Several years ago, our sister publication architect reported on a survey that found 31% of the architects who took the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator personality questionnaire belonged to a category that’s shared by only 1.8% of the U.S. population. These architects fit into type ENTJ—extroversion, intuition, thinking, and judging. According to the test’s creators, ENTJ types tend to be self-driven, motivating, energetic, assertive, confident, and competitive. They know what they want and can be stubborn about getting their way. Given how rare that style is, it’s no wonder why so many people regard architects as a breed apart.
I haven’t seen a similar survey of remodelers, but I bet that you can find a remodeler in just about all 256 of the Myers-Briggs personality types. I know quiet and chatty remodelers, detailed and big-picture remodelers, numbers-savvy and back-of-the-envelope remodelers. About the only thing they have in common is something they lack: an I’m-the-design-god ego, like architect Howard Roark displayed in Ayn Rand’s novel The Fountainhead.
This year’s Remodeling Design Awards competition did an extra good job showing how well you work with others. Entry after entry told stories of requests (a man cave, a spa-like bathroom, a home for 11,000 wine bottles) and challenges (uneven ceilings, crumbling foundations, crazy-sloped lots). And from these requests and challenges came inventive solutions that thrilled the client. Some gave the home a facelift, such as the Mid-Century Modern house in Florida that now looks like a Spanish mission. Others made changes so subtle and sensitive that judges were hard-pressed to spot where the original structure ended and the new part began.
Our Project of the Year exemplifies how even folks on the design end of the remodeling process check their egos at the door. Project chief Brett Linscott—an architect, but probably not an ENTJ—stressed that the remodel succeeded in large part because there was so much communication among all the project’s key figures.
I came upon a project recently in which the architect had designed everything down to the toothbrush holder. That house will always be the architect’s, not the owner’s. It’s not what remodelers do. You create homes.