i-architect

We were looking to increase the value of a rental property by making a larger open plan kitchen/diner/family room along with adding a downstairs loo and utility room. My wife and I met Jane for a 1 hour Home Design Consultation at the property. It was £150 well spent. Jane came up with ideas that we would never have thought of. She solved the ground floor layout within the hour, including all the spaces we needed and came up with a design that we were really happy with. She kept our budget in mind, designing the layouts so it could be built with minimal structural alterations. We would definitely recommend Jane's services.

Jane has made our home redesign project so much easier and more effective. I know from experience how hard it is to manage the design and delivery of a build at home so her input to improve the use of our space and ideas to make a decent design become a wonderful home were invaluable. We have no hesitation in recommending her to anyone looking to redesign their home and definitely rate her service as excellent value for money.From the first contact through to obtaining planning consent, Jane listened to what we needed and wanted, suggested options but happily left final decisions to us, she understood how we want to make use of our space and our final plan will deliver this. From an ordinary two up two down to a spacious three bed, two bath home with only as small extension, she’s near a miracle worker!

Jane came around to our property for a 'Home Workshop' session a couple of months back. We are looking to get a side return/extension and Jane had been recommended to help us with some plans. Jane was at our house for a couple of hours and discussed some good ideas in relation to what we could possibly achieve with an extension at our property. We paid Jane up front (£495) presuming that we would get some architectural drawings we could then pass on to a builder/building company to give us a very realistic quote for the work planned. Unfortunately this wasn't the case - the drawings Jane left us were basically floorplan sketches, which we could have probably done ourselves. Our builder has been unable to quote with these drawings as he needs what he called 'section' drawings. If Jane had explained this clearly from the outset we would have thought twice about the 'workshop'. In our opinion £495 for a home workshop with Jane doesn't get you an awful lot at all, in fact, I'm still trying to fathom exactly where our money has gone.

My partner and I are in the early stages of scoping our first house extension project. While we had some ideas of what we wanted we realised that we don't have enough architecture tools to achieve them so we invested in a Home Design Workshop with Jane at i-Architect. I was aware of Jane's passion in working with families’ existing homes and I felt more comfortable asking for help this way than walking into a local architecture firm.Jane was very flexible in arranging her visit around my partner's work commitments and sent over some preliminary questions for us to discuss. This process helped us to shift the conversation away from our house quibbles and budget, and to focus more positively about how could we make the school morning exodus a smoother process for all, and how to improve the flow of toys/voices/people around the new house.On the day of the workshop we chatted about things we liked and didn’t like about previous houses and, after a visit to the new house, Jane summarised what she had understood about our key priorities. Jane was very easy to chat with listening, feeding in, offering suggestions along the way and letting my partner and I have our ‘I don’t think so!’ moments.At the end of the HDW Jane produced 3 different, hand drawn sketches - she chatted through both the why's and how’s of the ideas and we all felt that two of them were more likely than the third so we focussed on two. These were followed up by tidier, electronic versions by the end of the week.My partner and I are still mulling over the designs as we chat through compromises on storage and natural sunlight for the different options, we are also adding ideas of our own. We will then be able to take the draft sketches to our Planning Dept to have their initial input before asking Jane to come back and do fully detailed drawings that we can use to take through the planning process and to engage with prospective builders for the job.The whole process has been insightful and thought provoking. Jane’s knowledge and process has really kickstarted useful conversations between my partner and I and helped us to identify key factors to incorporate into our new home. As the design ideas are firmed up, I’m really looking forward to extracting more expert ideas from Jane on how to bring our new home to life. Thanks, Jane!

One of the best £150 I've spent as she has potentially saved us from spending around £12000 on an extension that we now know we dont actually need. We described how we wanted to make our downstairs dining/kitchen and living space work now we have a toddler. We had some plans in mind which involved a small extension but she showed us how we could better alter and utilise the current space with just internal modifications to get just what we want. She was conscientious, listened and was generous with ideas and suggestions. We now have some sketches and a good idea of what to do, and well within budget! Well recommend.