Luxescapes Process
Your landscape should not only enhance your home, it should reflect your personality and lifestyle. We want to find out what allows you to relax, what stimulates you, what you take pride in, and then create a pleasing, inspiring living space for you to enjoy. We strive for a vast understanding of different styles and themes and encourage the thought of pushing the envelope and thinking outside the box. Our passion lies in designing custom elements for dining, entertaining, and relaxing. We Believe your outdoor extension starts with a strong design and attention to detail. Creativity and imagination will continue to play vital roles through implementation with skilled masons and artisans.
Consultation
Your landscape design starts with a free on-site consultation with one of our designers. This consultation is a chance for you to get to know more about us, tell us your thoughts and ideas for your landscape, and ask your many questions. It is also a time for our designer to get to know more about you, explore options you may or may not have considered about the potential of your site, address any visible concerns with your site, and discuss overall functionality. At this time a "ballpark" estimate can be explored to help you establish a budget before you start the design process. By the end of this meeting our designer will have a good idea of how long it will take to complete the design and can provide you with a quote for the design process. Our design fees are very affordable and will also be applied to the construction of your project!
Budget Goal (established during consultation)
Too many companies start their designs without a budget, and the result is that their designs are too often way over budget and unrealistic. Our process starts with a budget goal, and our designers value-engineer the design to make sure you are getting the most for your money! The differences between a tract home and a custom home are much the same between a cookie-cutter landscape and a custom landscape. We are not a cookie-cutter landscape company. Our designs are custom and unique to each specific home site and its homeowner(s) and require quite a bit of time and effort to complete. Thus our designs need to have an established budget goal, just like when someone starts looking for a home. This does not mean you are restricted to this goal, but rather it gives our designer a starting point to work from, and will make the design process more time efficient, realistic, and attainable.
Design
A good design will include and enhance architectural styles and themes, whether it is a Tuscan Courtyard style or Mountain Naturalistic setting; A great design will pair these concepts with you, the individual. The design process includes a series of meetings and revisions. The number of meetings and length of time for the overall process will vary based on the complexity of the project, and decisions made at presentation meetings. The entire design process can take a few days to a few months, with the average being around a couple of weeks. The first meeting is the consultation meeting, while all subsequent meetings are presentation/revision meetings. At the first presentation meeting our designer will bring a concept design showing the layout, and generic plant placements along with any related sketches and photos to help illustrate where the design is headed. At this meeting, both low and high rough estimates will be brought to help narrow down the scope of work and material choices to be used for the next revision. Narrowing the scope of work and reviewing the functionality of your landscape design will be first priority for this meeting. Once these are established, material choices, construction methods, specific plantings, and other elements can be discussed as criteria for the first revision of the design. Future revisions will include a detailed accurate cost estimate and should include only minor changes in plantings or labeling as the budget goal, scope, and layout should be established after the first presentation meeting. Each design revision will be more and more detailed, and so will each estimate. The final design will be HOA or ARC ready. All that's left to start construction is a contract!
Estimates
We believe very strongly that there should be no hidden fees or costs, and are very upfront about these! Our estimates are very detailed and thought out, from demolition to debris removal, and material staging to installation. With the experience of our designers, and the review of each estimate by the Owner, we guarantee that our contracts are fixed price lump sum! This means that we will NOT nickel and dime over items that we miscalculated or forgot on the estimate! However, if a major unforeseeable factor, which could affect the cost of your project, presents itself (i.e. a buried and abandoned swimming pool, or a 3 foot hidden void under an existing patio - *these have happened*), we will stop what we are doing, notify you, and immediately work together to come to a cost effective solution that appeases both parties before we continue your project. Nothing on a project is done without written consent from the buyer! Each item in your landscape, whether it is a sprinkler head, a shrub, or square foot of patio, is broken out separately on the itemization with its respective price. If there are any additions or deletions as a result of a change order (design or scope change), these unite prices will remain consistent and will be used to calculate the change order. Compared to some contractors who bid low and then come back later to nickel and dime the buyer, our initial fixed price lump sum contract may seem higher in the beginning, but will save you in the end!
Landscape Contract
The same detailed itemization and landscape drawings you approve become the basis for the landscape contract. Our contracts are NOT vague in their descriptions, but rather very detailed and outline every aspect that has been discussed during the meetings with the Buyer. Our contracts are written in layman's terms, and are very straight forward.
Change Orders
Change Orders are drafted when there is a substitution, or design/scope of work change at the Buyer's request or authorization. We understand that there may be changes along the way after the contract has been signed, and we are very accommodating to these changes. We do NOT charge a markup on our change orders, but rather will increase or decrease the final contract price according to the exact line-item prices included in the original itemization of the contract. Simple change orders can affect the schedule of a project. For that reason we schedule our projects on a rough timeline, but in a specific order that does not change. If a more complex change order will affect a project by adding more than a few days to the timeline we will ask that it will be treated as a new project and will be place in our schedule at the end of the order so it will not drastically affect the start time of the projects after it.
Schedule
Once our crew's show up to start work, the same crew stays on the project until it is finished! This may sound simple and ordinary, but many of our competitors use different crews to juggle their projects and schedules around, and end up dragging out a project for much longer time than it should have taken. Our crews are very experienced and have a knowledge and skill set to complete any project with the quality and standards we have set as a company. A dedicated project foreman works to ensure your project is completed in a timely manner while keeping an eye on quality and coordinating with specialty trade subcontractors if necessary. Our goal is to make sure your project is complete before we start the next project. For this reason, we do not guarantee a specific start date, but rather give you a rough timeline based on the specific order of projects in our schedule, both before and after yours.
Installation
Interpretation of the design is extremely critical to how your project takes form. Our designer maintains communication with you and the project foreman throughout the entire construction process. Daily inspections by the designer, and constant communication company-wide are critical components to every project, and this is what gives a small company like us a huge advantage in our industry. Every employee's focus is on each project and our customer's satisfaction. Our size and quality of employees is what maintains consistency in the quality of products and services we offer. Licensed and insured Subcontractors are only brought in for specialty trades like gas lines and electrical. All other work is done in house by our full time crews. We love what we do, and it shows in our work!
