Recommendations for Home inspector and architect/designer?

[emcicle.livejournal.com]

Hi All,

I will search the archives/tags too, but i don't recall seeing anything go by recently. I find myself in the position of having placed an offer on a house and having it been accepted (yay! and scary!). Now I need to find an inspector. Any recommendations on someone who is thorough? What type of cost should I expect?

I also would like to contact an architect or designer about some remodeling work that will need to be done immediately after closing (if everything goes well, of course). I have no idea where to begin with finding someone who can help design a plan for knocking out several internal walls on the first floor. Any recommendations on people to contact? where to start? what to expect?

Thanks in advance, i'm a total newbie at this. Also, this is in North Cambridge, though I don't think that should effect recommendations...

Comments

[dphilli1.livejournal.com]

we've been working with David King at David L King architects, but your job may be too small for him to take.

[emcicle.livejournal.com]

thanks, i just contacted him yesterday and he will at least discuss my plans/goals and we'll see if we can go from there.

[emcicle.livejournal.com]

wondering if you could give me more feed back about using David? we can go offline, if you would like. I'm trying to get a sense of what a general price range for his services might be, for creating the schematic drawings for redoing one floor (no changing of house envelope, moving windows, etc, just knocking out two walls).... is your project comparable?

[dphilli1.livejournal.com]

we've used him for designing rather more extensive work -- total reno of a basement, including cutting a new door into the foundation and adding a patio, laying out a new kitchen, and a total gut and rebuild of a second floor, including ripping the roof off and adding dormers. I think we paid around $1000 for the basement/kitchen job (laid out simultaneously) because it also included electrical design work, and about $500 for the second floor job because it was less detailed (just placing the walls, the detailed construction drawing will come later when we start the project). If you know what you want in terms of placement, King may be too expensive.