Let's address your questions directly:
1. Best to hire us of course! (LOL)
seriously, for a high level renovation you will need a local architect to handle filing, and building department submissions. We do a lot of out-of-town jobs with local architects. What's best?? It all comes down to how simple you want to keep it, and how much you want to spend on fees... More guys, generally = more fees, right?
2. Turnkey company.. works for some folks. We find it to be a conflict of interest. How can I serve as your "representative" with a contractor when I AM the contractor?? Simple as that...
3. I'll avoid the "who to avoid question" as that would be pretty biased and I've already swung way past the line!!
4. What to spend?? How much you got?? No, but seriously that really is what the first conversation comes down to with most of our inquiries. I've done $60-70K Garage conversions. More typically it approaches 100K.. I've done small project that mounted to significantly more than that as well.... so, how much you wanna spend??
Not trying to be directly obtuse here, really. It's just this is a wide open business (we're) in and people do rooms for a couple thousand and people do rooms for a couple million, so it does, in the end, come down to
a) what are you looking for?
b) what is your budget?
c) how do you best achieve "a" within the restraints of "b".
I often tell folks in limited budgets that what they are buying with the services of a firm like ours, it good advice on how to "not waste their money"... and that, in the end, might be the best advice...
so, does that help at all?? Of course, private correspondance is always available should you want. (that's our "me me me") Thanks!!