include; establishing a design plan and facilitating the engineering process, getting building permits issued on the first pass with the building department, support in selecting finishes and appliances that will make our home everything we dreamed of, and keeping in close contact with our contractor so that our design is executed as planned. One common complaint about designers is that they don't consider the opinions of their clients enough, rather tell their clients what to do. Janet is completely open to the level of decision making support that her clients desire. For us, there are certain decisions that we want to pass off completely to Janet and some that we want her to fine tune with her vision. Janet is completely open to our process. Janet also has a strong command of local businesses and building suppliers and always knows where to get the best price for the finest materials. Most of all, Janet is a pleasure to work with. She's professional, communicates with us consistently, and is a joy to be around. Janet came highly recommended from a colleague and we highly recommend her to you.

We needed a rather unusual size vanity for the bathroom we were having enlarged. Stewart Design designed the cabinet, chose the doors and the color and we had it in a little over a week - very fast turnaround for cabinet work in our experience. It is a top quality piece. They also recommended two excellent paint colors for the entire 1200 square foot space. We used both and are very pleased with the results.

Janet helped me design all aspects of my kitchen remodel...which turned into a kitchen, family room, living remodel. Her ideas were fabulous, she was able to look at our floor plan and see options we had never considered. We are extremely happy with the results AND the costs for the amount of work we had done were extremely reasonable. We loved the service providers she recommended and the quality of work was excellent and completed in a timely manner.

I have worked with Janet Stewart Design for many years. She has helped design & remodel two bathrooms and most recently the most stunning gourmet kitchen. Janet is a talented full service designer specializing in kitchen and bath remodels. She is easy to work with and fun to be around. Janet is extremely knowledgeable with the entire remodel process from design to product completion. She has great ideas, will work within a budget, has a wonderful network of contacts for every need in a remodel, helps to establish a realistic timeline so there is no downtime and keeps a close eye on projects to completion. I would highly recommend Janet Stewart Designs.

We found Janet through a neighbor who used Stewart Designs for their kitchen remodel and we could not be happier! From the first meeting Janet listened to our needs, wants and desires on what we wanted / needed in a kitchen. After only a few days after our initial meeting she was emailing us different concepts to look at (we thought it would take weeks). We loved one of the concepts and refined it to suit our needs within a couple versions. After that Janet took time to help us locate materials for our project AND recommended some amazing contractors. We are ecstatic with the results and have recommended her to friends! Thank you Janet!!!

Janet is a pleasant person who has some interesting ideas, but her attention to detail and her lack of carefulness compromised our remodel project. As examples: measurements were incorrect or inconsistent from page to page on her drawings, certain cabinets and drawers could not open because of lack of foresight about cabinets opening in the path of others, and her husband who does her final blue prints neglected to notice that he had left out the only outlet in a small bathroom. Additionally, two important drawers were 2 inches too short to allow for standard cleaning supplies to be put in them despite careful instruction on our part to be sure to allow for such. Her plans did allow for this in one bathroom ... but she neglected to carry through to the second bathroom, so the cabinet maker built the unit incorrectly (and we now have no choice but to live with this, transferring cleaning products to shorter containers). Some of her ideas simply do not work or required extensive retrofitting after installation of product or materials (For example, the drawers under the sinks did not close because of miscalculation on the sink design. A finish carpenter had to come in to rectify the problem by cutting out parts of the drawers in order to get them to close; but the final result looks unprofessional. One wall cabinet was too long and prevented the doors of another from opening. This required the wall cabinet to be cut down by 25% and the other to have a split door rather than a single; solutions which we ourselves came up with). We would not use her again nor recommend her for designing a project that requires attention to detail or functionality. Her general ideas and the concept for our project were quite interesting (and obviously appealed to us which is why we chose her); but the final results are disappointing because of repeated design missteps,

The fact that Stewart Design is now completing a third remodeling project for me speaks to how happy I am with the creativity and service that I receive. Janet designed my kitchen and guest bath and we are now completing the master bath. For each project Janet has done an excellent job of listening to my needs, suggesting ideas that are consistent with my taste and style, and following up on the details of each project. She is a pleasure to work with and produces fantastic results.