KBDNRadio Podcast with Ginger Rabe
I was super excited and honored to have been awarded the 2021 Innovators Award from Kitchen and Bath Design News, and with that I was invited to share some of my secrets and insights on KBDNRadio.
I am a Mom-trepreneur, an educator, a board member, and now a podcaster! I really enjoyed chatting with Autumn from KBDNRadio and it’s inspired me to start my own podcast later this year.
This is the first of many podcast episodes in 2022. I am inspired to be sharing my industry secrets in a collaborative educational speaker series called DESIGN YOUR LIFE starting this month as well. Once a month I invite my trusted network professionals to join me in speaking on a variety of interior design and custom build subjects, live in front of an audience, and on-site at fun showrooms and luxury homes in my network.
We will be kicking off February at my showroom in Village Faire, Carlsbad, then moving around San Diego County each month for an evening of beautiful design and exciting new product presentations on subjects as broad as backyard renovations, and as detailed as cabinet/drawer pulls.
But in this episode of KBDNRadio I to talk about the ups and downs of the interior design, and renovation build process. Check out my quick 20min podcast episode on Kitchen & Bath Design News Radio:
Autumn: This week we are talking to designer and business owner Ginger Rabe — Hey Ginger, it's great to have you with us today! Can you explain a little about you and your company?
Ginger: We are a full design-firm which is great because it makes us a little unique in the fact that we're able to take the build all the way from concept to completion. We lead the design process from the beginning so there is always a plan, and by time we get to the end of a project we can see where we've come from, know that everything has been done correctly, and that we've stayed on the original path that was planned. I want projects to comes together in a holistic way and never looks like it's been put together by committee — by random input or ideas at various stages of the project. The result of that is a disjointed design, and sometimes poor craftsmanship.
I've been doing this for 17 years now and I have found that leading the design and build through the entirety of a project is a great way to kind of get everybody going, in the right direction, and keep everyone on task and more importantly on time. Many clients simply think we are just interior design and when they realize we can handle a full remodel or custom build it opens up opportunities and ideas for them — we don't just make spaces pretty, we make dreams come true. And being kind of a one-stop-shop helps the stressful process of remodeling or building a home enjoyable. My team removes some of the added obstacles of managing multiple vendors and being the middle man.
Autumn: What do you think sets your design process apart and how have you learned from your experience. How has it made you modify your process since the start of your career and the start of your firm?
Ginger: Oh my gosh, there’s so much, in 17 years! Oh the stories, I could make a coffee table book, haha. Our design process over the many years of me doing this has evolved into basically three steps:
When we meet with a client we find out what their wants and their needs are. We sit down with them for an hour and really have an in-depth conversation to get to know them, their style, and how their lifestyle demands a new design. It really takes us down the road of where we/they really need to be, and how we need to get there.
From there we conceptualize, we design the whole project. We give them conceptual 3D so they visually can see everything. We constantly hear from our clients, and colleagues, that we are one of the only firms that do that. Real life design and build projects don’t look like HGTV’s 3D models that have video illustrations of walls sliding around and 360-degrees of the space filled with furniture. But we try to get as close to that customization and conceptualizing of a client’s project so they can really ‘be’ in their new space, and walk them through what their new improved future is going to be.
Then we roll into construction documents — I have a great drafting team that really helps with that so I don’t have to do that all by myself anymore [Amber laughs], and from there we go to a full build.
I am really lucky that I have done all of the things, and I have great teams that help me with all of that now. My team members and my staff are really integral in us staying on the path and getting us all the way there. And it’s nice because they have other people to talk to other than myself, and we’re all fun and creative in our own way. We joke around a lot because construction is stressful, and design is stressful, especially with everything going on now.
So our process is kind of slower now, which probably helps us out and gives us more time to educate our clients. For us we do this everyday, this is normal, “What do you mean you don’t understand?” Our three step process is really about educating our clients on how things work.
To lean into that, our experiences that brought my business to this point — in the beginning it was just designing. Then I found out that the contractors and architects were often disjointed and often times nobody seemed to know what was going on. My solution to that was to build a team, and we all work together like a well oiled machine. From start to finish, on each project, we have an efficient process, everyone knows what’s going on, and we kind of taking the headache out of things for the client.
When I first started I always saw so many problems on the building side and that’s what led me to becoming a full-service design-build firm. So we’ve completely changed, we’ve evolved over the years, and I think we change almost every year.
“It all hinges on having a really good team!”