1. What’s the size of your average job? If you’re contemplating a $100,000 addition, you could run into problems hiring a firm that typically handles $20,000 projects. On the flip side, if yours is a contractor’s smallest job, it may fall through the cracks. You also want a firm that does a lot of your kind of project—say, kitchens or bathrooms.

This 1870s Capitol Hill rowhouse had been converted into a three-unit apartment building. “It was an incredible house,” says architect Steve Lawlor, “and no one was touching it because it required so much work.”

Though he had helped design dozens of award-winning projects around Washington, Lawlor had never created something from scratch for his own family. He and his wife, Susan Ades, director of exhibits at the National Zoo, decided this was their chance.

When Kevin and Kelly Walker bought an early-1900s Victorian in Winchester, Virginia, their first mission was to overhaul the kitchen. The tiny space—160 square feet—hadn’t been renovated in 35 years. Kevin, an architect at Reader & Swartz Architects, and Kelly, a health educator, had a budget of $25,000. Kevin did the demolition himself, including tearing out a wall of built-in cabinets that closed the kitchen off from the dining room.

Architect Wayne Good’s kitchen is 15 years old, but you’d never know it. “I wanted to create something timeless,” he says.

His 100-year-old rowhouse in Annapolis required a top-to-bottom renovation, which Good did gradually over 12 years. The kitchen was the first room he tackled.

Attorney turned interior designer Lori Graham had options when deciding where to put the kitchen in her 19th-century Victorian near Dupont Circle. The building had housed an art gallery for 30 years, and there was only a tiny kitchen on the third floor.

She decided to build a new kitchen between the living and dining spaces on the first floor. “I loved the open floor plan from an entertaining perspective,” says Graham, who hosts dinner parties and fundraisers.

The 1929 Colonial—with only one full bath—was bursting at the seams.

In the May issue, Michael Tardif writes about the renovation of this Colonial in Chevy Chase. The owners originally bought the house as a starter home, but wanted to stay in the neighborhood after having children. The two-story addition by Landis Construction includes a front porch with wide stairs and a curving stone wall, master bedroom suite, and large family room.

Click here to read the full article and see a slideshow with more than a dozen pictures.