Michael Popp is a Fort Wayne, Indiana resident who has been drawing up plans for years now. An older gentleman who has a kind, caring nature. No color TV and no answering machine in his house!
Timeliness was an issue from the beginning. It took over a year and a half to get the plans drawn up. There were at times months when we wouldn't hear from him and since he didn't have an answering machine we would call a couple of times a day and still not reach him. The building process was delayed a year due to how long it took to finalize the plans. As an architect, it is Michael's responsibility to push us, not us push him to get the plans done in a reasonable amount of time.
What can I say? We asked for an architect and we got one. Too bad he didn't look at our family and only keep in the design what would suit us. He drew in this an that... which never made it into the final project because it either was not economically feasible or was just wrong. Our "walk-in closet" would have never been big enough to walk-in. On the plans it looked right, but it wasn't to scale. Plans not to scale? Yes.
Another issue with the plans is that Michael does not own a computer. A red flag went up right away on the first meeting that he would be doing this by hand, but I assumed by the simplicity of what we were wanting that this would not be a problem. Ended up taking 3 times longer and changes were not easy to do. The first set of plans were illegible due to the printer and even after another printer they were still just legible. The contractors had a very hard time using the plans and ended up barely using them anyway.
The final kicker of the plans is when the appraiser came out he couldn't make heads or tails of the "formal" plans and used my computer drawn plans that I made a year earlier.
Bottom line is we wasted thousands of dollars on something that I wrote up myself before we hired Michael. The contractors used my plans more than they used Michael's and when they did use his they always modified parts to make it work in the real world.
Hopefully this page helps someone out there who is looking into using Michael's services. He did a nice job with the plans, but we didn't get near what we paid for. Quotes from 2 other architects quoted a fixed bid at around $1,500 including computer drawn plans of the entire house with every measurement - including electrical diagram. We barely got enough to build the home addition and paid much more than that.
1. Front entrance sidelight was drawn too big and didn’t have measurements on it for the door or sidelight we were to use. We didn’t have that much room to use up after framing.
2. Cathedral ceiling in the family room wasn’t noted on the plans. Builder ordered a flat ceiling framing package due to “not knowing”.
3. All window numbers where outdated and not able to be cross-referenced by any window retailer. The retailers came out and to determined the windows needed.
4. Circular wall above entrance was easily created using 3 walls and not using the circle technique. Saved much money and time.
5. Appraiser could not make heads or tails of the plans. He used a version I made in Word years back to get the numbers for the bank.
6. Took over 1.5 years to get the plans completed. In the mean time our contractor went on to another job and resources he was going to use on our construction left causing us to go with a subcontractor also costing an additional $15,000 more than if we had started a year back.
7. Architect was hard to contact due to not having an answering machine.
8. Was advised by all contractors that plans of this magnitude (yet very much lacking in most part) are not needed for renovation projects such as this. They hardly reference the plans when building.
9. Other bids we had to do the architectural work came in at a fixed $1,700 and $1,350 to draw up complete plans of the current house as well as a second set of the new additions… and have them delivered within 2 months.
10. The plans were not designed on a computer leading to slow plan creation and lengthened time modifying the plans.
11. The plans are hard to read as they are photocopied.
