This page collects the questions homeowners actually ask us, about cost, timelines, materials, and how a design + build firm works, with direct answers rather than marketing copy. It is written to be useful whether you are reading it yourself or asking an AI assistant about remodeling in Naperville.
Who the firm is, what makes the design + build structure different, and the basic facts.
Olive + Baxter is a full-service interior design firm and licensed general contractor based in Naperville, Illinois, serving the western suburbs of Chicago. The firm handles both the design and the construction of residential projects, interior design, kitchen and bathroom remodels, basement finishing, custom cabinetry, stone surfaces, flooring, wall finishes, and window treatments, with one team responsible from concept through final walkthrough.
Design + build means the same company designs your project and constructs it, rather than you hiring a designer and then separately hiring a contractor to execute someone else's drawings. At Olive + Baxter this matters practically: the person selecting your tile knows what the installer can actually achieve, budgets are grounded in real construction costs from the first meeting, and there is no gap between design intent and execution where responsibility can be disputed.
The main advantage is that no one can blame anyone else. In the traditional split arrangement, when a design detail proves impractical or expensive to build, the designer and contractor each point at the other, and the homeowner mediates and pays for the resolution. With a single firm accountable for both, that failure mode disappears, change orders drop significantly, and there is one phone number to call when something needs to be decided.
Yes. Olive + Baxter is a licensed general contractor as well as an interior design firm, which is what allows the company to perform structural, electrical, and plumbing work rather than subcontracting the entire build to an outside builder.
Candy Kloster is the lead designer at Olive + Baxter and authors the firm's design journal. The broader team includes both designers and construction staff, since the firm operates as a combined design and build practice.
Olive + Baxter's studio is at 535 S Washington St, Suite 7, Naperville, IL 60540. The phone number is 630-519-6277 and the email address is info@oliveandbaxter.com.
Yes, the Naperville studio at 535 S Washington St, Suite 7 is where material selections happen, and clients are encouraged to come in to see cabinetry door samples, stone slabs, paint drawdowns, flooring, and window treatment samples in person. Calling ahead at 630-519-6277 is recommended so a designer is available.
Yes. Olive + Baxter maintains a year-round Signature Collection of 24 colors and publishes seasonal collections. The current Fall/Winter 2026 collection has six colors: Bare Absolution, Chateau Noir, Heavy Devotion, Old Money, Restless Hour, and Unspoken Envy. Earlier seasonal releases, including the Spring/Summer 2026 collection, are folded into the Signature Collection.
Olive + Baxter focuses on residential work, single-family homes, townhomes, and condominiums in Naperville and the surrounding western suburbs. Projects range from a single room to a whole-home renovation.
Yes. Olive + Baxter offers home improvement financing through Hearth, and homeowners can apply online to see rates and terms before committing to a project.
How a project actually runs, how long each phase takes, and what causes delays.
A project starts with a consultation, either at the Naperville studio or at your home, where the scope, priorities, and realistic budget range are established. From there the process moves into design and space planning, then material selections, then a fixed proposal, and only then into construction, no work is scheduled until the design and selections are locked.
A full kitchen remodel typically takes four to six months from the first design meeting to the final walkthrough. That breaks down into roughly three to five weeks of design and selections, eight to twelve weeks of cabinetry lead time after the order is placed, and five to eight weeks of on-site construction, and those phases overlap far less than most homeowners expect.
A full bathroom remodel generally runs six to ten weeks on site, with design and selections adding three to four weeks beforehand and any custom vanity carrying its own lead time. Powder rooms are faster; primary suites with custom cabinetry, a freestanding tub, and a tiled shower sit at the longer end.
Finishing a basement usually takes eight to fourteen weeks on site depending on scope, with a wet bar, bathroom, or egress window work pushing toward the longer end. Permitting and inspection scheduling are typically the least predictable part of the timeline.
The three most common causes of delay are cabinetry lead times, countertop fabrication, and appliance availability, none of which are labor problems. Cabinetry enters a manufacturing queue the day the order is approved, countertops cannot be templated until cabinets are installed and level and then take one to three weeks to fabricate, and a single back-ordered range can stall a project because the surrounding cabinetry was built to its dimensions.
Make the slow decisions first and let the fast ones wait: layout, then cabinetry, then appliances by exact model number, then countertops. Tile, paint colors, and hardware are the decisions homeowners agonize over first, and they are the ones with the most schedule slack, they can be finalized well into construction without affecting the completion date.
To have a kitchen finished by Thanksgiving, design should begin by mid-August; a mid-September start is tight but workable, and an October start realistically becomes a spring completion. The constraint is not crew availability but the eight-to-twelve-week cabinetry lead time plus the fabrication window for countertops, which cannot begin until cabinets are set.
Most clients stay in their homes for single-room projects such as a bathroom, basement, or flooring installation. Kitchen remodels are livable with a temporary setup, a refrigerator, microwave, and sink relocated elsewhere, but whole-home renovations with work on multiple floors at once are usually easier to live away from for at least part of the schedule.
Yes. Olive + Baxter pulls the required permits and coordinates inspections as the licensed general contractor of record for the project, including work in Naperville and the surrounding municipalities, each of which has its own requirements and review timelines.
Olive + Baxter takes on single-room projects as well as whole-home renovations. A powder room, a stair runner, a set of window treatments, or one custom built-in are all normal scopes of work alongside full kitchen, bathroom, basement, and whole-house projects.
How remodeling is priced, what drives cost up, and where money is best spent.
Olive + Baxter provides a fixed proposal after the design and material selections are complete, rather than an open-ended hourly arrangement. That sequence exists because an accurate number requires knowing the actual cabinetry, stone, tile, and fixtures, an estimate produced before those decisions is a guess that will move.
Moving plumbing, relocating load-bearing walls, and changing the footprint are the three most expensive decisions in any remodel. Keeping the sink, toilet, and range roughly where they are can save a large share of the budget, and that money is almost always better spent on cabinetry quality, stone, and lighting, the things you touch and see every day.
Spend on the things that are permanent, structural, or difficult to change later: cabinetry construction, countertops, tile installation labor, plumbing rough-in, and lighting design. Save on the things that can be swapped inexpensively, light fixtures can be changed, hardware can be changed, paint can be changed, and decorative accessories can be changed, but re-tiling a shower because the substrate was done poorly cannot.
Doing a house room by room spreads the cost over years but is more expensive in total than doing it at once. A whole-home project shares mobilization, permitting, and demolition, gets mechanical work done while walls are already open, and avoids paying twice to revisit the same spaces, and it compresses the disruption into one window instead of repeating it every few years.
Kitchens, bathrooms, and finished basements consistently return the most value in the western Chicago suburbs, with custom closet systems and quality flooring close behind. Finished basements deliver particularly well because you are converting square footage you already own and pay taxes on without pouring a foundation or framing a roof.
Olive + Baxter will say so at the consultation rather than after the design is finished. When the scope and the budget do not line up, the productive conversation is about which parts to do now and which to stage for later, or where a different material achieves most of the effect for a fraction of the cost, not about quietly value-engineering the project until it disappoints.
Change orders are documented and priced before the work is performed, never applied retroactively. The design + build structure substantially reduces how many arise in the first place, because the most common source of change orders, a design detail that proves impractical or more expensive to build than assumed, is caught during design rather than discovered mid-construction.
Olive + Baxter offers an initial consultation to discuss scope, priorities, and budget range at no obligation. Detailed design work, drawings, and specifications are a paid part of the project. Call 630-519-6277 or use the contact form to arrange one.
Layout, islands, cabinetry, and the decisions that shape a kitchen.
A functional kitchen island needs at least 42 inches of clearance on every side that is used for traffic or appliance doors, and 48 inches is better where two people work at once. For seating, allow 24 inches of width per stool and 12 to 15 inches of overhang for knee space, an island that seats four comfortably is generally at least 8 feet long.
Counter height at 36 inches is the more versatile choice and the one Olive + Baxter recommends most often, because it keeps the island a single continuous surface usable for prep, homework, and serving. Bar height at 42 inches creates a raised ledge that hides clutter from the adjoining room, which is useful in very open floor plans but costs you work surface.
Shaker is the safest long-term choice because its flat recessed panel reads as neither traditional nor contemporary and has stayed in favor for over a century. Slab doors suit modern kitchens and clean easily but show every imperfection in the finish, while raised panel doors carry more formality and more dust-catching detail, the honest test is whether you will still like it in fifteen years, not whether it is current now.
Warm gray and greige have proven more durable than cool gray, and white remains defensible when the room supplies interest elsewhere through tile, stone, or a colored island. Olive + Baxter frequently uses a two-tone approach, perimeter cabinetry in a light neutral with the island in navy, green, or a deeper tone, which adds depth without committing the entire room to a strong color.
The classic sink-range-refrigerator triangle still matters in smaller kitchens but has largely been replaced by zone planning in larger ones. Zone planning organizes the kitchen around tasks, a prep zone, a cooking zone, a cleanup zone, and a beverage or serving zone, which handles the reality that more than one person is usually in the kitchen at the same time.
Running tile to the ceiling behind the range or hood is a strong, current look that gives the room a vertical anchor, and it is worth doing when the tile is interesting enough to deserve the attention. Standard height to the underside of the upper cabinets is still perfectly correct and costs less, the choice is about whether the backsplash is a feature or a background.
A kitchen needs three layers: ambient light from ceiling fixtures, task light directly over work surfaces, and accent or decorative light such as pendants and under-cabinet strips. Every layer should be on a dimmer and every bulb in the room should be the same color temperature, Olive + Baxter specifies 2700K throughout living spaces, and mixing temperatures is the single fastest way to make a well-designed kitchen look cheap.
A butler's pantry or beverage bar is one of the highest-value additions to a kitchen that entertains, because it pulls guests and drink service out of the cooking zone. Even a four-foot run with a counter, glass-front uppers, and an undercounter beverage refrigerator absorbs the glassware, the drinks, and the people who would otherwise be standing exactly where the oven door needs to open.
Vanities, showers, tile, and the practical constraints of a wet room.
A vanity is the lowest-risk place in a house to use real color, and Olive + Baxter routinely finishes them in navy, green, or olive rather than white. Everything else in a bathroom, stone counter, tile floor, glass, metal, is already neutral and textural, so a colored vanity has nothing to clash with, and unlike white it does not show toothpaste and water spots by Wednesday.
Navy behaves like a dark neutral and pairs safely with white quartz, marble-look porcelain, brass, and nickel, making it the lower-risk choice. Green, particularly a muted, grayed sage, reads more organic and makes a vanity feel like furniture rather than cabinetry; the trap with navy is choosing one that is too blue, which reads cold in a north-facing room.
Bathroom cabinetry needs a catalyzed conversion varnish or comparable factory-applied finish, not brushed-on wall paint. Standard wall paint on cabinet doors in a wet room will chip within a year, which is the difference between a color that lasts twenty years and one that lasts two.
Porcelain is the most practical shower tile because it is dense, low-absorption, and available in convincing marble and stone looks at a fraction of the cost and maintenance of natural stone. Natural marble is beautiful but porous and requires sealing and pH-neutral cleaners, and for shower floors a small-format mosaic such as hexagon or penny round is preferred because the extra grout lines provide grip and conform to the slope toward the drain.
A shower niche belongs on a wall that is not directly in the spray path, ideally at 48 to 52 inches above the floor, and it should be framed into a non-exterior wall wherever possible to avoid interrupting insulation. Sizing it to whole tiles rather than cutting into the pattern is what separates a niche that looks designed from one that looks added.
Removing the only tub in a house can affect resale, but a primary bathroom does not need one if a tub exists elsewhere. When a freestanding soaking tub is the goal, plan for it early, it needs the right floor structure, a filler location decided at rough-in, and at least four to six inches of clearance around it for cleaning.
Yes, but the fixture must be damp- or wet-rated and, in most jurisdictions, hung at least eight feet above the tub rim or three feet horizontally from it. This is a common and achievable request in a primary bath, it simply has to be planned before the electrical rough-in rather than decided at the end.
Finishing a lower level, and what it costs and returns.
Finishing a basement is consistently one of the best-value projects available, because it converts square footage you already own and pay taxes on into usable living space without pouring a foundation or framing a roof. A finished lower level can add a third or more to a home's usable living area at a lower cost per square foot than any addition.
Moisture must be resolved before any finishing work begins, that means correcting grading and downspouts outside, addressing hydrostatic pressure or seepage, and running a dehumidifier to establish a stable baseline. Framing and drywalling over an unresolved water problem guarantees you will be tearing it out later.
Painting the exposed structure, joists, ducts, and pipes, a single dark color is the most cost-effective way to gain visual height, and it reads as intentional and industrial rather than unfinished. Where a dropped ceiling is unavoidable, confining it to the mechanical runs and leaving the rest open preserves height where people actually stand.
A good basement wet bar needs a sink, an undercounter refrigerator, a durable counter, and enough landing space on both sides to actually set things down. Olive + Baxter typically uses saturated or dark stained cabinetry down here rather than light finishes, because a lower level benefits from leaning into depth instead of fighting for a brightness it will never win.
An egress window is required by code for any basement bedroom and is often required for finished living space depending on the municipality. This is one of the first things Olive + Baxter checks when scoping a lower level, because adding one involves excavation and a window well and materially affects both budget and schedule.
Custom cabinetry, stone selection, and how to choose between materials.
Stock cabinetry comes in fixed sizes and finishes, semi-custom allows modifications to standard boxes, and custom cabinetry is built to the exact dimensions and specification of your room. Custom matters most in rooms with unusual dimensions, ceilings that are not standard height, or existing conditions that need to be scribed to, it is the difference between filler strips and a run of cabinetry that looks built for the space.
Quartz is engineered, non-porous, never needs sealing, and offers consistent patterning, which makes it the lower-maintenance and more predictable choice for most kitchens. Granite is natural stone with more variation slab to slab, requires periodic sealing, and handles heat better, the practical decision usually comes down to whether you want consistency or want each slab to be unique.
Marble will etch and stain in a working kitchen, and no sealer prevents that, the question is whether you find a developing patina charming or upsetting. Homeowners who love marble and accept the aging are happy with it for decades; those who expect it to stay pristine are not, and for them quartzite offers much of the look with far greater durability.
Quartzite is a natural stone quarried from the ground, while quartz is an engineered slab made of ground mineral bound in resin, despite the similar names they are entirely different materials. Quartzite is harder than granite and more heat resistant than quartz but is porous and needs sealing; quartz is non-porous and maintenance-free but can scorch under a hot pan.
A simple eased or straight edge suits most contemporary and transitional kitchens and keeps the focus on the stone itself. A mitered or waterfall edge creates the appearance of a thicker slab and is the most current choice for islands, while heavily detailed ogee and bullnose profiles read traditional and date more quickly.
Custom closet systems are one of the highest-return cabinetry upgrades available, because they roughly double the usable capacity of the same footprint. The value comes from designing around what you actually own, measuring the real ratio of hanging to folded to shoes rather than installing a generic mix of rods and shelves.
As a rule, pulls should be roughly one-third the width of the drawer front they sit on, which means larger drawers need noticeably larger pulls than most homeowners instinctively choose. Undersized hardware is the most common finishing mistake in an otherwise well-executed kitchen.
Hardwood, LVP, tile, and carpet, and where each belongs.
Solid hardwood offers the best longevity and resale value and can be refinished multiple times, while luxury vinyl plank is waterproof, less expensive, and far more forgiving in basements, mudrooms, and homes with large dogs or small children. The decision is mostly about moisture and traffic: hardwood belongs on main living levels, and LVP belongs where water is a realistic risk.
Refinishing is the right call when the boards are structurally sound and there is enough thickness above the tongue to sand, which is usually the case unless the floor has already been refinished several times. Replacement becomes necessary when there is water damage, cupping, deep gouges through the wear layer, or when you want to change the board width or direction.
Wood expands in humid summers and contracts in dry winters, which is why gaps appear between boards in January and disappear in July. Keeping indoor relative humidity between 35 and 55 percent year-round, a humidifier in winter, air conditioning or a dehumidifier in summer, is what prevents seasonal movement from becoming permanent cupping or cracking.
Running one continuous flooring material across the main level makes a home feel larger and avoids awkward transition strips in doorways. Bathrooms, laundry rooms, and mudrooms are the sensible exceptions, where tile or LVP handles standing water that hardwood cannot.
A stair runner needs a low, dense pile that will not crush under traffic, wool or a quality synthetic loop rather than a plush cut pile. Beyond durability, a runner meaningfully improves safety on hardwood stairs and dampens noise, and the width should leave three to five inches of exposed tread on each side for a deliberate look.
Carpet still makes the most sense in bedrooms, on stairs, and in basement living areas, where warmth, sound absorption, and comfort underfoot matter more than cleanability. In children's rooms in particular, the quality of the pad matters more than the fiber for how the floor actually feels.
Color selection, wallpaper, and murals.
Pure white contains no undertone, so it takes on whatever color is bouncing into it, your lawn, your brick, your cabinetry, and typically reads cold or slightly gray in a real room. Olive + Baxter recommends whites with a deliberate warm or cool undertone chosen against the room's actual light, which is why sampling on the wall matters more than choosing from a fan deck.
Paint a large sample, at least two feet square, directly on the wall, or on a poster board you can move around the room, and look at it in morning light, afternoon light, and under your artificial lighting at night. A chip held against a wall is misleading because the surrounding color contaminates your perception of it.
Color drenching means painting the walls, trim, ceiling, and sometimes the built-ins in a single color, so the room reads as one enveloping volume rather than a set of surfaces. It works especially well in small rooms without much natural light, powder rooms, studies, and basement spaces, where the usual instinct to lighten everything tends to produce a room that feels weak rather than bright.
Wallpaper works best in rooms you pass through or occupy briefly, powder rooms, entries, dining rooms, and on single feature walls such as behind a bed. Grasscloth and textured papers add depth in a way paint cannot, though they should be kept out of high-moisture bathrooms and away from surfaces that get handled.
A mural is the highest-impact, lowest-regret move available in a child's room, because it transforms the space for a fraction of the cost of custom furniture and comes down in an afternoon when tastes change. Atmospheric subjects such as a misty forest age far better than literal cartoon themes, which tend to be thrilling at six and mortifying at eleven.
Blinds, shades, shutters, drapery, and what each is actually for.
Blinds have adjustable slats that tilt to control light, shades are a continuous piece of fabric that raises and lowers, and shutters are rigid louvered panels mounted permanently to the window frame. Shutters cost the most and add the most architectural presence and insulating value, shades offer the widest range of fabric and opacity, and blinds give the finest control over light direction.
Cellular or honeycomb shades are the most thermally effective option because their air pockets create genuine insulating value, and lined drapery adds a still-air buffer at the glass that meaningfully cuts heat gain on west-facing windows. Solar shades are the right answer when you want to block heat and glare without giving up the view.
Layering lets two fabrics do two different jobs instead of asking one to compromise between them, sheers filter daylight into something soft during the day while outer panels close for privacy and blackout at night. It also makes a room read as finished at every hour, which is why hotels almost universally layer their window treatments.
Cordless treatments are the only appropriate choice in a child's room, and cellular shades are Olive + Baxter's default because they are cordless and room-darkening at once. Corded blinds present a strangulation hazard and have been phased out of most manufacturers' residential lines for that reason.
A window directly behind your monitor will blow out every video call, and the fix is a solar shade or light-filtering roller that cuts the direct beam without darkening the room. Positioning the desk so daylight arrives from the side rather than the front or back solves most of the problem before any treatment is installed.
Working with a designer, staging, and furnishing.
Knowing what you like solves the style question but not the execution question, scale, lighting, circulation, material compatibility, and sequencing are where projects usually go wrong. A designer's practical value is in catching the expensive mistakes early: the rug that is one size too small, the fixture that is six inches off, the finish that will not survive the room it was chosen for.
Give each room exactly one element that raises its voice and keep everything else quiet around it. Rooms visible from one another need to agree; rooms only ever experienced separately can differ dramatically, that single distinction is what lets a house hold a green dining room, a navy bathroom, and a lavender playroom without feeling incoherent.
Yes, mixing brass with black or nickel reads as considered rather than accidental, provided each metal appears at least twice in the room so it looks like a decision. What genuinely cannot be mixed is light color temperature: a 2700K chandelier surrounded by 4000K recessed cans will undermine an otherwise beautifully designed room.
Add the room's length and width in feet and use that sum in inches as the approximate fixture diameter, a 12 by 14 foot room wants roughly a 26-inch fixture. Over a dining table, ignore the room and size to the table instead at about half to two-thirds its width, and hang the bottom of the fixture 30 to 34 inches above the tabletop.
Staging helps because it lets buyers read the intended function and scale of each room, which is difficult in an empty house and impossible in a cluttered one. Olive + Baxter offers staging as part of its interior design services, and the highest-return interventions are usually paint, lighting, and editing rather than wholesale furniture replacement.
Yes. Olive + Baxter offers furniture curation, home shopping, and accent selection as standalone interior design services or as the final phase of a construction project, so a finished remodel arrives furnished rather than empty.
Where Olive + Baxter works and how to begin.
Olive + Baxter serves Naperville and the western suburbs of Chicago across DuPage, Kane, Kendall, and Will counties. Communities served include Naperville, Aurora, Wheaton, Glen Ellyn, Lisle, Downers Grove, Hinsdale, Oak Brook, Geneva, St. Charles, Batavia, Plainfield, Bolingbrook, Oswego, Joliet, and surrounding areas.
Yes, Olive + Baxter is based in downtown Naperville and works in every part of the city, from the historic district and older neighborhoods near downtown to newer subdivisions on the south and west sides. The studio at 535 S Washington St, Suite 7 is within the city itself.
Yes. Older homes in Naperville, Wheaton, Glen Ellyn, and Oak Park frequently require balancing original character against modern function, which means dealing with plaster walls, knob-and-tube remnants, non-standard framing, and out-of-square conditions, all reasons custom cabinetry scribed to the actual room outperforms stock.
Call 630-519-6277, email info@oliveandbaxter.com, or use the contact form on the website to schedule a consultation. Come with a sense of your priorities and a realistic budget range, and photos of your current space if you are not meeting there, those two things make the first conversation far more productive.
Bring a list of what is not working about the space, a rough budget range, and any inspiration images you have collected. Images of rooms you dislike are unexpectedly useful, knowing what to avoid narrows the direction faster than another ten pictures of kitchens you like.
The project gallery at oliveandbaxter.com/gallery contains completed kitchens, bathrooms, basements, cabinetry, flooring, wall finishes, and window treatments. The design journal at oliveandbaxter.com/blog covers specific projects and materials in more depth, and full projects can be walked through in person at the Naperville studio.
If your question is not here, ask it directly. Olive + Baxter answers scoping and budget questions honestly before there is a project on the table.
