Mayer Jeffers Gillespie, Architects

They drew up the blueprints, got the city permits, and even hired the workmen.

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After Carrie had visited our home, we explained that we wanted to add a set of stairs, a bathroom, and expand the partially finished basement, however, our decision to move forward with Architectural plans depended on the estimated cost of the work. Since we do not plan to live in the house for more then a few years it wouldn't make sense for us to spend over 50k. She suggested that we use a local builder that she works with to get an estimate. His initial estimate was between 40-50k, which prompted us to move forward, however, months after when the plans were complete his estimate was significantly higher for the same work initially discussed- 75k. It seemed like a bait-and-switch to my husband and I. That aside, she originally said since the plans were rather simple (we were not doing a significant amount of redesign, rather adding walls/bathroom in a space that existed) it would take a week, however, it took her a few weeks. We started the process in Aug and it is now Nov. Carrie is professional but she grossly underestimates the amount of time things will take and frankly we are going to end up paying her 3k for work that we will never do because it doesn't make sense from an investment standpoint - something we stressed with her at the beginning of the process. Before we asked Carrie for services, we asked a full service arch-builder to come in and do an estimate - they were able to provide us with arch drawings in a few days (they said it was so easy there was no reason to charge us), there estimate was around 75k too. We went with Carrie because she lead us to believe that by working with independent arch and builders we would be able to get a better price, instead we are just paying 3k for something we knew back in Aug wasn't worth it.