Welcome to RLW Design & Construction! This blog is my attempt to use my woefully underutilized degree in Journalism to some effect in welcoming you all into the world of remodleling and how we arrived here, as well as provide you with hopefully helpful information from time to time regarding design trends - especially as they come and go in the Great State of Texas.
A little about us: I'm a native New Yorker (but Texas has been home for over 40 years) and Texas Aggie, and Hubby is a Baylor Bear and native Texan. We have been married for coming-up-on 30 years and have spent most of that time in Texas, with a brief stop in Las Vegas in the late 90's (fun place to visit but we got back home as soon as we could!).
Robert grew up in a rural community south of Houston and spent his childhood learning the building trades from his father, a master electrician by trade a expert woodworker by hobby.
As a couple, we took on adding desired architectural elements to our homes as something for Robert to feed his ongoing love of "physical work" and keeping those trades skills from getting rusty after purchasing a managment training business that has kept him tied to the corporate world since 2000. We've bought and sold 11 homes in San Antonio and three homes in South Padre Island in the last 25 years, and have added pools and/or outdoor kitchens to several of them. We also remodeled a townhome in Key West with friends and still own that one today.
We've become quite proficient at remodeling our own properties, and we lived in every one of the San Antonio homes during the remodels. We also brought our children into the business during their teen years and both of our kids have learned a lot about hard work, physical labor, and the satisfaction of building something for yourself in the process. I have always had an interest in design and I handle that side of the remodels for our properties. Robert has a great eye as well and chimes in on practicality of design as well as cost-effectiveness when certain elements carry hidden costs many clients dont realize will put paticular projects out of budget. Let me be clear - I'm not a licensed designer. Interior Designers are highly-trained, educated and licensed professionals. I am an added resource to our remodeling projects to assist with design selections for clients at little to no additional cost to regular GC markup. We come as a package.
Our successes with our properties as well as completing every pool we've undertaken in under 90 days has led to the word getting out and people we know asking us to remodel their homes or build a pool for them. We have gone through the required steps to get incorporated, obtain insurance, licensing, etc. and here we are! As of this blog post writing we've completed pools and/or outdoor kitchens for several clients, have completed full-house remodels for three client homes, and partial-home remodels for several more. We've decided its time to "go public" with a website to see if there are more families in the San Anotnio area who can utilize our services.
So that's us - welcome and please take a look around our site at some of our projects. We're very proud of our work and would love to talk to you about your project and see if RLW D&C would be a fit for you.
-Laura