Interior Designer in University Park

What University Park homes usually need

University Park grew up alongside Southern Methodist University from the 1920s onward. The housing runs from period cottages and revival houses to newer rebuilds on original lots, and those are two very different projects: an older house brings defined rooms, a small kitchen and few bathrooms, while a newer one is usually about layout, finish level and how it has dated.

Most briefs translate into something more specific:

• “We need another bathroom” usually means borrowing from a closet or a bedroom, and rarely needs an addition.
• “There is nowhere to put anything” means a storage inventory and built-in joinery, not more square footage.
• “The kitchen is cut off” usually means one wall, often to the breakfast room, and often a structural one — see removing a load-bearing wall.
• “We have outgrown it” is sometimes true. More often the formal living room and the dining room used twice a year are the family space being asked for — see add on or rework what you have.

Its own town, and the school calendar

University Park is its own municipality, separate from both Dallas and Highland Park, with its own building department, requirements and inspections, so the process is confirmed with the town at the start. Households here plan around the school year: summer is the obvious window and the busiest, a summer-only project has to be genuinely small with every selection closed before work starts, and larger work is usually better started in the fall than compressed into a summer it cannot fit. More in the University Park remodeling guide.

How a project with Jan runs

1. Consultation at the house. A working meeting where Jan looks at what is there, asks how you live in the rooms and tells you what is possible — including what is not. See what to expect at a first consultation.
2. Plan and selections. Floor plans, elevations and every finish chosen before anything is scheduled, because unmade decisions are what delay projects.
3. The build. Jan can run the construction herself as general contractor, or hand a complete plan to your own builder.
4. Furnish and finish. Furniture, window treatments, lighting, rugs and art ordered, installed and styled, so the room is finished rather than nearly finished.