Architecture and interior design thread

We'd originally hoped we'd get away with £120k, but after getting the keys and starting to poke around underneath the many layers of wallpaper, laminate flooring, carpet and 60s chipboard paneling it rapidly became clear this wasn't going to cut it. Cue a couple of years of saving and scrabbling and we went out to an architect with max. budget of £170k (this is for a three-storey mid-terrace). They did some great looking plans (in hindsight, too great looking), went through planning and got it all signed off but when it went out to tender everything was coming back around double (even with cost engineering). No way we could justify (let alone afford) that, so ripped up the plans, ditched the architects and stripped out all the complex, structural work and trick glazing and focused on getting the bare bones and detailing right.

Really happy with how it's turning out now, just wish we hadn't wasted so much time/money with the architects as they were impossibly ambitious with what they thought we'd be able to achieve with the budget, and some of their early decisions/recommendations that we did carry over have ended up costing us as they required non-standard sizes (sometimes by only a few centimetres) which has meant we've had to either amend details late on in the process or otherwise specify bespoke where we might have got away with off-the-shelf had we been aware of it earlier (I'm looking at you, pivot door).

Long story short, choose architects who have a track record in projects the same size as your own and stress test the plans with a contractor as early as possible to avoid getting burnt. If you're going to go ahead without an architect (as we are now) you'll need to prepare to spend what seems like every waking hour stressing over every individual detail in order to make sure it all comes together in the way it looks in your head (TBC on whether we've managed that).