Braitman Design Studio

Jackie has been excellent to work with. She's very fast and professional, you can tell she knows what she's doing. It has been a pleasure to work with her!

Jackie did an amazing job on my family room addition. It was on time, under budget and really works perfectly with both the style of my home and my family's needs. Jackie is the perfect combination of creative and organized. In terms of the design stage, her process of asking questions and probing your thinking and needs up front helps minimize potentially costly changes mid-project. When it came to actual construction, she was totally organized. Everything is computerized and transparent, so we knew exactly what would happen when and when to make specific decisions, and all the people who worked for her were polite and clean. She gave a lot of though about how to minimize distraction for our family-- and we stayed in our house the whole time. She was a timely and efficient communicator. If I noticed something off, one phone call or email and she would have it all handled. For busy DC people, she is godsend and true professional in her field. I highly recommend Jackie as a one stop shop for your remodeling needs.

I give Jackie my highest recommendation. She built a new level for us and completely renovated the existing level - all under-budget and on-time. She took the time to learn about what was not working for us with our existing space (both in terms of function and aesthetics), and she completely addressed these issues in the renovation. Our house is beautiful and we have more storage than we can fill. She also worked with our budget, suggesting when we could save with particular types of materials and offering inexpensive changes that had high visual impact (e.g. knocking down walls, restoring original wood floors).

Jackie was terrific at listening to our goals and concerns and incorporating them into a design. In several cases she came up with ideas that would never have occurred to us, but turned out to be just right. This project included some unusual challenges, which Jackie solved in the best way possible. On top of that, it was completed in a very timely way and according to the budget specified.

Jackie has such style, She has used our tile in several projects that we're proud to show off. We look forward to working with her again. Her clients are lucky to have her talents available to them.

We hired Jackie as both our designer and general contractor, and we can’t recommend her highly enough! At the beginning of the project, Jackie spent time getting to know us, our design tastes, and what we ultimately wanted out of the renovation of the first floor of our house. As a result of these conversations, Jackie was able to design a space that perfectly met our needs. Ultimately, Jackie provided us a plan that worked within our home’s existing footprint, but which significantly expanded our usable space. The design provided us with a more open floor plan, which opened up to our expanded deck in the back. She also recognized our need for more organization, and provided numerous closets and built-ins for storage and display of artwork. Finally, she created a master bedroom and beautiful bathroom on the first floor also. In sum, her creative design allowed us to do far more within our budget than we ever imagined. Her impressive design work was matched only by excellent project management. In her role as general contractor, she clearly communicated with us at every stage of the project (both in terms of schedule and budget). Jackie is efficient, organized, and a consummate professional. Importantly, she recognized our need to have the construction site cleaned up at the end of the day, so that it was safe for us to live in our house during the renovation with our two young kids. To that end, the subcontractors Jackie hired were excellent. They were skilled craftsman, who left their work spaces clean at the end of every day. Overall, we had an excellent experience with Jackie—the project was finished on time and on budget. We have recommended her to others and we will certainly contact her again for any future projects.

We highly recommend Jackie as both a designer and a general contractor. Jackie worked creatively within our home's existing footprint to significantly expand our usable space, making our living areas brighter and more open. Outside she turned a narrow, virtually unusable backyard into a gorgeous entertaining space. Renovations are notoriously stressful, but Jackie did such an excellent job of communicating project status, timelines and budget that much of the anxiety was eliminated. Jackie's subcontractors were thorough, meticulous and did beautiful work. Even small jobs were done carefully and well. It was a pleasure to work with her, and I'd happily do it again.

I have recommended Jackie to all of my friends and family -- without reservation! The work was of excellent quality, accomplished with creativity, responsive to our needs and finished on time and within budget. Her experience in eliciting our preferences showed through from the start by challenging us to articulate the results we wanted and listening to both what we said and what we intended. “Don’t try and solve the problem, but tell me what you want out of the space. I’ll provide you ways to solve the problem.” And so she did. What we like so much about the new space is that it is unique to us, but classic in its own way. It has a modern feel yet retains and recreates elements from the original house. And it provides both an openness across the first floor while retaining intimacy when sitting in any particular room. Our house was built in 1926 and as such contains both structural and decorative elements from pretty much every era since then. It is a relatively small duplex connected to our neighbors and therefore presented a number of design and construction challenges. She managed to unite these elements into a pleasing, coherent and functional space. And once a design had been established, Jackie proceeded to manage the complex project moving seamlessly from “right brained” creativity to “left brained” organization. Only by living through our renovation did I acquire an appreciation for the large number of specialty trades involved and the complicated scheduling necessary to have materials on hand and work done in the proper order without creating any waiting or delays. We had been warned by others that things appear to go fast at first and then you don’t get a sense of progress because the detailed work happens more slowly. This was not our experience. There seemed to be constant progress and seamless and accountable “baton passing” as one team transitioned to another. Clearly, Jackie was in charge and in pleasant but firm ways had quality crews at the work site when she needed them, despite the occasional surprise of a rotten beam or a snowstorm. And, finally, throughout both the design and construction phases, Jackie’s communication with us was superb. Communication was frequent and she regularly provided us updates on schedule and budget. She anticipated choices that needed to be made and provided us the time and guidance to provide meaningful input. She raised problems immediately and also offered solutions. She considered and accommodated our last-minute requests whether or not they were timely and provided us the information we needed to make decisions. I strongly recommend Jackie Braitman if you are looking to re-think your living space. Her artistic vision, her organization and diligence in implementing a large project over a long time frame and her skills in listening and communicating set her apart as both a manager and an artisan.

We have been enjoying our completely renovated kitchen and are very pleased with the final product. It’s efficient, functional, and beautiful. Jackie and I worked on numerous custom touches – like a sink grate that fits just flush with the counter in the coffee area and acts like a countertop extension. In each case, she clearly heard my desires and devised and executed elegant solutions. Jackie didn’t try to impose her aesthetics on us. In one funny instance, before we started she said she thought the space would be too austere and recommended using oak to match the flooring on the small soffit above the cabinets . We said “no, we couldn’t envision doing that”. But once the kitchen was completed and we felt it looked too austere. Without a single ‘I told you so’, she mocked up the oak treatment so we could visualize how it would like – and, guess what, it solved the problem. It wasn’t until my wife mentioned that this was one of her original ideas, that I realized she had anticipated the problem and the solution. But she was willing to let us learn for ourselves what would work best – she knew she could retrofit it if needed. Jackie finished the project under-budget. She finished on-time – with only a few punch list items that needed to be fixed over a few weeks. Jackie’s crew was all wonderful to work with – professional and respectful of our home. I will use her as we update other portions of our home.

Jackie’s work has truly been life transformative! We love our neighborhood but are in a small 1940’s cape that just didn’t have the indoor/outdoor access and open floor plan that I envy about more modern homes. For us the biggest issue was not being able to seat enough people around our dining table. We thought we needed an addition – but we couldn’t really afford one large enough to solve all our problems. Jackie showed us that by moving some walls and making some spaces serve dual-purpose, we really had enough space to make it work. She also added new windows and doors and repositioned some existing windows and doors. Our first floor is now flooded with natural light. We have a great deck that extends our living space. A formerly tiny, unused front room is now a gracious foyer with some of the space enlarging the now open-plan living area. And, best of all, all whether it’s just the 4 of us or we have friends and family over, we all seem to fit just fine in what once felt like a tiny house. It was great to work with Jackie right from the start. At the design process, she showed us several different options. Using computer renderings – that almost looked like photos – she showed us how our house would work with different size additions and then also working within our existing walls. She used our existing furniture to show us how the new spaces would work. It made the decisions so much easier. Jackie showed us a schedule and budget at the start of the process and both were right. No extra costs – except for a few add-ons we asked for. I couldn’t believe it. Plus every single one of her team was terrific to work with – thoughtful and courteous. We hope to do a master suite in about a year or so. And there’s no question, we’ll use Jackie again.

Jackie has an uncanny ability to turn remodeling problems into assets. Her ideas have allowed us to design a master bathroom space to be more open, functional, well-lit, and an enjoyable space. We'ere so looking forward to it's completion.

Jackie renovated our home. She finished the job ahead of time, under-budget, and, here's the clincher, the results were much better than I had dreamed. I've never heard of someone having this experience.