Designed Happy The Podcast

Inspired by their recent in-studio event, Katie and TJ break down the three ways to redo a kitchen: cosmetic, pull and replace, and custom, and why most people walk in saying "we want to redo our kitchen" without realizing there are choices to make. Before that, TJ shares the client who went misty on a Zoom call the moment she realized her real Why, a story that lands harder than either of them ex...

Another surprise episode, which TJ handles with dread. A few days out from Halloween, Katie runs him through the everyday home symptoms that feel like a haunted house and asks when to shrug and when to worry. Howling wind, things that go bump in the walls, flickering lights, dripping faucets, creaky doors, they cover it all. Along the way we get the single greatest story this podcast has produced...

Friend of the show, Steve Scholl returns to talk through the world of putting an elevator in your house. Steve traces how he got into universal design after a visit home revealed his mother couldn't turn a doorknob, and why the reason people call has shifted from an emergency that needs it today to future-proofing a house they never want to leave. He and TJ get into hoistways, cabs, and multi-dire...

A twist on the usual Happy Home Story: instead of clients looking back on a finished project, Erin and Henry come on about a third of the way through their design process, still in the thick of it. They talk about the trauma-adjacent bathroom renovation that nearly scared them off doing anything else, the fatalism they kept hearing that these projects are just supposed to be miserable, and what ac...

The people spoke, the YouTube numbers came in, and cabinets get a sequel. This time TJ shares his screen and walks through the terminology you'll actually hear in a showroom, from five piece versus slab drawer fronts to raised versus flat panels to why your top drawer might need to be a different style than the ones below it. He gets into which accessories are worth it, why paying the cabinet manu...

The topic pairs nicely with the toilet episode: faucets. Katie thinks she has made it to the victory lap of the design process, then finds out some people touch their faucet 40 times a day and labor over it more than anything else in the house. TJ walks through the decision tree, from pull down versus pull out to single lever versus spread to the bridge faucet to the wall-mounted one that's offici...

TJ flips the mic on himself and walks through a personal design saga: the rose garden he built for Kat for their 20th anniversary. What starts as a grand romantic gesture turns into a real-world lesson in being on the other side of the table, from why he chose to bring in a professional instead of doing it himself, to the black background website that told him everything he needed to know, to the...

Surprise episode. No outline, no agenda, no idea what the topic is until they're rolling. Once they land on roofs, it turns out there's a lot more to decide than a triangle and some shingles. Katie and TJ get into roof shapes, why the very first question any roof has to answer is where the water goes, why the pitch you choose controls what material you're even allowed to put on top, and what happe...

Marc Cashin, first ever returning guest, is back to talk about what the luxury real estate market looks like this fall. He explains the little-known micro season that shows up a few weeks after school starts, why the interest rate conversation has fundamentally changed, and why waiting to buy might cost you more than you think. He and TJ also get into the real math behind renovating your current h...

Katie and TJ welcome DC realtor Jack Shorb to talk about the flip side of the downsizing episode: upsizing, or upgrading, which turns out to mean very different things to different people. Jack and TJ break down the big drivers behind find a house to upsize to, why the house someone really wants is often nearly impossible to find and ends up being built or renovated instead, and what to actually l...

Katie takes her usual measured approach and TJ, well, does not. This one is a rant with a point. TJ explains why HGTV is entertainment dressed up as education, why those $20,000 kitchen reveals are real numbers that mean nothing for your actual project, and what he found when he inspected two client kitchens that had been done on camera. He also admits his deepest, pettiest grudge. Plus a pitch fo...

It's the podcast's one-year anniversary and Katie and TJ mark it by tackling additions, inspired by their recent in-studio event. Before you spend hundreds of thousands of dollars tacking a box onto the back of your house, they walk through why you start with your why, how a heat map might reveal you don't need the addition at all, and the three foundation types (piers, crawl space, full basement)...

TJ tries to make zoning sound like Matthew McConaughey and cannot. Katie tries to connect it to Area 51, aliens, and whether 90s Will Smith could save the planet. Somehow they still deliver a genuinely useful overview of zoning: what it actually controls, how to look up your zone and find the ordinance, and what setbacks, lot coverage, and max building height mean for what you can build. Then TJ t...

The air horn is back. Katie and TJ celebrate 50 episodes by each sharing their three favorites, and TJ takes a well-deserved victory lap for calling the Knicks winning the NBA Finals back in the Houzz predictions episode from January. Then Katie pulls listener scenarios out of a hat and TJ recommends episodes for each one: first-time remodelers, bad past experiences, deciding whether to stay or mo...

TJ didn't want to say the title, but he said it anyway. Katie and TJ walk through the cabinet decision tree, from custom versus semi-custom to framed versus frameless to inset versus full overlay, and TJ builds a cabinet from scratch in SketchUp so you can actually see the difference an inch of face frame makes across an entire kitchen. They also cover why painted cabinets will never match your wi...

Katie and TJ get judgy for a good cause. They walk through the red flags (and a few green ones) to watch for when you're browsing a designer or architect's website, including what the web design choices signal about the experience you're likely to have. TJ has a strong reaction to black backgrounds and heavily serifed fonts. Katie has thoughts about pop-up boxes and broken contact links. They also...

Katie is a thriver, not a survivor, and her comfort depends on temperature control. TJ didn't think this topic could fill 30 minutes. He was wrong. They cover the building envelope, the difference between Tyvek and Zip, why your insulation matters more than your thermostat, and how mini splits work for additions. Katie shares her personal temperature control toolkit, TJ reveals his prototype inven...

If your home is in a "city of" or "town of," there's a whole extra layer of approvals between you and your building permit. Katie and TJ break down what that means, which municipalities are helpful (hi, Falls Church) and which ones are not (hi, Rockville), and why missing a submission deadline by one day can cost you seven weeks. TJ shares the three-month curb cut saga from building his own house,...

Katie knows nothing about floodplains (her words). But by the end of this episode she's earned her architecture license (again, her words) and is spending her Friday evening on the FEMA website. TJ explains base flood elevation, walks through how to check if your property is in a flood zone, and shares a story about clients whose floodplain changed mid-project - they couldn't even build a deck. Ka...

You think it's all the same? False. Katie and TJ dig into the flooring decisions that trip people up, from LVP thickness and wear layers to the relationship between old wood floors and new ones. Then TJ gets into wide plank engineered floors and humidity, Katie Googles what can go wrong, and things take a dramatic turn she did not recover from. Also: psych is apparently making a comeback, TJ remot...

TJ actually did research for this one, like for real research. He goes behind the remodeling industry curtain to find out if the old line about it costing more next year is actually true, and what the real numbers look like compared to inflation. Spoiler: a gallon of milk roughly doubled in 25 years. A high-end kitchen more than tripled. Katie flies without an outline for the first time and delive...

Katie and TJ welcome Realtor Jeff Wu to the podcast to talk about downsizing, or as some are calling it, right sizing. Jeff shares his 5D framework, explains why downsizing is more of an identity shift than a house decision, and drops a stat that 10,000 people turn 65 every day. TJ realizes one of his own clients has been doing this all along without him fully connecting the dots. Katie briefly ta...

What does it mean to be a great client and why should you care? Spoiler: it's not about making your design team happy. It's about making your experience better. Katie and TJ walk through the seven-piece puzzle from Designed Happy: The Book, including pronoia, vulnerability, thank you notes, and why you don't want your service professional rolling their eyes before they pick up the phone.

They sound almost the same. They're not. Katie and TJ break down the differences between design build and design bid, including the pros, the cons, and the nuance that nobody talks about. TJ also reveals he couldn't tell Bruce Willis and Michael Keaton apart as a kid, Katie and TJ fall into a Newsies rabbit hole, and TJ makes enough blanket statements to warrant a drinking game.

It's one of the most commonly asked questions in remodeling. And a lot of times the answer is yes, you technically can...but should you? Katie and TJ talk through the things you need to think about before you commit, from noise and dust to water and phasing. TJ regrets a loud river cruise, Katie reveals a short-lived career as a party princess, and neither one of them would ever live through a rem...