Featured on this episode:

• Join The Designers Edge waitlist here
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• Access the full video interview with Elana Steele of Steele Appliance here

What you will learn from this episode:

• Why trade relationships save projects that processes alone never could
• How to vet, start, and maintain relationships with new subcontractors
• What it actually looks like when those relationships show up for you mid-project

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When designers talk about managing construction, the conversation almost always goes straight to the contractor. And yes, that relationship matters. But there is an entire layer of people underneath it that almost nobody talks about, and in my experience, they are the ones who actually save your projects.

The tile setter. The faux painter. The trim carpenter. The wallpaper installer standing in a powder room at the end of the day, calling you with an apology in his voice before he’s even said a word. These are not interchangeable laborers. They are collaborators. And the designers who understand that distinction build something over time that cannot be bought and cannot be shortcut.

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Why This Episode Exists

Right now, I am in the middle of a project that made me want to record this immediately.

It started with a defined scope and a tight timeline — an empty home, clients out of state, large first floor plus a primary suite and multiple bathrooms, all needing significant renovation work. And then the scope roughly doubled. Maybe tripled. The clients realized they had talent in the room and kept asking, hey, while you’re here, could you also… We demo’d stone floors. We added spaces that weren’t in the original plan. We said yes to things we discovered along the way that were simply too good to walk past.

Every time the scope expanded, I told the clients clearly: when the scope grows, the timeline grows. That conversation is non-negotiable.

But here’s what I want you to hear. We are still within that stretched timeline, slim margin, but we’re there. And most of the people on this job had other work lined up. They didn’t have to stay. But they did. They came together, held as a team, and got it done anyway.

That does not happen with strangers. It happens with people who trust you.

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What Trade Relationships Actually Are

The team that will stretch for you doesn’t show up on day one. It gets built over time, one project, one person, one moment at a time.

And it starts before the first project even begins.

When I’m vetting a trade I haven’t worked with before, I’m looking at more than their portfolio. I’m watching how they show up before they have any skin in the game. Do they return calls? Do they show up when they say they will? Are they honest about what they can and can’t do?

I also listen to how they talk about past designers and past jobs. Someone who carries resentment about being held to a standard is not someone I want on my team. But someone who talks with genuine pride about something they’ve built? That’s the beginning of someone worth knowing.

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Where the Best Trades Actually Come From

The best trades I’ve found have almost always come through other trades I already trust.

A plumber recommends a tile setter he met on another job. A painter mentions an electrician. Trades work alongside each other in real conditions, on real jobs. That referral is worth more than any online review ever could be.

This is actually how I found my new contractor this year. My longtime contractor — my Todd — retired last year. I was genuinely worried. He was my mid-sized project guy, and those aren’t easy to find. So I reached out to my trades, my colleagues, my architects. One conversation with an architect I trust led me to Greg, who is now on this current project and is extraordinary.

One honest recommendation. That’s how it started.

For designers who are just building their roster: start exactly where you are. Do you have a plumber who works on your own home? An electrician you like? Ask the people you already trust if they know someone they trust. That is how every network begins.

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Setting the Tone on Day One

On a first project with a new trade, I set the tone immediately.

I tell them how I operate, what my standards are, and what they can expect from me in return. And I tell them this specifically: if a client asks you to add or change something while you’re on site and I’m not there, the answer is always I’ll check with Renee and get back to you. Not yes, not no. It goes through me. Every time.

That boundary protects the trade, the project, and the client relationship.

But then I do something that genuinely catches new trades off guard — I advocate for their fee. When additional work comes up, I go to the trade first, ask what it will cost, and then bring all of that to the client myself. I do not expect anyone on my site to absorb extra work as goodwill.

Trades who experience this for the first time are honestly a little disoriented. They are so accustomed to clients expecting more for the same price that being asked straightforwardly what their fee is catches them off guard. But it signals something they don’t forget. I honor their expertise. I understand it has real value. And I will say that out loud to the client.

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The Trim Carpenter and the Grass Cloth Corner

I want to get specific, because the texture of how this plays out is the most useful part of this episode.

Last week, I specified real grass cloth wallpaper finishing on an outside corner. If you’ve worked with natural grass cloth, you know that outside corner is its most vulnerable point. I called for a corner bead, nothing dramatic, just something that would do its job and essentially disappear.

The trim carpenter I’ve been working with through Greg stood there with me and looked at it. He thought the three-quarter inch piece might feel bulky. He had the same concern I did. So he suggested mitering the edge so it tapers down to the paper. We spent fifteen minutes talking through form and function — how it would meet the base molding, whether it would project past that profile.

He came back the next day with the piece. We looked at it again in different light. And then he said something I hadn’t considered.

I don’t think we should glue this on. I think we should paint it first and install it with finish nails — so if anyone ever needs to remove it, the trim comes off clean and the grass cloth stays intact.

I had already planned to paint it first. But I never thought about not gluing it. Will someone need to remove that piece thirty years from now? Probably not. But we thought it through, and now it’s done in a way that protects everything underneath it.

My clients will never know any of that. I’m completely fine with it. We both know we elevated a detail most people would consider inconsequential — because that’s the kind of thought this team brings to their work.

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The Wallpaper Problem Solved in 24 Hours

I am a stickler about plates on walls. My guys all know: anything touching a surface gets treated as that surface. Walls get painted, plates get painted. Walls get wallpapered, plates get wallpapered.

On this project, I specified a Schumacher Tree of Life mural for the powder room — stunning, and it comes in a set of three panels that are not interchangeable. I was out of town when the installer finished. He called me, and I could hear it in his voice before he said a word.

There wasn’t enough of the right panel to cover the plates.

Plastic white plates against a creamy parchment background. A vent cover, two outlet plates, a double light switch plate — all screaming off the wall. Every other wallpapered room in this house had wallpapered plates. To me, these were going to be the most noticeable thing in the house.

A few minutes later, I texted the same photo to my faux painter, someone I’ve worked with for close to twenty years and one of the most extraordinarily talented people I’ve ever met. My text said: I’m in a bind. Can you give me a ballpark to hand-paint these plates to match the wallpaper, and what’s your availability?

His response came back in about ten minutes.

Sure, I’m actually free tomorrow. Here’s the cost. Can I meet you there?

Twenty-four hours after that apologetic phone call, the plates were hand-painted to match a complicated Tree of Life mural. The clients came in while it was still happening and were blown away seeing them half done.

That is what twenty years of working together looks like.

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The Tile Setter Who Rose to Something New

The shower enclosure I designed on this project is complex — multiple stone niches, custom shelves, pencil moldings, chair rail. Genuinely challenging to execute. And the tile installer, who I’ve worked with before but not extensively, had never done something quite that elaborate.

But I knew he could do it. So I stood by him.

We reviewed drawings together before the project started. Then we had to change them — studs where we didn’t want them, plumbing that needed to move. Six inches here, three inches there. When you’re doing picture moldings, those inches matter enormously.

So we did the layout on the wall. Then again. Then we did a full dry lay of one section on the floor. Three complete layouts, measuring and confirming and problem-solving together every single time.

He finished that shower last Friday. It is stunning. And he knows it.

That pride is what happens when you stand by someone and help them figure it out instead of simply expecting them to deliver — and then being disappointed when it gets hard.

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When Things Go Sideways Anyway

Real relationships aren’t always smooth. And I think pretending otherwise does everyone a disservice.

My painter has been working with me for over twenty years. In the last two years, he started working with a third-party spraying crew for cabinetry. I asked him to walk me through the process. He did, somewhat high-level, and said trust me — I’ve got you.

I said: I do trust you. But I also need to verify, because I’m the one scheduling everyone around this.

Throughout the project, I kept asking for a firm schedule. I kept getting loose parameters. Eventually the third-party schedule didn’t land where it needed to. Work shifted. My trim carpenters felt behind even though they weren’t. And my painter and I got frustrated with each other on site.

The tension was palpable. Everyone in the room felt it, because that is not normal between us.

We both recognized it at the same moment. So we walked outside into the driveway in scorching heat. I said, what is going on? He said he couldn’t control the third party, that he should have told me the day had changed, and that he wasn’t mad at me. I said I wasn’t mad at him either. But I needed the information so we could all move forward.

He said he was sorry. I said I was sorry too. He looked at me and said: are we good?

I said of course we’re good. And he gave me a hug.

My first job site hug, in the driveway, in the heat. And then we walked back inside laughing, and everyone stared at us trying to figure out what had just happened.

That is what a real relationship does. Things go sideways on construction projects — I don’t know when, I don’t know what, I don’t know the cause. But they do. And how you manage it is everything.

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How You Maintain It Between Projects

The trades who pick up the phone on a Friday afternoon aren’t doing it because you worked together once three years ago. They’re doing it because the relationship has been maintained — not intensely, just consistently.

Between projects, I stay in touch. I come across a new technique and ask for their opinion. A code changes and I call to ask what they think. They know they can do the same with me.

But here’s one of the simplest and most underused things designers can do.

Send the finished photos.

My plumbing rep at Ferguson, someone I’ve worked with for close to fifteen years, has told me more than once that I am one of very few designers who ever sends her the after photos. After everything she puts into my projects — the advice, the alternate sourcing, the backorder saves — she deserves to see what her work went into.

I do this with my furniture reps too. With my faux painter who is long gone by the time the room is finished. With anyone who helped bring the project to life but won’t be there at the end to see it. It costs nothing and it means everything.

And I refer my people. When anyone asks me for a tile person, a painter, a stone fabricator, my people go first. Every time.

The referral I send today is the phone call that gets picked up six months from now. That is not transactional. It is reciprocal. Transactional is keeping score. Reciprocal is understanding that good things flow between people who genuinely take care of each other.

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This Is Why Construction Brings Me Joy

I know people laugh when I say construction brings me joy. I hear it. But I mean it every single time.

It’s not the permitting. It’s definitely not the change orders. And it is not the Friday afternoon calls when something goes sideways.

It’s the faux painter who had hand-painted plates done by three-thirty in the afternoon for a problem I didn’t know I had the day before. It’s the tile setter who rose to something he’d never done and came out the other side with a shower that stops you in the room. It’s the painter I argued with and hugged it out with in the driveway and walked back inside laughing with. It’s my electrician whose son just got married, and we spent twenty minutes on a Monday morning going through wedding photos together.

I am one part of an enormous team. I know it, I say it, and I mean it.

The designers who truly understand this — who show up for their trades the way they want to be shown up for — build something that cannot be bought or shortcut. A network of people who will stretch when the scope triples, solve problems you didn’t know you had yet, and call you back on a Friday afternoon because they know that on your jobs, it is always worth it.

That starts one relationship at a time.

And when you build it, I promise you — the joy comes.

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Like this Episode?

Be sure to check out Episode #230: The Kind of Collaborator You Don’t Forget

Be sure to check out Episode #215: Why Designers Struggle with Trades—and How to Fix It

Be sure to check out Episode #161: A GC’s Perspective on the Power of Collaboration Between Builders and Designers with Sean Canada