December 2, 2025 • 26 mins
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
When you need wisdom and advice. Seek out a guru
when you need wisdom and advice about remodeling and design,
Lock on and listen right now to Nick the Construction Guru.
Here is award winning remodeling expert Nick Kerzner.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
News Talk eleven thirty two as Nick the Construction Group. Hey,
if you're tuning in this week and you're tuned in
last week, we're on a two part series about design.
Chris Agner here with me again. Thanks for coming in. Chris.
It was interesting because people are getting smart. They're getting
smart in our business, and they're asking the right questions.
So the Lions shure. The questions coming in about our
(00:44):
company is what is design build? What does it mean
to get a design? Why does it cost money to
get a design? One of the things, Chris, that people
say to me, and I explained to them, look at
when I come out, I'm not going to ballpark your project.
You and I are both master certified remodelers, and if
you don't know what that means out there, we have
gone through considerable continuing education and continuing education to maintain
(01:07):
those certifications. And so when we're looking at things, I
would say that if you're going to use a contractor,
you should use a certified nary contractor. That's just That's
just if hey, man, if I was going in for
plastic surgery, I don't want the guy with the most
flasks on the wall, right, So I'm just telling you.
So people are asking me about that, and you know
(01:29):
there's only how many are there two hundred and fifty
of us in the United States? Two hundred and fifty men,
if that right? So you know, the questions coming up
are are starting to dig into some of the things
that we learned through our experience with certifications. So last week, Chris,
we talked about but you know I should introduce you.
I'm sure people know who you are from listening to
(01:50):
the show, but go ahead, tell us about Chris Agnor
Design and how we work together.
Speaker 3 (01:54):
Sure, Chris Agner Design. I've been a design build company
for about thirty years, but about five years ago changed
my company to design only and now I'm involved, you know,
with design for Cursoner, which has been great, great partnership.
But I work with client, our clients to develop the
design three D modeling so they can see in photo
(02:16):
realistic views of what the project's going to look like
before we start, and allow them to explore options before
we start, and they make a decision as to what
is that kitchen or that addition or what have you.
So so I have now focused solely on the design
side of things, and and and that's been a great,
great partnership and just love working with you and your clients.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
Well. And you know, when we when we when I
look at the designs that are coming out of out
of our our company versus a lot of the other ones,
a lot of the other ones kind of look like
a rerun of Andy Griffith to me, you know what
I mean, It's just not it's just not good stuff.
And I think part of that is because of the
experience and the continuing education that we go through with
(02:59):
a certainification. Another thing is is the software. You know,
I had a client asked me the other day, why
isn't everybody doing this virtual design stuff? And by the way,
I know that people watch HTTV and they see some
of it. We're light years ahead of that as well,
But they say, how come every but the learning curve
is astronomical in this and that the software is extremely expensive,
(03:20):
and you hit it on the last show with the software,
but the hardware. Well, yeah, I mean when my computer
starts to render, it sounds like a helicopter running. There's
three fans, and the RAM looks like a deck of
playing cards. Right, So there is a barrier to entry,
not only from an educational standpoint, but strictly from a
cost standpoint. Why companies aren't doing this? Oh?
Speaker 3 (03:41):
Absolutely? I mean the computer I use for this, I
end up updating. I probably replace my computer every sixteen
to eighteen months just as a technology, and we are not.
You know, this is not a thousand dollars laptop. This
is a five or six thousand dollars investment each time,
not to mention the pro that we're running, which is
(04:02):
probably a five thousand dollars program, plus annual fees to
keep it, you know, updated and what have you. So yeah,
so that that's a barrier. But the thing you hit
on there is the learning curve. I've been doing computer
design for probably twenty years. When I was designed build,
I was only designing for the projects I was going
(04:24):
to build my customers. So I would I would work
on the program and I would design something, and then
I would be off building that and I wouldn't be
back designing something on the computer for you know, a
month or two weeks or whatever. And I can just
tell you doing that for you know whatever, twenty years.
But now that I am full time, you know, I'm
literally drawing on my computer probably eight to ten hours
(04:47):
a day using this program. Over the last five years.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
It's not uncommon for me to call you at nine
point thirty ten o'clock at night. We do that all
the time.
Speaker 3 (04:55):
But until I was doing it at that level of
that that much time I'm doing it, you can't imagine
how much power is in this program. You don't even
scratch a surface till you get to kill You start
getting that.
Speaker 2 (05:08):
I know, I know. And it's funny because you know
you more than me. You I'll call you up and say, hey,
how do you do this, and and you're like, okay,
go here, do this slow down, man. I mean literally,
we can take a material off. If you find something
like a floor piece on Amazon, you can go in
grab that floor piece, you can modify it to scale
it for the plan, and you can put it into
(05:30):
the plan. So you know, it's not just hey, here's
what we think it would look like. You can literally say,
I want to put shaw a lighthouse er five eight
flooring in there, right, you know.
Speaker 3 (05:41):
That, and you know the the the possibilities are literally endless.
I mean I can literally do the design. I can
photograph your site and literally put you sitting in the
chair looking out your window at your lake or your
backyard or what ever. Yeah, we can pick a day
(06:03):
and date and time, and I can show you where
the sun's going to hit that addition and where the
shadows are going to be on your swimming pool. As
to do we want this here? Do we want this here?
Speaker 2 (06:14):
Now?
Speaker 3 (06:14):
All of those things take time, which means money. So
you know, we can be as involved as we want
to be or have to be in the program. But
the opportunities are unbelievable.
Speaker 2 (06:25):
I was talking to somebody at the show and they said,
you know, they had had a remodeling project done by
another company. It's interesting you bring this up because he said,
we had two areas we could have put the addition on.
And he said, the thing that drives me crazy is
a side that it's on never sees the sun, so
we get the ice damming. And he says, there's always
a patch of ice in front of my garage where
it is, And.
Speaker 3 (06:46):
We talked about that last week. What is bad design.
Bad design is designing something without the understanding of what
in the real world, not only what is it going
to look like, but how is it going to function?
Speaker 2 (06:57):
Yeah? Yeah, the environment. Another one that we ad. Lady
had a dishwasher and an island. She said, you know
a lot of times I'm doing the dishes and other
people are helping. If I open up the dishwasher, can
I get past the island? Let's do it. We did
it in the computer and we said, no, you can't.
We're going to have to put it somewhere else. So
I think, you know, those are those are huge. You
catch so many little things when you're doing this. And
(07:21):
we discussed another thing we discussed last week and I'd
like to hit on again is the experience of the designer.
Now you talk about you've been designing for twenty years,
but I think more than that is you've also worked
with Narry on communication skills and how to talk to customers.
You've also built your own I mean, your hands have
(07:41):
built additions. Okay, why is that so important as opposed
to somebody who comes in that says Okay. You know,
I just got through at my AD and I have
a design agreement. I shouldn't talk like that. It's very condescending,
but right, you know what I'm saying, it's okay. Now
I have my designer my design letter here, and I'm
a designer. Okay, how does that translate?
Speaker 3 (08:02):
Yeah, I mean, you know, it's it's like I don't
care what you're doing. I don't care if you're a
surgeon or you know, a chef or whatever. Experience is experience.
I mean, you can you know all schooling learning. I'm
very big, you're very big at education. We've been through
so much, which is why we're certified and all those
kinds of things. But that only gets you so far.
I'm going to give you a really good base. But
(08:23):
you know, it's the experience of you know, no, we've
we've done this, or we've seen this and there's a
better way to do this, or there's a more cost
effective way of doing this. You know, we get back
to good design. Good design can also save money. You know,
everybody says, why don't I want to pay for design?
You know, I can just tell you I don't think
you're paying for design. I think you're saving money. You know,
(08:46):
the mistakes that can come from not completely looking at
all ramifications of what we're doing upfront can be much
more expensive than what you paid for a design. The
other thing that good design that you might pay for
is going to get you maybe a much more valuable
project because you took the time and spent some money
(09:07):
up front. I would think of it more as an
investment than a cost. It's a great point that that
just part of it. But you know, to your point
of you know, I'm new in this industry. You know,
I'm your designer, you know what, So everybody had to
so were you and I right? And there's you know
that God bless them, and you know, we wish you
the best. But unfortunately we've been around, you know, long
(09:31):
enough to be able to go. It's our turn. We are.
Speaker 2 (09:34):
We are the experience, and quite honestly, you know, I
guess it's the customers that pay the tuition a little
bit because when you're when I mean some of my
early designs, there were some things that I wouldn't do again,
and that experience has come and I think that if
you're a new designer and you're a customer working with
them that's all fine, well and good. I'd rather be
(09:54):
the guy that is working with the guy who's made
all the mistakes and knows what doesn't work, you know,
And I think that comes with experience and when you're
building it. Another thing is with budget. You know, somebody
might say, well, it's going to take forty hours to
frame this one in and it qualified and I still
I still sometimes undercut hours. I still miss it sometimes.
(10:15):
But the truth of the matter is is that what
a designer thinks is going to take forty hours, we
know what's going to take eighty hours. And I think
that's important because change orders are ugly on a project,
you know. That's that's one of the things I think.
Another thing with at least our virtual design at Kurzner
is we are able to take your selections and put
(10:35):
them into the rendering. So it's we don't say this
is a countertop that's close to what you're looking at.
We say, this is Cambria Bradshaw, this is what you
picked out for your quartz countertops, and we're showing you
what it looks like with the expresso cabinets. And a
lot of times, you know you'll go on Pinterest and
you'll see a little little shot of a kitchen and go, oh,
I really like that, and then when you see it
in your kitchen, you'll be like, oh, that's not working
(10:58):
for me. Yep, right, what you know? We talked last
week a little bit how does subjectivity come into play?
In other words, we talked about for sashe has a
look this and that. Let's just hit on that a
little bit again. How do you stay fresh? In other words,
how do you lose your your norms?
Speaker 3 (11:16):
Sure, you know, I think part of it is because
I am doing this, you know, one percent of the
time I'm dealing. I'm doing design now. I you know,
I read all the trade magazines. I'm online, you know,
looking at you know, here's a trend, here's a trend.
You know trends. Some trends are great. Some trends are
just that, you know next year they're going to be nothing.
(11:38):
And part of this, you know, like anything else. I mean, I,
for whatever reason, have an eye for things. You know,
it just I it interests me. I'm excited about it.
I do this because I enjoy it. I love it.
I mean, if I'm not designing something for you in
one of your clients. I'm figuring out what I'm going
to change next on my houses, you know.
Speaker 2 (11:59):
And I was going to say that, you know, I
come to your house and it is You're always doing
something and it's always very detailed and very cool, and
at first I thought it was a little bit show offye,
but it is who you are. It is who you
are doing for me. Yeah, you do it for you. So, hey,
we're going to take a quick break. We always whenever
we're on the show, we get right up to the
break and Greg's back. They're going, hey, you gotta do
(12:21):
it commercial. So but we'll come back. We're going to
talk some more about this, and I want to talk
about the next step is once we get that design,
the collaboration between the designer and the client, because clients,
I always say all our designs are a collaboration between
us and them. By week, by the time we get
to the third set of drawings, we're all working together,
all right. We are going to return after these messages
(12:41):
on news Talk eleven thirty WISN. News Talk eleven thirty
WISN returning from break, Nick the construction Guru.
Speaker 3 (12:53):
Listen.
Speaker 2 (12:53):
If you're thinking about a project, give us a call.
I always say you should get three opinions. Make one
of those hours. We'd love to come out and talk
to you about an addition hitch in the bathroom. Kurzner
is the only company in Wisconsin to win a Better
Business Built torchs Award for Ethics and Integrity three times,
over seventy five awards for our work. You can find
us on the worldwide web at Kurzonerinc. Dot com. That's
(13:13):
k e r z n e r I n C
dot com. Or give us a call at two six
two five six seven twenty five hundred. At Kurzner, we
will treat your home as if it were our own. If
you're just tuning in, I have a good friend returning
guest from last week. We're talking about designer Chris Agner
here from Chris Agner Design Build. How many how many
awards do you think you have for your work? There's
(13:34):
a lot, There's a lot, right, a lot of them,
and I always talk about it, but what what's your interpretation? What?
What is what are the awards based on?
Speaker 3 (13:46):
Well, you know it's the awards are like anything else,
is someone's opinion. But but the awards you're talking about,
and you have. Many are are from the NARY Awards program.
It's a national program and it's judged by other professional remodelers,
and that's what I take pride in. You know, there
(14:07):
are all kinds of awards for projects and things like
that in the remodeling or custom home world. Many of them, though,
are you know, maybe consumer based. It's in a magazine
and consumers go, yeah, I like the way that looks,
or what have you. The awards that you and I
think are the most things that we're most proud of
are the ones that come from the NARY program because
(14:29):
they're judged by other remodelers across the country, professionals, So
they're looking at you know, yes it looks beautiful, but
is it good design? Is it functional? Did it solve
a client's needs? All those things? So I think that's
those are the ones that I cherish the most.
Speaker 2 (14:46):
Yeah. Yeah, And I think that the important thing is
is that you're right, they're looking deeper into it. It's
not just what's pretty right, It's like, not what's the
pay job on the car? Iwish use cars, pay job
on the corvette? What's a performance? How does it perform?
How does it solve the problems?
Speaker 3 (15:01):
Good?
Speaker 2 (15:02):
Good point, Chris. We were talking before break about you know,
you get to the second or third set of renderings
and it becomes a collaboration between the designer and the client.
How does that develops? As you know, I have my
ideas in it, but I want to get yours. How
does it develop? How does that collaboration come together when
(15:22):
you're working with.
Speaker 3 (15:23):
Yeah, so I think now we're kind of talking about
the process, right, So, you know, we're meeting with a
client for the first time. They're telling you what they're
trying to do, what they'd like, giving some ideas, maybe
they've got a bunch of pictures of things they like.
Whatever that input is from the start, right So at
that point, now it's on us to come up with
(15:45):
what we think is a solution, what we think is
going to a statically functionally. All those things we've talked
about fit within the budget early on. But now we
start the real work, you know, so we're showing them
what we were considering a first draft. Mister and missus homeowner,
here's what we've come up with. You're not going to
(16:06):
hurt my feelings. We're going to go through this and
you go, I love that. I don't like that. What
if we did that? That's where it really gets good.
And you know, and everybody's different, but we work with
clients that are like, you know, I don't have time
for this, or I don't care, you know, just do
what you think is best. Okay, that's great, and that's
our experience that will take care of it. But the
(16:27):
ones I really love are the ones where they're into
it and when they see that first three D rendering
and their minds literally blown that what are you showing me?
Is this a picture of a project you finished already?
It's like, no, this is your house, what it's going
to look like. But it's so real looking, it's like yeah,
And all of a sudden, they just you can just
(16:48):
see it. They just get into it. And now, okay,
what what if we did this? Okay, let's try that.
What if we did the cabinets in a stain color
instead of white. We could show you that and you go, ooh,
I love that or no, but guess what, we just
saved you a thirty thousand dollars mistake ordering the wrong cabinets.
Speaker 1 (17:08):
Right.
Speaker 3 (17:09):
But then, so now this plan, this design is developing
and they're they're involved, and they're owning it. They're part
of the they're part of the design team at this point.
And now when it's done, I guarantee you when they
have their friends over and they're sitting in their new
dining room or kitchen or whatever, they're very proud of
what that was my idea, right exactly. Yeah, we we
(17:31):
came up with this, and they you know or whatever.
But you know that's I enjoy that. I love it
when they're into it and they're part of it. So,
you know, back to the process. So now we're revising
this plan. And what I'm getting at is because we
show you something once that's not okay, this is it,
take it or leave it? Do you want you sign here?
That's not what this is about. This is about We're
(17:53):
going to spend as much time or as little time
as you want to developing your plan for your house.
But once we lock it in and this is exactly
what you want when it's done, that's exactly what it's
going to look like.
Speaker 2 (18:07):
You know. One of the project that we just won
Remodel of the Year for I remember when the Chimney
Chase was coming out and they had that little bit
of space. It's an older Victorian home. I call it
a Renaissance neighborhood. It's down on North and buffem What
(18:27):
do you think that house was built nineteen twenties. Yeah, yeah, Victorian, gorgeous,
gorgeous house. We took that chimney chase out and the
homeowner said, you know what would be cool. There is
a little bookshelf for my cookbooks. Now this is like
twenty four by forty eight area and a two hundred
(18:48):
thousand dollars kitchen. And that's the thing that when they
come down to the show, it's on our thing and
they goes, that's a really cool idea, and that it's
just such a small part of it. And that was
the homeowner's idea, and I thought, you know, there was
a big lesson there right now. I always say I've
the rule of fives. I'll tell you five times why
your idea sucks, and then I'll do whatever you tell
(19:10):
me to do, providing I don't violate the law or code.
So that's the other thing. Sometimes people that you know,
I'm just going to say it. The customer isn't always right.
Sometimes we have to talk them down.
Speaker 3 (19:22):
Right yeah, and you know, and it's you know, yeah,
this is a good idea, or this sounds really great,
but here's why you.
Speaker 2 (19:28):
You've brought it up on the last show about roof line.
Speaker 3 (19:30):
Here's why you don't want to do this, or you know,
here's why this shouldn't be done, or here's why this
is going to you know, this might be great here,
but if you do that here, it's going to negatively
impact here. You know, those are all the things, you know,
And that's the thing in remodeling. You know, everything we're
doing is affecting an existing home. It could be affecting
(19:52):
it structurally, it can be affecting it functionally, it can
be affecting it esthetically. Well, are the things we're doing
in enhancing the rest of the home or are they
hurting it?
Speaker 2 (20:04):
And you can hurt you know, you can do a
beautiful design in an older home that does hurt it.
Because it's kind of like when you're getting ready to
go to that wedding and you say, hey, I'm going
to go and get a new dress, but then you
wear the same old beat up shoes. The shoes look
worse with the new dress. It's the other areas in
the home. Sometimes on a beautiful design are going to
(20:24):
look worse because now now you're going to see more
of the wear and things like that. And that's one
of the things that we have discussions on. You call
it scope creep, right, I call it mushrooming, whatever it is.
But that's another thing that I think a good designer
is going to be able to so at least you're
aware of it. You know. Dave Peckell used to always say,
remodelings like a pizza, you can eat it in pieces, right,
(20:44):
And that's the thing that another thing the designer can
do is they can show you the lines where hey,
if we're getting to budget constraints, this is the line
where I would stop because we're not going to disturb
anything else. When we come back a year or two
later to do these areas.
Speaker 3 (20:57):
Yeah, you just touched on a thing that you know
we do, and we do this quite a bit where
you know, homeowner wants to redo their kitchen now, but
they know down the road we want to do this,
and then we want to do this, and we want
to do this well. One of the beauties in the
design that we do in the three D programs and
the things that we do now is a lot of
(21:17):
times we're creating what we call a master plan, and
we're not just designing that kitchen right now for just
what you said, Because if we do this two years
from now, when you want to do this, we might
have to rip this out and throw it away. But
what if we did this knowing that we're going to
do this two years down the road. So creating that
master plan now and now, as you said, eat that
(21:39):
pizza piece by piece until everything you wanted is done,
that can be a real benefit and cost savor too.
Are you.
Speaker 2 (21:50):
I hate to ask this because it's going to put
us both on the spot, but I know everybody's wondering
out there, how much should a design cost? What kind
of money?
Speaker 3 (21:58):
Yeah, I know it's a tough but let's let's talk
about it a little absolutely. And it's like, you know,
how much does a kitchen cost? Well, I don't know.
You know, are you using a five thousand dollars range?
You're using a fifteen thousand dollars range, you know, And
design's kind of the same thing. I mean, you know,
my fees are strictly an hourly fee, so you know
it is what it is based on how much time, so,
(22:20):
how many revisions do we have, how detailed is the project,
you know, how much is it involved? There, the more
information a client has upfront, pictures I like this, what
have you, that's going to speed that process up and
slow down the amount of time and cost in a design.
So it's really hard to say. But as I think
(22:42):
we talked about earlier on how many hours to do
a really good kitchen, and I think I said somewhere
in the you know, twenty to seventy five hours. So
you know, I mean an average design for a really
nice kitchen could be twenty five hundred to five thousand dollars.
It's pretty realistic for that. You know, an addition could
be three thousand to seven thousand dollars. A whole house remodel,
(23:03):
you know, maybe it's ten thousand dollars. But believe me,
that is not a cost in a project that that
is going to be you know, one hundred and fifty
thousand dollars kitchen or what have you. That's that's that's
going to save you money in the long run. It's
going to save you money by picking the right making
the right selections, making sure function is right, making sure
two years from now you're not spending money to fix something.
(23:25):
How much is regret worth? Right?
Speaker 2 (23:27):
Exactly? Know how much is regret worth? You know. One
of the things that we do at Kurzner, and I
don't know how everybody else handles this, but whatever you
spend on design, when you pull the trigger on the project,
we apply that too. That my thought has always been, Chris,
is that the designs that are being developed now at
our company make make the job much faster. The guys
(23:47):
can our guys can read blueprints, but when you have
a rendering in front of you. We just had one now.
They wanted to suspend a bench in the shower as
opposed to building a drop wall in front of it,
and in the rendering there's a dropball in front of it.
So I said, no, we have to do it this
way because this is what they saw. And when they
look at it, they're like, okay, I get it on
(24:07):
a flat two line drawing and I'm not knocking it,
but you would have never seen that. You would have
never seen that. So it does save labor time and
that's taken into consideration when I do my budget. I
don't know how everybody else works, but I know that
my guys are going to know exactly what to do.
With rare exception, you'll open up a wall and find
something that we didn't plan on. And even that, you know,
(24:28):
if the homeowner will let us open up walls before
they actually sign an agreement to do business with us,
we can be much more accurate. But the truth of
the matter is is that when you get into this
level of design, there's a lot of things like HVAC things.
We were just talking about Matt's house in Brookfield. There's
a couple of runs in there, heat runs that my
(24:49):
guy called me up. Sean called me up and said, hey,
you know, we got to move these two heat runs.
And I didn't even catch it. He caught it, yep, okay,
And at this point I have to eat it because
it's my job. But the truth of the matter is
is that there are several eyes looking at the same
pictures and that's that's what makes it now. Obviously a
good remodeling company if they make a mistake and come
(25:10):
back and fix it, but that all goes into overhead
and that raises prices and things like this. So when
you do a good design, it's like any if you're
going to build a shed in your backyard, you're much
better off time wise. If you have a good design,
you have a good material, you have schedules on there,
here's the sized cabinets were gonna need. All of that
stuff's laid out, All of that stuff goes into the
bid and we don't miss stuff and say, oh hey
(25:31):
we miss this right absolutely, yeah, Chris, I really appreciate
you coming in on another Sunday to spend time with us.
If this raises more questions for you guys out there,
then answered, please give us a call. My email is
Nick at kurznerink dot com. You can email that out
to us, you can, Chris, you can give out some
(25:52):
information as well. If somebody has a question, they.
Speaker 3 (25:55):
Can reach me at Chris Agnerdesign dot com or my
email which is Chris Agner d E B R DAS
and Design bas and Build Remodel at Believe it or
not AOL dot com. I cannot get rid of that.
You've tied it too many.
Speaker 2 (26:08):
That's cool though, that's cool. Well, you know, there you
go again. It's like my phone is four one four
and people go, you've had that number a long time. Well,
what does that tell you about the business. They've been
around forever, right, so really appreciate you coming in on
a Sunday. Yeah, and we'll do this again. I think
this is good stuff. All right, News Talk eleven thirty WSN.
We will return again next week
When you need wisdom and advice. Seek out a guru
when you need wisdom and advice about remodeling and design,
Lock on and listen right now to Nick the Construction Guru.
Here is award winning remodeling expert Nick Kerzner.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
News Talk eleven thirty two as Nick the Construction Group. Hey,
if you're tuning in this week and you're tuned in
last week, we're on a two part series about design.
Chris Agner here with me again. Thanks for coming in. Chris.
It was interesting because people are getting smart. They're getting
smart in our business, and they're asking the right questions.
So the Lions shure. The questions coming in about our
(00:44):
company is what is design build? What does it mean
to get a design? Why does it cost money to
get a design? One of the things, Chris, that people
say to me, and I explained to them, look at
when I come out, I'm not going to ballpark your project.
You and I are both master certified remodelers, and if
you don't know what that means out there, we have
gone through considerable continuing education and continuing education to maintain
(01:07):
those certifications. And so when we're looking at things, I
would say that if you're going to use a contractor,
you should use a certified nary contractor. That's just That's
just if hey, man, if I was going in for
plastic surgery, I don't want the guy with the most
flasks on the wall, right, So I'm just telling you.
So people are asking me about that, and you know
(01:29):
there's only how many are there two hundred and fifty
of us in the United States? Two hundred and fifty men,
if that right? So you know, the questions coming up
are are starting to dig into some of the things
that we learned through our experience with certifications. So last week, Chris,
we talked about but you know I should introduce you.
I'm sure people know who you are from listening to
(01:50):
the show, but go ahead, tell us about Chris Agnor
Design and how we work together.
Speaker 3 (01:54):
Sure, Chris Agner Design. I've been a design build company
for about thirty years, but about five years ago changed
my company to design only and now I'm involved, you know,
with design for Cursoner, which has been great, great partnership.
But I work with client, our clients to develop the
design three D modeling so they can see in photo
(02:16):
realistic views of what the project's going to look like
before we start, and allow them to explore options before
we start, and they make a decision as to what
is that kitchen or that addition or what have you.
So so I have now focused solely on the design
side of things, and and and that's been a great,
great partnership and just love working with you and your clients.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
Well. And you know, when we when we when I
look at the designs that are coming out of out
of our our company versus a lot of the other ones,
a lot of the other ones kind of look like
a rerun of Andy Griffith to me, you know what
I mean, It's just not it's just not good stuff.
And I think part of that is because of the
experience and the continuing education that we go through with
(02:59):
a certainification. Another thing is is the software. You know,
I had a client asked me the other day, why
isn't everybody doing this virtual design stuff? And by the way,
I know that people watch HTTV and they see some
of it. We're light years ahead of that as well,
But they say, how come every but the learning curve
is astronomical in this and that the software is extremely expensive,
(03:20):
and you hit it on the last show with the software,
but the hardware. Well, yeah, I mean when my computer
starts to render, it sounds like a helicopter running. There's
three fans, and the RAM looks like a deck of
playing cards. Right, So there is a barrier to entry,
not only from an educational standpoint, but strictly from a
cost standpoint. Why companies aren't doing this? Oh?
Speaker 3 (03:41):
Absolutely? I mean the computer I use for this, I
end up updating. I probably replace my computer every sixteen
to eighteen months just as a technology, and we are not.
You know, this is not a thousand dollars laptop. This
is a five or six thousand dollars investment each time,
not to mention the pro that we're running, which is
(04:02):
probably a five thousand dollars program, plus annual fees to
keep it, you know, updated and what have you. So yeah,
so that that's a barrier. But the thing you hit
on there is the learning curve. I've been doing computer
design for probably twenty years. When I was designed build,
I was only designing for the projects I was going
(04:24):
to build my customers. So I would I would work
on the program and I would design something, and then
I would be off building that and I wouldn't be
back designing something on the computer for you know, a
month or two weeks or whatever. And I can just
tell you doing that for you know whatever, twenty years.
But now that I am full time, you know, I'm
literally drawing on my computer probably eight to ten hours
(04:47):
a day using this program. Over the last five years.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
It's not uncommon for me to call you at nine
point thirty ten o'clock at night. We do that all
the time.
Speaker 3 (04:55):
But until I was doing it at that level of
that that much time I'm doing it, you can't imagine
how much power is in this program. You don't even
scratch a surface till you get to kill You start
getting that.
Speaker 2 (05:08):
I know, I know. And it's funny because you know
you more than me. You I'll call you up and say, hey,
how do you do this, and and you're like, okay,
go here, do this slow down, man. I mean literally,
we can take a material off. If you find something
like a floor piece on Amazon, you can go in
grab that floor piece, you can modify it to scale
it for the plan, and you can put it into
(05:30):
the plan. So you know, it's not just hey, here's
what we think it would look like. You can literally say,
I want to put shaw a lighthouse er five eight
flooring in there, right, you know.
Speaker 3 (05:41):
That, and you know the the the possibilities are literally endless.
I mean I can literally do the design. I can
photograph your site and literally put you sitting in the
chair looking out your window at your lake or your
backyard or what ever. Yeah, we can pick a day
(06:03):
and date and time, and I can show you where
the sun's going to hit that addition and where the
shadows are going to be on your swimming pool. As
to do we want this here? Do we want this here?
Speaker 2 (06:14):
Now?
Speaker 3 (06:14):
All of those things take time, which means money. So
you know, we can be as involved as we want
to be or have to be in the program. But
the opportunities are unbelievable.
Speaker 2 (06:25):
I was talking to somebody at the show and they said,
you know, they had had a remodeling project done by
another company. It's interesting you bring this up because he said,
we had two areas we could have put the addition on.
And he said, the thing that drives me crazy is
a side that it's on never sees the sun, so
we get the ice damming. And he says, there's always
a patch of ice in front of my garage where
it is, And.
Speaker 3 (06:46):
We talked about that last week. What is bad design.
Bad design is designing something without the understanding of what
in the real world, not only what is it going
to look like, but how is it going to function?
Speaker 2 (06:57):
Yeah? Yeah, the environment. Another one that we ad. Lady
had a dishwasher and an island. She said, you know
a lot of times I'm doing the dishes and other
people are helping. If I open up the dishwasher, can
I get past the island? Let's do it. We did
it in the computer and we said, no, you can't.
We're going to have to put it somewhere else. So
I think, you know, those are those are huge. You
catch so many little things when you're doing this. And
(07:21):
we discussed another thing we discussed last week and I'd
like to hit on again is the experience of the designer.
Now you talk about you've been designing for twenty years,
but I think more than that is you've also worked
with Narry on communication skills and how to talk to customers.
You've also built your own I mean, your hands have
(07:41):
built additions. Okay, why is that so important as opposed
to somebody who comes in that says Okay. You know,
I just got through at my AD and I have
a design agreement. I shouldn't talk like that. It's very condescending,
but right, you know what I'm saying, it's okay. Now
I have my designer my design letter here, and I'm
a designer. Okay, how does that translate?
Speaker 3 (08:02):
Yeah, I mean, you know, it's it's like I don't
care what you're doing. I don't care if you're a
surgeon or you know, a chef or whatever. Experience is experience.
I mean, you can you know all schooling learning. I'm
very big, you're very big at education. We've been through
so much, which is why we're certified and all those
kinds of things. But that only gets you so far.
I'm going to give you a really good base. But
(08:23):
you know, it's the experience of you know, no, we've
we've done this, or we've seen this and there's a
better way to do this, or there's a more cost
effective way of doing this. You know, we get back
to good design. Good design can also save money. You know,
everybody says, why don't I want to pay for design?
You know, I can just tell you I don't think
you're paying for design. I think you're saving money. You know,
(08:46):
the mistakes that can come from not completely looking at
all ramifications of what we're doing upfront can be much
more expensive than what you paid for a design. The
other thing that good design that you might pay for
is going to get you maybe a much more valuable
project because you took the time and spent some money
(09:07):
up front. I would think of it more as an
investment than a cost. It's a great point that that
just part of it. But you know, to your point
of you know, I'm new in this industry. You know,
I'm your designer, you know what, So everybody had to
so were you and I right? And there's you know
that God bless them, and you know, we wish you
the best. But unfortunately we've been around, you know, long
(09:31):
enough to be able to go. It's our turn. We are.
Speaker 2 (09:34):
We are the experience, and quite honestly, you know, I
guess it's the customers that pay the tuition a little
bit because when you're when I mean some of my
early designs, there were some things that I wouldn't do again,
and that experience has come and I think that if
you're a new designer and you're a customer working with
them that's all fine, well and good. I'd rather be
(09:54):
the guy that is working with the guy who's made
all the mistakes and knows what doesn't work, you know,
And I think that comes with experience and when you're
building it. Another thing is with budget. You know, somebody
might say, well, it's going to take forty hours to
frame this one in and it qualified and I still
I still sometimes undercut hours. I still miss it sometimes.
(10:15):
But the truth of the matter is is that what
a designer thinks is going to take forty hours, we
know what's going to take eighty hours. And I think
that's important because change orders are ugly on a project,
you know. That's that's one of the things I think.
Another thing with at least our virtual design at Kurzner
is we are able to take your selections and put
(10:35):
them into the rendering. So it's we don't say this
is a countertop that's close to what you're looking at.
We say, this is Cambria Bradshaw, this is what you
picked out for your quartz countertops, and we're showing you
what it looks like with the expresso cabinets. And a
lot of times, you know you'll go on Pinterest and
you'll see a little little shot of a kitchen and go, oh,
I really like that, and then when you see it
in your kitchen, you'll be like, oh, that's not working
(10:58):
for me. Yep, right, what you know? We talked last
week a little bit how does subjectivity come into play?
In other words, we talked about for sashe has a
look this and that. Let's just hit on that a
little bit again. How do you stay fresh? In other words,
how do you lose your your norms?
Speaker 3 (11:16):
Sure, you know, I think part of it is because
I am doing this, you know, one percent of the
time I'm dealing. I'm doing design now. I you know,
I read all the trade magazines. I'm online, you know,
looking at you know, here's a trend, here's a trend.
You know trends. Some trends are great. Some trends are
just that, you know next year they're going to be nothing.
(11:38):
And part of this, you know, like anything else. I mean, I,
for whatever reason, have an eye for things. You know,
it just I it interests me. I'm excited about it.
I do this because I enjoy it. I love it.
I mean, if I'm not designing something for you in
one of your clients. I'm figuring out what I'm going
to change next on my houses, you know.
Speaker 2 (11:59):
And I was going to say that, you know, I
come to your house and it is You're always doing
something and it's always very detailed and very cool, and
at first I thought it was a little bit show offye,
but it is who you are. It is who you
are doing for me. Yeah, you do it for you. So, hey,
we're going to take a quick break. We always whenever
we're on the show, we get right up to the
break and Greg's back. They're going, hey, you gotta do
(12:21):
it commercial. So but we'll come back. We're going to
talk some more about this, and I want to talk
about the next step is once we get that design,
the collaboration between the designer and the client, because clients,
I always say all our designs are a collaboration between
us and them. By week, by the time we get
to the third set of drawings, we're all working together,
all right. We are going to return after these messages
(12:41):
on news Talk eleven thirty WISN. News Talk eleven thirty
WISN returning from break, Nick the construction Guru.
Speaker 3 (12:53):
Listen.
Speaker 2 (12:53):
If you're thinking about a project, give us a call.
I always say you should get three opinions. Make one
of those hours. We'd love to come out and talk
to you about an addition hitch in the bathroom. Kurzner
is the only company in Wisconsin to win a Better
Business Built torchs Award for Ethics and Integrity three times,
over seventy five awards for our work. You can find
us on the worldwide web at Kurzonerinc. Dot com. That's
(13:13):
k e r z n e r I n C
dot com. Or give us a call at two six
two five six seven twenty five hundred. At Kurzner, we
will treat your home as if it were our own. If
you're just tuning in, I have a good friend returning
guest from last week. We're talking about designer Chris Agner
here from Chris Agner Design Build. How many how many
awards do you think you have for your work? There's
(13:34):
a lot, There's a lot, right, a lot of them,
and I always talk about it, but what what's your interpretation? What?
What is what are the awards based on?
Speaker 3 (13:46):
Well, you know it's the awards are like anything else,
is someone's opinion. But but the awards you're talking about,
and you have. Many are are from the NARY Awards program.
It's a national program and it's judged by other professional remodelers,
and that's what I take pride in. You know, there
(14:07):
are all kinds of awards for projects and things like
that in the remodeling or custom home world. Many of them, though,
are you know, maybe consumer based. It's in a magazine
and consumers go, yeah, I like the way that looks,
or what have you. The awards that you and I
think are the most things that we're most proud of
are the ones that come from the NARY program because
(14:29):
they're judged by other remodelers across the country, professionals, So
they're looking at you know, yes it looks beautiful, but
is it good design? Is it functional? Did it solve
a client's needs? All those things? So I think that's
those are the ones that I cherish the most.
Speaker 2 (14:46):
Yeah. Yeah, And I think that the important thing is
is that you're right, they're looking deeper into it. It's
not just what's pretty right, It's like, not what's the
pay job on the car? Iwish use cars, pay job
on the corvette? What's a performance? How does it perform?
How does it solve the problems?
Speaker 3 (15:01):
Good?
Speaker 2 (15:02):
Good point, Chris. We were talking before break about you know,
you get to the second or third set of renderings
and it becomes a collaboration between the designer and the client.
How does that develops? As you know, I have my
ideas in it, but I want to get yours. How
does it develop? How does that collaboration come together when
(15:22):
you're working with.
Speaker 3 (15:23):
Yeah, so I think now we're kind of talking about
the process, right, So, you know, we're meeting with a
client for the first time. They're telling you what they're
trying to do, what they'd like, giving some ideas, maybe
they've got a bunch of pictures of things they like.
Whatever that input is from the start, right So at
that point, now it's on us to come up with
(15:45):
what we think is a solution, what we think is
going to a statically functionally. All those things we've talked
about fit within the budget early on. But now we
start the real work, you know, so we're showing them
what we were considering a first draft. Mister and missus homeowner,
here's what we've come up with. You're not going to
(16:06):
hurt my feelings. We're going to go through this and
you go, I love that. I don't like that. What
if we did that? That's where it really gets good.
And you know, and everybody's different, but we work with
clients that are like, you know, I don't have time
for this, or I don't care, you know, just do
what you think is best. Okay, that's great, and that's
our experience that will take care of it. But the
(16:27):
ones I really love are the ones where they're into
it and when they see that first three D rendering
and their minds literally blown that what are you showing me?
Is this a picture of a project you finished already?
It's like, no, this is your house, what it's going
to look like. But it's so real looking, it's like yeah,
And all of a sudden, they just you can just
(16:48):
see it. They just get into it. And now, okay,
what what if we did this? Okay, let's try that.
What if we did the cabinets in a stain color
instead of white. We could show you that and you go, ooh,
I love that or no, but guess what, we just
saved you a thirty thousand dollars mistake ordering the wrong cabinets.
Speaker 1 (17:08):
Right.
Speaker 3 (17:09):
But then, so now this plan, this design is developing
and they're they're involved, and they're owning it. They're part
of the they're part of the design team at this point.
And now when it's done, I guarantee you when they
have their friends over and they're sitting in their new
dining room or kitchen or whatever, they're very proud of
what that was my idea, right exactly. Yeah, we we
(17:31):
came up with this, and they you know or whatever.
But you know that's I enjoy that. I love it
when they're into it and they're part of it. So,
you know, back to the process. So now we're revising
this plan. And what I'm getting at is because we
show you something once that's not okay, this is it,
take it or leave it? Do you want you sign here?
That's not what this is about. This is about We're
(17:53):
going to spend as much time or as little time
as you want to developing your plan for your house.
But once we lock it in and this is exactly
what you want when it's done, that's exactly what it's
going to look like.
Speaker 2 (18:07):
You know. One of the project that we just won
Remodel of the Year for I remember when the Chimney
Chase was coming out and they had that little bit
of space. It's an older Victorian home. I call it
a Renaissance neighborhood. It's down on North and buffem What
(18:27):
do you think that house was built nineteen twenties. Yeah, yeah, Victorian, gorgeous,
gorgeous house. We took that chimney chase out and the
homeowner said, you know what would be cool. There is
a little bookshelf for my cookbooks. Now this is like
twenty four by forty eight area and a two hundred
(18:48):
thousand dollars kitchen. And that's the thing that when they
come down to the show, it's on our thing and
they goes, that's a really cool idea, and that it's
just such a small part of it. And that was
the homeowner's idea, and I thought, you know, there was
a big lesson there right now. I always say I've
the rule of fives. I'll tell you five times why
your idea sucks, and then I'll do whatever you tell
(19:10):
me to do, providing I don't violate the law or code.
So that's the other thing. Sometimes people that you know,
I'm just going to say it. The customer isn't always right.
Sometimes we have to talk them down.
Speaker 3 (19:22):
Right yeah, and you know, and it's you know, yeah,
this is a good idea, or this sounds really great,
but here's why you.
Speaker 2 (19:28):
You've brought it up on the last show about roof line.
Speaker 3 (19:30):
Here's why you don't want to do this, or you know,
here's why this shouldn't be done, or here's why this
is going to you know, this might be great here,
but if you do that here, it's going to negatively
impact here. You know, those are all the things, you know,
And that's the thing in remodeling. You know, everything we're
doing is affecting an existing home. It could be affecting
(19:52):
it structurally, it can be affecting it functionally, it can
be affecting it esthetically. Well, are the things we're doing
in enhancing the rest of the home or are they
hurting it?
Speaker 2 (20:04):
And you can hurt you know, you can do a
beautiful design in an older home that does hurt it.
Because it's kind of like when you're getting ready to
go to that wedding and you say, hey, I'm going
to go and get a new dress, but then you
wear the same old beat up shoes. The shoes look
worse with the new dress. It's the other areas in
the home. Sometimes on a beautiful design are going to
(20:24):
look worse because now now you're going to see more
of the wear and things like that. And that's one
of the things that we have discussions on. You call
it scope creep, right, I call it mushrooming, whatever it is.
But that's another thing that I think a good designer
is going to be able to so at least you're
aware of it. You know. Dave Peckell used to always say,
remodelings like a pizza, you can eat it in pieces, right,
(20:44):
And that's the thing that another thing the designer can
do is they can show you the lines where hey,
if we're getting to budget constraints, this is the line
where I would stop because we're not going to disturb
anything else. When we come back a year or two
later to do these areas.
Speaker 3 (20:57):
Yeah, you just touched on a thing that you know
we do, and we do this quite a bit where
you know, homeowner wants to redo their kitchen now, but
they know down the road we want to do this,
and then we want to do this, and we want
to do this well. One of the beauties in the
design that we do in the three D programs and
the things that we do now is a lot of
(21:17):
times we're creating what we call a master plan, and
we're not just designing that kitchen right now for just
what you said, Because if we do this two years
from now, when you want to do this, we might
have to rip this out and throw it away. But
what if we did this knowing that we're going to
do this two years down the road. So creating that
master plan now and now, as you said, eat that
(21:39):
pizza piece by piece until everything you wanted is done,
that can be a real benefit and cost savor too.
Are you.
Speaker 2 (21:50):
I hate to ask this because it's going to put
us both on the spot, but I know everybody's wondering
out there, how much should a design cost? What kind
of money?
Speaker 3 (21:58):
Yeah, I know it's a tough but let's let's talk
about it a little absolutely. And it's like, you know,
how much does a kitchen cost? Well, I don't know.
You know, are you using a five thousand dollars range?
You're using a fifteen thousand dollars range, you know, And
design's kind of the same thing. I mean, you know,
my fees are strictly an hourly fee, so you know
it is what it is based on how much time, so,
(22:20):
how many revisions do we have, how detailed is the project,
you know, how much is it involved? There, the more
information a client has upfront, pictures I like this, what
have you, that's going to speed that process up and
slow down the amount of time and cost in a design.
So it's really hard to say. But as I think
(22:42):
we talked about earlier on how many hours to do
a really good kitchen, and I think I said somewhere
in the you know, twenty to seventy five hours. So
you know, I mean an average design for a really
nice kitchen could be twenty five hundred to five thousand dollars.
It's pretty realistic for that. You know, an addition could
be three thousand to seven thousand dollars. A whole house remodel,
(23:03):
you know, maybe it's ten thousand dollars. But believe me,
that is not a cost in a project that that
is going to be you know, one hundred and fifty
thousand dollars kitchen or what have you. That's that's that's
going to save you money in the long run. It's
going to save you money by picking the right making
the right selections, making sure function is right, making sure
two years from now you're not spending money to fix something.
(23:25):
How much is regret worth? Right?
Speaker 2 (23:27):
Exactly? Know how much is regret worth? You know. One
of the things that we do at Kurzner, and I
don't know how everybody else handles this, but whatever you
spend on design, when you pull the trigger on the project,
we apply that too. That my thought has always been, Chris,
is that the designs that are being developed now at
our company make make the job much faster. The guys
(23:47):
can our guys can read blueprints, but when you have
a rendering in front of you. We just had one now.
They wanted to suspend a bench in the shower as
opposed to building a drop wall in front of it,
and in the rendering there's a dropball in front of it.
So I said, no, we have to do it this
way because this is what they saw. And when they
look at it, they're like, okay, I get it on
(24:07):
a flat two line drawing and I'm not knocking it,
but you would have never seen that. You would have
never seen that. So it does save labor time and
that's taken into consideration when I do my budget. I
don't know how everybody else works, but I know that
my guys are going to know exactly what to do.
With rare exception, you'll open up a wall and find
something that we didn't plan on. And even that, you know,
(24:28):
if the homeowner will let us open up walls before
they actually sign an agreement to do business with us,
we can be much more accurate. But the truth of
the matter is is that when you get into this
level of design, there's a lot of things like HVAC things.
We were just talking about Matt's house in Brookfield. There's
a couple of runs in there, heat runs that my
(24:49):
guy called me up. Sean called me up and said, hey,
you know, we got to move these two heat runs.
And I didn't even catch it. He caught it, yep, okay,
And at this point I have to eat it because
it's my job. But the truth of the matter is
is that there are several eyes looking at the same
pictures and that's that's what makes it now. Obviously a
good remodeling company if they make a mistake and come
(25:10):
back and fix it, but that all goes into overhead
and that raises prices and things like this. So when
you do a good design, it's like any if you're
going to build a shed in your backyard, you're much
better off time wise. If you have a good design,
you have a good material, you have schedules on there,
here's the sized cabinets were gonna need. All of that
stuff's laid out, All of that stuff goes into the
bid and we don't miss stuff and say, oh hey
(25:31):
we miss this right absolutely, yeah, Chris, I really appreciate
you coming in on another Sunday to spend time with us.
If this raises more questions for you guys out there,
then answered, please give us a call. My email is
Nick at kurznerink dot com. You can email that out
to us, you can, Chris, you can give out some
(25:52):
information as well. If somebody has a question, they.
Speaker 3 (25:55):
Can reach me at Chris Agnerdesign dot com or my
email which is Chris Agner d E B R DAS
and Design bas and Build Remodel at Believe it or
not AOL dot com. I cannot get rid of that.
You've tied it too many.
Speaker 2 (26:08):
That's cool though, that's cool. Well, you know, there you
go again. It's like my phone is four one four
and people go, you've had that number a long time. Well,
what does that tell you about the business. They've been
around forever, right, so really appreciate you coming in on
a Sunday. Yeah, and we'll do this again. I think
this is good stuff. All right, News Talk eleven thirty WSN.
We will return again next week
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