Tom Reynolds is TikTok Architect, a real architect who shares his experience and love for architecture with his audience of almost 15,000 followers on TikTok. Tom and I had a long talk about what to expect when you will be renovating your house, his own home renovation experiences, his career, why to hire an architect, and more.

See the episode enhancements for “TikTok Architect”.

KM: All the architects I know just live in a construction zone basically until they decide they want to buy another house in two weeks, and then suddenly it all just wraps up in two weeks. 

TR: You can see, even right here, the door’s not trimmed, the other one over there is not, no base around this room yet. But it’s sort of where we are, and we live here so… 

KM: I don’t think we can help ourselves. I mean, can you imagine living in a fully finished, like a fully completed-

TR: With nothing to do?

KM: Yeah, with nothing to do. You’d have to move, you’d have to go buy another house. 

TR: You’d have to find a bigger fixer-upper.

KM: Yeah, right. My husband and I used to drive up to houses and if the front porch was falling off or there’s a giant hole in the roof, like this is the house that needs us, we have to go fix it!

TR: When we were shopping for this house, the thing that sold me was the backyard here. And the price, the price was sort of perfect. We have a shelter dog who has anxiety issues, doesn’t do well with other people, other dogs. So bringing him to the dog park isn’t great. Where we walk, we gotta kind of be careful that there’s not too many people around, because he’s likely to go from like, absolutely cute and adorable to attack. And you don’t know what the trigger is. So this place had like a 4,000 square foot backyard and the house itself was structurally sound. So I was like, that’s good enough for me. 

KM: Sometimes that’s good enough, just structurally sound. 

TR: We were like, okay, well, we’re gonna take the first month and do the things we want to do. Which turned into the first year. 

KM: And that must have been before you had the baby.

TR: Yes before we had the baby, before we knew there was a baby on the way. And then when we knew there was a baby on the way, it sort of put a time crunch on it. So about a month before she was born, I was calling in contractors to close up walls and ceilings and first coats of paint. So we left it at like trim, basically. It’s like, okay, this we can live with.

KM: The trim is just extra.

TR: Yeah. The walls are closed, we got insulation.

KM: That’s good. It’s a fun hobby, a lot of people are into it. These people on Instagram- oh, I guess on TikTok as well. There’s just tons of people now documenting their home renovations where I don’t remember that being the case before, but maybe I just don’t remember that.

TR: Well I think social media has made it really easy to sort of make it look interesting. The ones I really enjoy, I think it started around Christmas time when people took that sound effect from whatever video game, they throw the Christmas ornament in the room and then close the door and you hear the explosion, you open it up and now it’s decked out in Christmas stuff.

KM: I do love those videos, I love watching them. And you’re doing a great job on TikTok. I love the series you were doing in February. Or, it’s still February I guess.

TR: I’m actually getting ready to edit another interview to throw on so I can try to get the last two days of black history month in. One of the things – and this sort of hit me when I was interviewing Shauna Little, she’s this black architect out of Michigan, she’s the first one to have gotten elevated to fellow in Michigan, female – and I realized, first of all, there’s only like 500 black female architects. Like I can interview all of them in a reasonable amount of time, two years maybe, but then there’s only like 3000 black architects at all. So I can do that in like 10 years, hit em all and come up with a really interesting series on that.

KM: Not even 10 years, you would have a lot of, if you came at once a week. Wait a minute, my math is not so good. But you would have a lot of material that people I think would like to hear. 

TR: I know for me, it was about knowing that some of the things I’m going through are not unique to me, that other people are doing, that other people are having these situations. And you know, one that always used to get me up until I had a really honest conversation with one of my mentors was when I started, I felt like all my clients were like, do you know what you’re doing? And I was like, I know my business is new, but I’ve been at this for like 10 years plus. And I think it used to bother me more than it does now. But then sort of speaking to other people like, oh yeah, that happened, they’re always questioning whether I know what I’m doing or how- It’s like, okay, I’m not alone.

KM: You mean because you’re black that they would question you, you think?

TR: I don’t know if it was a race thing. I joke around that now that I’ve got gray hairs, I get the question less. So I’ve been a member of NOMA and since- I mean, we started the New Jersey chapter in 2008, 2009, the National Organization of Minority Architects. And before that, I was heavily involved in the NAACP, which is sort of what actually, that means architecture a little bit more formally. They have a program called the ACT-SO program, Afro-Academic Cultural, Technological and Scientific Olympics. And one of the competition categories is architecture. I was in high school, I was interested in it. And so they team you up with a mentor. And I was teamed up with this guy, Chuck Woodridge, who lived near me and went to his office and he was doing a lot, he had some great projects. He was working on the New Jersey Performing Arts Center. He worked on some other great projects. And then he also was teaching CAD out of his office, and he had his practice and he was teaching at the county college level. So it was like, okay, this is interesting. I chose schools where I got to have options of my three interests of technology, music, and architecture. I was like, I’ll start with architecture because that’s supposed to be the hardest one. If I don’t like it, I can switch it to one of the ones that I know I’ll be fine with. And after my first semester, I think it was, I think I got hooked at my first lecture, Mark Wigley’s ‘How old is the young architect?’ And then the second one was Peter Eisenman, so that was a packed lecture hall. And I was sitting on the floor right in front of him, and I was sketching in my little notebook and he grabs my notebook and signs it. 

KM: Woah, really? Do you still have that?

TR: I do. It’s down in the basement right now.

KM: What were you sketching? Can you imagine if you’re just sketching, you know, like a can of soup or something?

TR: So it also happened with Venturi, and I was sketching that duck, you know, I am a house, and he’s looking down, He’s like, ah, that’s pretty nice. And after the lecture he grabs it and signs it too. He signed as I am a signature. 

KM: Woah, that’s amazing. 

TR: Yeah. So I’ve been hooked since then.

KM: There’s another reason to sit in the front row all the time. I love the front row, cause it’s like, they’re talking to you, but you get some interaction even with that.

TR: I mean, I had no intention of sitting in the front row, but I was late like I usually was cause undiagnosed ADD

KM: Yeah, I hear you. That is so awesome.

TR: Yeah, it was really cool. It was one of those architecture geek-out moments. You know, it’s interesting, so working on the house, it’s been this process of, so we have this vision that was bigger than our budget, obviously. And then it’s like of sitting down, it’s like, okay, what’s important to us, why do we like these things? And then making sure we can actually get them. Like we have this whole grand dream of blue vanities and gold handles and faucets, and we thought it’d look really cool. And I was kind of concerned about the timeless aspect, like how long would we be bored of it. So when it came time to doing the kitchen and bathroom, we even found this really beautiful tile that had, it gave me this Gatsby feeling with this gold inlay, and then if I could line it up with the faucet and the shower head perfectly it would be absolutely beautiful as an accent wall there. And so we go to grab the tile and I’m like, you know what, we should make sure, cause we checked out the fixtures at this plumbing supply store near us and they’re like, let’s just make sure we can get those so that we make sure it’s the right shade and everything. So we go to check it out and they were like, yeah, there’s a six month backlog, between COVID and their typical thing. Okay, that’s a problem. So we go to check every place and all they had were sort of your typical silver look and then the oil rubbed bronze. And we like the oil rubbed bronze. That was sort of like our number two, but it completely changes the whole look.

KM: Yeah, it changes everything.

TR: Yeah. I think it sort of leads to this importing thing, and I deal with this with clients all the time, make sure you have what you need or that it’s available when you need it. Cause like, I’m sure you get this, I need those plans by whenever, because I want to submit and I want to get construction started. It’s like, okay, well, we can do that. Sure, submit, go ahead. And then they take it to construction and they’re like, wait, I demoed my kitchen, where are my cabinets? Well, the cabinet maker takes time and he probably, especially now has a backlog, and the material costs are through the roof, and there’s a vinyl shortage right now, so. 

KM: Lumber’s double probably. 

TR: More than double now. I’ve got this large- or large for me 50 unit building in permitting. And about two days after the contractor submitted that building, well the whole city hall had a COVID outbreak and shut down and closed up. And so now we’re in this interesting, the state sort of has on the books that they have 21 days to review projects, but 14 of those days, no one’s in the building. And then I think they were saying they’re taking an extra week just to do cleaning and everything else. And it’s like, there’s no way they’re gonna review this in one week. And they’ll find like one thing wrong in the drawing and send us a rejection just so they have time to review it. And let’s hope that the inspectors are okay, I mean, just on the health side, because the ones in this town specifically are not exactly in the best shape. So we’ll see, we’ll see what happens. 

KM: Yeah. Anything can happen any minute like that. I mean, I guess it always can. A contractor just recently thought it was going to take two weeks to get his permit, and now he’s upset to find out it’s going to take six weeks, which doesn’t seem that surprising to me. But he wrote to me, he said, I have bad news. And I thought, oh no, what’s the bad news? But that was it, just six weeks. Like oh, okay. I mean, I kind of expect that, but okay. It’s not the worst thing.

TR: I think the most important part with just making sure you have all your ducks in a row as best as possible is… There’s some projects, especially kitchens and baths, as soon as you do demo you’re out of the kitchen and the bathroom or one or the other, and if you don’t have extra bathrooms or extra space to like, set up a hot plate… So one is a family of five and they demoed their kitchen and there was a cabinet ordering issue, which just turned into a bigger thing. So they were working out of a microwave and a hot plate for five people for a month. 

KM: Yeah. The timing is hard to get right sometimes. We talk a lot about the HGTV effect among architects, but I mean, I think people get the idea that the project itself, the process itself, just finishing a kitchen, how hard can that be? How long can that take? But yeah, it can easily take three to four months.

TR: Easily. So I often tell my clients, countertops, that’s not so bad. But cabinets themselves, like if you have a room, an extra room or something, get them, have them on site, make sure they fit. And your appliances, especially if you want something outside of what’s on stock typically, if you want a specific finish or a specific model, get them there before you start doing any of the work. Because as soon as you start, you’re out of a kitchen, out of a bathroom.

KM: That’s a good point. So that cuts down on the lag time. 

TR: Yeah. And you know, some people get annoyed cause they’ve lost a room to all their materials, but the upside is as soon as you start, you know, you can have that HGTV six week – hopefully – process, but you have to be willing to do it. 

KM: Yeah. And you have to have everything there, and you have to maybe pay more for that. It’s also dependent on one trade finishing and the next one starting and the inspector coming and inspecting it, and there’s that whole… 

TR: Some of the best contractors that I know keep their better trades on staff, or work really closely with specific businesses. And then you’ve just got to hope that the electrician finished at the right time with his roughing, and the plumbing finished with his roughing at the right time, so that when you go to sheet rock, it’s hopefully done right. Or just that the inspection happens when you need it to, because you fail an inspection, now you possibly pushed your schedule back.

KM: Right. Which is something I feel like if people are contracting, subcontracting things out themselves, they might not appreciate how much relationships with the subs really does make a project go more smoothly. Which is why contractors get paid the money they get paid, I guess. It’s basically for them, it is a lot of coordination. And if it’s a one-off thing, or maybe with an electrician, maybe they’ll have some relationship with the homeowner, but generally they’re getting more money from a contractor, more business from a contractor, right? So if some other contractor calls them and wants them to start on a project that’s going to take a week, then maybe suddenly he’s not showing up at your house for a week. And it’s just the reality of it, makes it harder. 

TR: Especially when you start getting to code change cycles. In New Jersey, I always find, so the state does their training for the code inspectors, usually around November. And come December, you can almost guarantee they found something new that they’re looking for specifically that’s just in the newest code update cycle that they want to focus on. We don’t always know about it at the time, cause it’s like, oh wait, is that the new change in 2020s update? 

KM: Yeah. All right, so planning is key, and making sure you have all your materials on site before you try to get started. 

TR: And then really taking the time to vet out and make sure your contract with your contractor. Or if you’re doing it yourself, making sure that you have taken the time to practice what you’re doing. Actually, I’ll tell a story where I messed up. In our kitchen, everything’s ready to start getting installed. All the walls are up, I’ve got my plumbing roughing sitting out and we didn’t change the cast iron pipe that went to the sink, and I was just going to saddle it and tie it and keep going, cause I didn’t want to deal with- It seemed as though this cast iron pipe, on the vent side was basically the only thing holding up the wall. I didn’t really want to take it out and then reframe, and then try to like… 

KM: Even though that’s the right thing to do, Tom. 

TR: I know, I know.

KM: Anyway, so you didn’t want to do that, I understand.

TR: It’s funny, the more I look at it, I knew that was the right thing to do. So as soon as I tied the sink in it starts leaking and I’m looking and I have to replace it, so the walls are already closed. I have not done more than supply connections with like shark bites so far. I didn’t want to touch a lot of it, because I know it’s not a strength of mine. So I brought plumbers in to handle all of that. And so sitting there took me maybe all day to cut out the cast iron pipe, cause first it’s all the wrong tools that I’m using.

KM: Of course, of course. Yeah, that’s the worst. Using the right tools for the job is another tip. They save a lot of time. I do the same thing all the time, and the whole time I’m thinking, if I had the right tool here, I would be almost done.

TR: I got 60% of the way through cutting it out, and I left and went to Home Depot and spent the $500 to buy the right tool. And it took me 20 minutes after that. But I cut it out, and then I’m in the basement, I’m sort of practicing how to make sure I glue my PVC properly. And my uncle’s a contractor and he was telling me, as soon as you connect these it’s going to start to set, so you got like five seconds to get that in place right and make sure you size everything out right. So I do that and I‘ve got it and I’m ready. And I go to put it in the wall, I’m sliding it down, I’m getting ready to glue the two pieces, and I put in the downpipe and I’ve got my Y coming off of it. And the one part going up to the vent, and I stop and I look at it and I realize it’s at an angle. So I go to turn it but I waited a little too long, cause I was like, is that at an angle? Is it? And I waited too long, I went to go turn it and it’s glued. It’s in place. It’s not moving. So then I’ve got this offset piping thing going down around and shooting back in.

KM: Someone’s gonna open that back up in like 40 years and think, what was happening here? What were they even thinking? 

TR: Yeah, I wonder about that. And I have to say the one thing that I- and this is like, probably only an architect would do, because I’ve got a set of drawings that show where every wire, every pilot pipe in the walls are, just so that at some point when I do have this dream of doing the extension on the back, it’s like so I got this wire here, I’ve got those pipes there, gotta make sure I plan around those. But for now it’s just like, yeah, one day somebody is gonna open this up and be like, who did this? 

KM: Well that’s fun, that’ll be a fun puzzle for them to figure out. But I mean, in that case you practiced, but it’s still hard to do.

TR: You can’t account for the years of training that some of the professionals have.

KM: Well, that’s true. I mean, they did it however many times. So sometimes, the moral of that story is- there are a couple. One, don’t worry about it if your plumbing is kind of strangely rooted in the wall, so that would be the takeaway. But then also, if you pay a professional to do their job, they probably can do it faster and better than you can.

TR: Yeah, I mean, that was like a 3 day process. And then at the end, because I wasted so much pipe testing and trying to learn how to do this, I was about two feet short on PVC.

KM: Oh no. But you enjoyed it, you had fun though. 

TR: I did, I did. It’ll be a great story for down the road one day. 

KM: Okay, so then what else do they do to get ready for their… 

TR: Furniture for some reason I feel like, and maybe this is just something that we deal with, you know, our house is not big, it’s a 500 square foot footprint on two levels, sidewall colonial. So there’s a wall down the middle for the back half of the house. And we got like this galley kitchen and call it a galley dining room. In our old place, at our old apartment, it was pretty spacious and the spaces were open. So we had this large table, this large couch. And when we moved here, it was like, oh, this couch is too big for this room, and this table is too big for this room. And so then we go shopping, and we’ve got to be extra conscious of the actual size of the pieces we’re getting to make sure they fit in the room. I’m an HGTV addict, I’ll think that’s a really cool feature. And then I’m like, okay, where does that actually fit. But it does give us an opportunity to do some really cool things with just rethinking how we use our walls for shelving. We’ve got some furniture down. So we’ve got a couch, we’ll call it a futon plus, like the adult futons, when it’s set up, and closed up it looks like a regular couch. It’s comfortable like a regular couch. And then it has a trundle you could pull out and the back folds flat, so you can change it into a bed because we don’t have the spare bedroom, and my mom wants to come visit the baby in a couple of months. It converts to a queen bed, but not like the pull-out beds that have that awkward bar in the middle. So one of the things we’re working on now is trying to find a chair to put in the living room that’s not too big, that’s comfortable. And we’ve gotta figure out our dining room situation, cause that table, we currently have it up against one wall and we only pull it out when it’s a holiday. I had done those, speaking about TikTok where we met, I’ve done like a bunch of those videos just on how to understand drawing and scale, just because it becomes important to understand what fits in something. The next room over here is our nursery and we know it works right now for an infant, but as soon as she’s out into a bed, it’s going to start becoming a problem because the rooms basically eight by eight, the only thing you can really fit in there’s like a twin bed against the wall. 

KM: Maybe she won’t grow to be very big. I mean, she’ll just be like maybe a petite young woman who could live in that.

TR: With not too much stuff. We’ll get her into like a very swedish design style. 

KM: Definitely nurture that minimalism with her. That’d be good. 

TR: One toy, that’s all you get.

KM: One beloved toy. It’s really important to figure out if the room is going to function as you want it to, and drawing a bed in there, I always do that in my models because I want people to see how their bed is going to end up fitting in there. Because you definitely don’t want to build a bedroom that doesn’t have room for your bed, or a dining room where you can’t get up from the table because your chair’s too close to the wall. 

TR: Yep. And that’s our dining room right now. This room, since I closed my physical, my office office, I’m now working from home, we did spend a little time sort of figuring this out. And then came the baby. So now it’s like, oh, look, we got this rocker thing. Planning it really helps. We went through so many iterations of what this room could look like with the furniture we have. You have the monitors that, even the one I’m talking to you on, we’ve mounted it to the wall, the desktops are like mounted underneath the desk and off the floor. So we’ve got under-table storage between this table and the next one and shoving the plotter into the closet and then putting these heavy shelf brackets to try to get as much space out of this tiny space as possible. Because me and my wife both work out of this one room. And then there’s the downside, her new job has her on the phone a lot, Zoom calls and stuff. Cause she’s managing a team of four people plus doing training and stuff. So it’s like, okay. Every once in a while I’m moving, which I forget who’s in what room who’s got a Zoom when. 

KM: I know, there are so many layers of challenges going on with this being home all the time.

TR: Yeah. But just the fact that you plan it out, sometimes having that- I think you joked about it being like a marriage counselor and the architect. But like being able to look at it and say, okay, that is a great dream, but what happens when these situations, having that outside person give you… I very recently did not take a job past preliminary design because I didn’t want to sort of be associated when they get frustrated with the project down the road. The house had the potential to be really beautiful. He was taking this smaller dated house and expanding it significantly for him, his wife, his three kids. They had already worked from home. The one kid was homeschooled and the whole first floor was supposed to be just a huge open space. And I’m like, you don’t want to just like, one room maybe just to like potentially close off? No, no, I want it all open. I’m like, just one? Like just give yourself like an office, something. No, I got the game room in the basement. I’m like, sure, but you’ve got- The one kid was an infant, the other one was a toddler. I think two toddlers, an infant, and then a pre-teen girl. And it was just like…

KM: There’s a lot of activity in that house.

TR: A lot of activity, a lot of activity.

KM: Yeah. Like I did a TikTok about all the different things that could be potentially happening on a daily basis. Trying to do it in the same space, that just leads to a lot of problems.

TR: Yeah. And I would have loved to be able to take this all the way through, but I know there’s going to come a point in which he’s going to say that this was my design and it was not what he wanted. 

KM: So what did you…

TR: I went to preliminary design, handed him over the plans like, hey, here’s everything I’ve done. Find someone else to take it all the way. 

KM: Was he okay with that? Just out of curiosity.

TR: He wasn’t happy, but I was like, I really don’t want to. I don’t want that on me. 

KM: I understand, yeah. I mean, I’ve been increasingly coming to realize that I am not driving the bus on a lot of my projects, and yet they’re my projects. Or are they my projects? Whose projects are they? And I just feel like this isn’t going to work out well, even though you refuse to believe what I’m saying to you. So you’re inspiring me to maybe just write preliminary drawings all over it.

TR: Yeah. This is one of my leftover bad habit projects where contractors who did something got caught for not having permits. And I dealt with this with him before, and I’m like, you’re doing an addition on a house, what do you think is going to happen? He’s like oh, it’s just a small little one room. And then we’re also going to add this and then we’re going to add that and like, okay, well we might have a zoning issue. I need to survey. Well, can’t you just draw? I’m like, sure, I can draw all day, but I can’t do the zoning side to make sure it’s going to be okay until we get the survey. Surveyor gets done, sends me over the plans. I’m like, we’ve got so many variances on everything, and he’s already got footings poured. So to tell the owner, I don’t know what to tell you. We’ll go to the board, we’ll hope and pray they are in a good mood…

KM: What happened?

TR: Oh, we’re still waiting for our zoning board deed. And he’s just like, oh, but can’t I just give you more money? Yeah, you can give me money all day! 

KM: Yes please give me more money, but that’s not going to help anything. Yeah. I mean, there are steps you have to take. And that is another good tip, is to make sure if you’re not hiring an architect to make sure that you check with the building department about what you’re planning to do. 

TR: Check to make sure what you plan to do, what you can do. Even just pulling up, if you have the survey from when you purchase the house and bringing that with you to the zoning office just be like, hey, I’m thinking about this. And it’s always best to sort of call ahead and schedule your meeting than just show up because that’s important. 

KM: Yes. Well, especially now a lot of the offices are closed. 

TR: Yeah. But I find that generally most of them are very friendly to wanting to help you figure it out as long as you’re willing to not tell them exactly what you’re going to do, just like, hey, I was thinking about this, is this something possible? I know some towns around here, they don’t want to deal with it. But a lot of the zoning inspectors, a lot of the building guys and women that I dealt with, they’ll take the time. If they know you’re coming in there, you know, you bring as much information as possible with you, and it can save you a lot of headache.

KM: Yeah, definitely. They’re very friendly in my town and helpful to people. I’ve been there behind people waiting, and they’re just explaining things over and over to people in a very patient way. And I’m thinking, I don’t have this kind of time to wait, but it is very nice that they are very patient and really explaining things to people who have never done it before. So if you happen to be someone who is afraid of the building inspector, generally speaking, the building inspector is your friend and don’t try to get anything by them. 

TR: No, never. Cause as soon as you try, they’re gonna look for any nuanced code they can find to hit you on. 

KM: Yep. That will not be good.

TR: So the guy that did the addition with no permits, I slapped on the front page, under my scope of work on the project, we understand that these things have been done, we know that it’s a problem. We’re going to try our best to get through it, I called up the town as soon as they were submitted to try to explain, make sure they knew. I said yes, we’re very aware, we’re not trying to hide, this is a mistake of understanding. So we’re here to help them get through it, but… 

KM: Wow, well they’re lucky to have you helping them through it. That could have been a big problem. Anything else you can think of? 

TR: Hire an architect.

KM: In the end, hire an architect.

TR: I know it’s sort of like a biased opinion, but the amount you spend on our services really saves you at the end of the day. And having an upfront conversation, like don’t try to hide your budget number also. Oh my, don’t hide your budget numbers. Especially from your architect.

KM: Yeah, please don’t do that. 

TR: Depending on who you’re hiring I don’t know if you do it, but do you go through and do your preliminary pricing and everything with them? Or…

KM: What I prefer to do is have them have a contractor that they’ve chosen who’s onboard earlier, so that we have the actual source right there. Especially now, because things are so busy that I feel like contractors aren’t that into – and not that they ever have been maybe – but into being part of a bidding… that guy who’s giving the third price, or that woman who’s giving the third price. They’re too busy, understandably for that. So I feel like if people just interview the contractors, figure out what level of service they want from contractors and then pick one. And then you’re dealing with that person’s actual schedule and that person’s price, and they can advise on it, and it’s just a team earlier. 

TR: Having that team though, it’s become a requirement for lead projects now, so. 

KM: I mean, it makes sense because you have this person who’s really going to be building it part of the discussion. 

TR: Yeah. Because then I’m not, you know, I deal with this- This has become one of the things that’s come up recently. So last year at the code officials conference thing, they said, it’s been in the residential code for so long that you have to have a manual J, manuals J, D and S for new heating systems, cooling systems, and most places haven’t been requiring it. But now they are, everywhere. So I’ll go and I’ll do a manual J, I’ll do the D and S, I’ll base it on, usually I go with a Goodman or Rheem system. And then you get the contractor on and he’s like, oh, I just installed this other brand that I- you know, whether he gets a good deal on it or whatever it is. If he was involved earlier, it just would have been a ten second thing for me to change in the software, we would have had the exact documentation to go along with what he was planning on installing. 

KM: Exactly. That’s why it makes sense to me. And really people’s prices, I don’t know how much you can rely on bid prices right now. There’s the whole added, this seems like it’s going to be a big pain or I’m really busy anyway, and I don’t care if I get the job or whatever other upcharge that they’re adding. So it’s not like you get much information out of it. 

TR: There’s a nonprofit, one of my first commercial projects on my own was with a nonprofit that had a very set dollar amount for their expansion. And I did this scope of work and we did the drawings to sort of figure it out, how to multipurpose as much space as possible, cause they didn’t have a lot of space and they didn’t have a lot of money. And because of where the funds came from, it had to be publicly bid. So, you know, put it in the paper, we start hearing back from all sorts of contractors. Originally, I was supposed to be a part of the reviewing of the bids. It only turned into me sort of preparing a template for the bidders to put in their numbers, and then they chose and came back to me like, hey, we have a contractor. And I’m like, wait, what? Hold on a second. They chose the lowest bid and I look at it and I’m like, there’s no way everything that we have on the drawings is- Like, oh, we talked to him and he’s going to do all that, and we’re gonna get him to do these other projects. So it’s like, okay, sure, sure… I don’t know if that’s the wisest idea. And they’re like, no no no, he said he can do it. And then we get halfway through demo, start ordering materials for construction, and issues come up. Not enough money, they’ve added too much to the project, they can’t do it for the- I’m like, if you had included me, we could have at least added some additional questions to send back to them. Like, are you making sure you’re including this? The reframing of the floor so we can have these wider open.

KM: Yup. That’s another reason to have an architect, I guess. Take a look at what they’re including and comparing people’s prices, because if someone’s far lower than other people, it’s probably because they’re not including things. I mean, what else could it be? 

TR: That was exactly what it was, all the missing parts of the scope. It came back to bite them down the road. 

KM: It all kind of reminds me of you not having the right tool and doing stuff yourself, where someone with experience could have done it a lot faster. It’s just a similar thing. People like to design their own thing.

TR: It’s funny, design their own thing- this client just sent me this, like I want to do this addition on here. I’m like oh, that’s…

KM: Okay, you’re almost done.

TR: I just need you to put it on paper. I recently drove past my first new construction house and I looked at it and I was like, oh man, I did that? I take no credit for that one. So that one, I just showed you the SketchUp, I was sitting down with the guy, and I mean luckily he’s understanding that he doesn’t fully know what he’s doing. So he was just like, this is my idea and please help me figure it out. But he mentioned something during the conversations like, oh yeah, you know, we had this well put in and when they were digging, there’s this much of sand. And I’m like, wait, keep going? You got five and a half feet of sand? and then did you guys find out what’s after the sand? He’s like, yeah, there’s like a clay… I’m like, oh, that moves. When do you hit something that’s solid? We might have to get a soil boring done here so we can check what our soils are, cause that doesn’t sound promising to me right now.

KM: No it doesn’t sound too promising. I mean, there are lots of technical things like that, that go beyond what you might see on HGTV, right? 

TR: I mean, I think the one, this one sort of sticks with me, the one episode where the, what are… the twins. 

KM: Brothers or something. 

TR: One of them is doing their own house and he wanted the basement. 

KM: I don’t actually watch those shows, to tell you the truth, so I don’t really know.

TR: Okay, so he walks down to his basement, he wants to take it down, cause they’re tall, they’re like six foot six each or whatever. And so he wanted like, eight, nine foot ceilings. They start digging and they come up with some issue and then they realize they have to bring in an engineer to test the soil. I think it was like the only time in an HGTV show, like that’s a real thing. You gotta make sure you know what you’re putting your house on. And they started talking about that, but that’s what we’re going to deal with here. We’ve got five foot of sand, sand moves and gets watered. You don’t have anything solid. And under that was clay and clay moves. So you want your house to sit on something solid, and that’s part of the process. There’s a nonprofit that does a lot of disaster relief work. And a lot of it is they’re sort of coming in after the contractors who’ve kind of screwed people, and some people have gotten their stuff done, but some are like, people stole their money. They come in and try to help a lot of those people get their projects done. So we do a lot of house liftings and we’re constantly checking and coming to a lot of soil issues. There’s a whole section of this one town that was all infill. And you know, we’re not hitting anything solid until we’re down eight, ten feet and we’re two blocks from the beach. 

KM: Are you on the beach, right where you are?

TR: No, I’m closer to New York City, maybe like 45 minutes from the beach, if even. But like, yeah, some of these are really close to the beach and you’re like, you got water. Like I’ve got this one, the guys are running the pumps constantly so they can de-water so they can do their foundation. And that’s a cost that these guys didn’t account for. 

KM: Yeah. Well, there’s a lot of things like that ,there are solutions, but you need professional help figuring out what those solutions are. Obviously you’re on TikTok. Do you want to talk about that for a second? You can be found at TikTok architect. Can I ask you the burning question? How did you get that name? 

TR: It was available and I just grabbed it. Because I actually have a personal account, which has the same username as all my other social media accounts. And then I was like, y’know- Okay, let me back up this a bit. I got on TikTok when we were down at my wife’s family’s shore house, and she has these cousins that at the time they were between seven and ten. And the one kid was doing a video for TikTok, and he was doing the Macarena. And I’m like, I know that dance- but he didn’t call it the Macarena, it was the Macarena though. And I was like, I know that dance. He’s like, you do, you know that dance? Show me how to do it! It was like, like this. He’s like, oh, let’s do it together. And I’m like, for what? For TikTok? What is TikTok? So I ended up joining. And you know, their algorithm, I have to say their algorithms are pretty good at figuring out things you like. And because it’s all about new content, trying to introduce you to new content, unlike Facebook, which is really like looking at your own friends or people you know. I started getting filtered towards a lot of actual lawyers, doctors. I love doctor pimple popper type videos. 

KM: What? I have never even seen one on TikTok. And now my phone’s listening to me and now I’ll probably see one this afternoon. 

TR: Careful, you’re gonna end up with a lot of them. So I ended up getting sort of pushed towards those professionals. And then I ran into Architect Russell, who’s this British architect in Tanzania. And I was like, oh, I could talk about architecture. Like my friends always tell me I need an architect friend instead of talking about it with them. So I was like, okay, let me try it. And I was like, I wonder if TikTok Architect- cause I think it was like TikTok Lawyer who I was a big fan of. So it’s like oh, let’s see if TikTok Architect’s available. And I was like, it is. That’s mine. Got it.

KM: Good one. That was a good score. 

TR: Yeah. My one friend Dave, who’s a civil engineer, he actually just grabbed TikTok Civil Eng

KM: Well, that was a while ago I’m guessing, was it?  

TR: Oh, a year and a half. 

KM: That’s a long time in TikTok time. 

TR: It is a long TikTok time ago.

KM: This podcast is like, it’s supposed to be for homeowners to try to help them…

TR: Tell them to hire an architect. 

KM: All right, I’m going to come out and just say, just hire the architect. 

TR: Hire the architect, save yourself the headache.

KM: Yes. And we talk a lot about the value that we bring, and it doesn’t really matter what our fee is, because if you mess up your house you could be- not mess it up like you have the pipes facing the wrong way, but I mean, mess it up, like the way you’re laying out the house or just the aesthetics of the house. I mean, that can really affect the price of your house.

TR: The one that I used to have trouble with communicating to my clients is spending the time on the design because you can solve all your problems, as many as possible I should say, there. And so you do the exploration, you look at the design, you work it through, you’re open and honest about it and you can come up with… You save yourself on the back end, just headache, just the headache of what could have gone wrong and sort of being prepared for it. And if you keep your architect on through construction, which I always think you should, I realize, even now I’m going to rehabs, walking through it with a contractor they’re going to use and I’m just like, oh, by the way, we got to make sure we’re doing this because there’s a- and the guy would be like oh, okay, I’ll make sure I’m pricing that in. Those are the things that not everyone’s gonna know unless they’ve been here and done it. That’s the value we bring. And I mean, you pay us a couple bucks so that you can save the change order. 

KM: It’s just a couple bucks. You’re not asking a lot. 

TR: Not at all. They’re medium dollars. 

KM: Thank you so much.

TR: No worries.

KM: Thank you so much, Tom. A lot of fun talking to you.

TR: It has been, thank you.

KM: Hopefully I’ll see you around again. I mean, I know I’ll see you probably this afternoon, as soon as I go back on Tik TOK for the afternoon. I’ll see you there. 

TR: I’ll see you on the internet.