First of all, how did you get into design and building?
Ben Dozier: We started as a landscape company in Austin, Texas when our first child was born. She was nine months old and we started as a landscape design build firm out of our living room with our first of four kids.
Cristi Dozier: And your first client was your grandma.
Ben: My first client was my grandmother, and one thing led to the next, and 20 years later, now we do architecture, interiors, landscapes, the whole nine yards, but I've always had a gift or a talent for drawing and seeing space and depth and dimensions and rearranging things. It's a gift I really didn't know I had. That's how we got started.
How did you collaborate and work as a couple? Who does what in your projects?
Ben: I do all the initial meeting with clients and what we call envisioning, listening to the client's needs and wants and whatever their dreams are and take that back and really start sketching from napkins to sketchbooks, to on my whiteboard. I have a 120-something-year-old barn down by the river that's got a little corner in it that has a view out to the river. I sit in there and sketch, and then we have a great construction team that takes the designs to reality.
Cristi comes in and turns these sketches and these ideas into a home, and really puts the finishing touches on all the decor, the textures, the colors, the feels, the vibes, the mood, all that stuff. Lots of it starts with a conversation most of the time over a coffee, because we own a coffee shop and that conversation turns into a vision and it goes from there. [It's] a lot of fun.
Cristi: I help with a lot of the finishes and then a lot of the furnishings and décor and paint colors. Occasionally, I come in and look over his shoulder and have some type of random idea to tweak something. Sometimes it works on the design, but not always. Neither one of us [has] a formal education in design. It's all been make it up.
Ben: Make it up as we go.
Cristi: That's what Ben likes to say, we make it up as we go, but [we have] a little natural knack and talent for putting spaces together.
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