Studlayer Construxxxion
Congrats on finding our secret construction page! Scout and I occasionally take on handyperson tasks for our friends and select friends of friends around Seattle. If you don’t know either of us, you might want to stop reading here and look for another service provider.
See our work
Click for details. You can use the arrow keys once the lightbox is open to scroll through the photos.
Our process
Initial checkin in about the project over email or text. Email is better for larger projects or anything with links or lots of reference photos. Pinterest boards are very welcome!
Set up a consult visit to see your space and talk through the scope of the project. We want to make sure we know what questions everyone wants answered before we can call a go/no go on working together. We will do some broad research and planning as part of this stage, but detailed planning comes after a commitment and approval of our hourly rate (this work is important and difficult, so we only really dive in once we have started billing hours). For projects that are a bit out of our area of expertise, we will often do a discounted rate for planning hours while we catch up on best practises.
Kicking off the project and starting work. We include our projected scope and the hourly rate we’re charging (usually around $30/hour per person) and clear that before starting to bill hours. We will set up a project management platform and give you access — this will have dashboards with up-to-date information about project costs (materials + hours), task statuses, related receipts, and before and after photos.
During the project, we try to have you buy materials directly, but when we have to buy them ourselves, we will provide receipts and ask for somewhat prompt reimbursements. We do not add a markup on receipts, but we do bill for our time at the store. We are also totally open to coaching you or having you help with the work to speed up the process, saving you money (plus it’s fun?). We mostly work on weekends and weekday evenings, and we need to have access to your parking, power, and water.
Once we feel we are done or close to done, we will try to have a final walkthrough to look everything over. When you’re happy with everything, we will do the final math and send over an invoice. To make projects more financially accessible, we offer payment plans to work with your monthly budget. This is a big part of why we only work for friends! Remember to keep all receipts related to capital improvements on your house for tax purposes when you sell it.
Fox’s tool library
Want to tackle the project yourself but need to borrow a tool? I probably have one. See my tool library for details on what I have available. There is no charge for borrowing tools (there’s more info at the link).