Our Process

Lifestyle provides premiere remodeling services to Indianapolis residents and those throughout Marion and the surrounding counties. It all begins with the first contact. Call our office at 317-352-9022 or click the online scheduling option on this website, whichever is most convenient! From there, we can figure out the best way to be of help. If you are early in the process and just have some initial budget or project planning questions, please feel free to call or take advantage of our online scheduling option where you can schedule a call at your convenience with one of our designers or project estimators who can answer your questions about cost.

Our first actual visit typically takes place at your home, unless it is a simple project with little to no design required, where in this case you might prefer to send pictures or meet through our “Facetime To Save Time” option. We’re flexible, so we can determine what is best together! Just know the purpose of the first visit is to obtain these 3 things: measurements of the project space, pictures of the project space, and information about your wants and needs that comes through a discussion with you about the project.

Lifestyle handles all interior design related to kitchens, bathrooms, basements, wet bars and lockers within our own design team. Simple home additions will also be handled internally as well. In terms of larger, more complex home addition projects, what we often try to do is provide initial pricing information prior to a client spending large amounts of money in the design process. Our experience is that if design and cost can be married early in the process, then we might avoid a situation where you spend a lot of money on a design that your budget will never allow you to build.

As it relates to design fees for kitchens, bathrooms, basements, wet bars and locker areas, while we do charge a design fee, in all cases those fees are minimal and meant to ensure that you as a client are interested enough that you have some skin in the game. In the most polite way we can say this, if a client is unwilling to pay us at what amounts to $10 an hour or less for our design time, then they likely aren’t doing a project with us for several thousand dollars. Our kitchen and basement design fees are $100 and master bathroom designs are $75, so we aren’t feeding our families off of design fees. Ultimately, we want to be the partner on your project. We normally schedule the next visit to review the design based on the level of client interest, but think in terms of one week for us to complete design and be ready to meet again.

Once we have pictures, dimensions and other relevant details about the renovation project, we are ready to begin pricing. If a design is involved, we will wait for the completion of that design to begin our pricing. Our business background and pricing experience have led to the creation of a proprietary 26 page excel spreadsheet that allows us to reach great levels of detail in our pricing.

As a general rule, we begin all projects by pricing to the “middle”. In other words, we want to give you a sense of reality with our first round of pricing, but we are always pricing something specific that we can show you in our showroom. Then, you can decide if you want to make selections that allow you to save or spend more!

In design related projects, the second visit will always take place at the Lifestyle showroom during normal business hours. On less complex projects, we will use alternative meeting forms, such as our popular “Facetime To Save Time”. It is not at all uncommon for us to have a phone conversation to discuss our pricing for simple repair projects, but for more significant projects, you must be prepared to invest time. As we often tell potential clients, we will trade our time for your time.

On a quick side note, if you happen to read this, please know we will not be offended if this process doesn’t work for you. It has been successful for us since 1999 and we use it because we recognize that we cannot be everything to everybody. As much as we try, we know we cannot. However, if you are truly interested in working with us and you have a unique set of circumstances, please tell us and we will do our best to be of help. The worst that can happen is we say that we cannot accommodate your request.

Once you’ve reviewed your project’s design and pricing details with us at our showroom, here’s where the real fun begins! We’ll show you all the available options, serving as your tour guides for the products and decisions that will make your project special and unique.

Whenever possible, we try to combine your product selection process and contract signing in one single meeting. As you make selections, we can finalize pricing and create your contract packet, made up of the contract itself, detailed written specifications with line-by-line descriptions of every aspect of your project and all applicable design plan.

Typically 4-6 weeks after contract signing, work begins. Our staff will bring a lockbox for a key from you so we can start and pause our work with minimal disruption to you and your family throughout the process. We’ll cover all the floors and maintain a clean job site daily, working diligently to make the experience minimally invasive into your daily life and completed on-schedule.