Fraley and Company

If I had to choose one word for my new kitchen, it would be “Stunning”. It is absolutely the most beautiful and amazing kitchen ever! None of this could have happened without the guidance of Joel Fraley and Nicole Adair of Fraley & Company. Joel’s inspirational ideas catapulted this kitchen from ordinary to extraordinary. The project began as merely a kitchen remodel but soon morphed into a much larger project. It became clear that just redoing the kitchen would not be enough, and so, along with the kitchen, we remodeled a failing sunroom and updated the living room space. Now the entire upstairs flows into each area creating one cohesive jaw dropping space. When the project was complete, we were so in awe, we could only stand and stare and wonder “Where are we?” and “Where did we find this amazing Airbnb to stay in? Is this really ours?” Words can’t describe how it hit us. We felt like we had stepped into a magazine. I was completely stalled out and didn’t want to ruin it by moving my things back into the space. The entire team at Fraley & Co. is so easy to work with. They are kind, caring, positive, and incredibly patient! I had so many design changes and moments of indecision, I’m sure I had their heads spinning! Joel’s knowledge and expertise in every facet of design and building is unsurpassed. He is an expert when it comes to lighting up a space. You cannot find a more creative team. One of the biggest challenges was remodeling during a pandemic. We had waited 25 years to remodel and of course we decide to proceed with a pandemic in full swing. Patience was the key here. Product availability became a huge issue. Delay was the name of the game. Things were either delayed for weeks or months, or no longer available at all. This was disastrous for a person like me, who now has time to change their mind, second guess their decision, or pick a substitute product! Joel and Nicole supported us through all the many challenges, and we could not have navigated this without them. After so many months of living in the basement, we began to wonder if we would have to live there permanently. We are currently writing a book entitled “Life Through the Zippered Door”. I want to thank Joel and his team for creating my one of a kind amazingly beautiful kitchen.

We hired Fraley + Company for the fourth time to design the remodel our primary bedroom and bathroom as well as create a walk in closet. Their work exceeded our expectations, including a beautiful design, functional plan with whimsical art work included. Joel and Nicole are so responsive, we felt like their only customers (not the case though). We love the results.

Joel and Linzy were the partners we needed in our remodel. They kept us on track and always with a great starting point on all of the decisions required to update our master bed and bath and add a powder room. They struck the balance we sought in getting our 110 year old home closer to its original aesthetic without making tradeoffs in its contemporary appeal. Across almost every element Joel showed off his skills, most notably with a design of a period-right custom vanity and mirrors. Our master bath now feels warmer and more inviting even though we carved off enough room for a new 1/2 bath, and our master bedroom has gone from a cave-like room ala the Brady Bunch to a light, open and welcome abode. We are very happy.

We recently updated our entire house and used Fraley and Company as our design team. From beginning to end we felt confident in the team. They listened to our ideas as well as our heart for the project and built on them big time using their incredible talent and experience. Not only that, Joel and the team felt like friends to us. Just terrific people! The house is beyond what we could have imagined! Lots of extras and amazing attention to detail. We have to pinch ourselves. The kitchen and bathroom designs are standouts, but everything came together beautifully. We can’t recommend them highly enough!

We hired Fraley and Company for our total kitchen overhaul. Joel and everyone on his team are so kind and easy to work with. The entire team's attention to detail was impeccable. He re imagined our kitchen and laundry room (with a spill over into the dining room to accommodate ductwork for our vent a hood). Joel was extremely patient with some of our indecisions. This was our very first remodel but it could not have turned out better. We have an amazing kitchen that I'm excited to cook in! Thank you Fraley and Company!

Fraley & Company designed a master bathroom remodel for us. From his first visit to our home, Joel was tuned in to every detail of our wish-list for the space (including my oddball insistence that there be a sea monster somewhere in the bathroom!), and patiently helped us through the parts of the design that we didn't even really have a vocabulary to discuss at the beginning. Though we had originally planned on hiring a contractor, we ended up doing the project-managing as well as some chunks of the work ourselves, and Joel's guidance was invaluable to that endeavor as well, as we otherwise would have been tripping over ourselves for sure. It was a great experience working with Joel and his team from beginning to end of this project! I would highly recommend them to anyone looking for assistance with a remodel!

Fraley and Co are the best. My house needed painting in the worst way and I wanted to take the exterior from boring to something more reflective of the interesting interior. Although I had an idea of what I wanted the house to look like, I didn't trust myself to be able to put all the pieces together to get the look I wanted. Joel and Linzy to the rescue. Joel and Linzy listened to my ideas and built on them. I appreciated their sensitivity to my thoughts and their ability to get me to stretch a bit out of the box. They made suggestions that I hadn't even imagined. Joel arranged a contractor to do the work. All in all, Joel took a huge load off my mind. Once he was on the job, I rested easy. Not only are Joel and Linzy's aesthetic impeccable, but their way of doing business is outstanding. They communicate very well, meaning that they're transparent and timely. No detail is too small for them to assist with. Both of them are extremely easy to work with. They are smart, detail oriented, and personable. Don't hesitate to contact Joel and his team. You'll be glad you did.

When we moved to Park City in 2010, we bought a house that was a total fixer upper. It had not been remodeled at all since the 80s and it was 80s...very 80s. We were kind of embarrassed to have people over. We had seen the work Joel had done before — the quality and the vision. I just trusted him implicitly and believed he was looking out for our best interests. His aesthetic really, really appealed to me. There was this trust in the process, and trust in the talent and expertise of Joel. He got us, and he solved the riddle of this house that I, even as a creative person myself, could not figure out. That rock that I've been carrying around is gone. I can kind of melt into my own home. I just love it. I just feel a warmth when I'm home now, and a relief that it's as beautiful as it is. I feel like we can put down roots here now because it's a space that speaks to our souls. We're in a Park City neighborhood that's very family oriented, and the values just keep going up and up. What Joel has done is he's put our home on par with some of the top tier houses in the neighborhood. I would do it again with Fraley + Company, for sure. I would do it all over again in a heartbeat.

We are in the city of Denver, about six minutes from downtown, in a house that gives us the best of both worlds — in town so we could have a city lifestyle but not feel claustrophobic because we back up to a park that overlooks a lake, right in front of the mountains. It is just a beautiful space, but our house is strange — people would joke around when they first saw “the compound” because it was just a rat maze. The house is a ranch style house but it's had additions put on to it over time. Because it is so segmented, there's tons of different roof lines and pitches going on. There wasn't any flow or openness. It was just like a bunch of small little boxes put together in a strange configuration. Technically, our house faces the park side and not the street side, so when people come onto our property, they're not even sure where to go. Do they walk all the way around the house to the park side, or do they come in this other entryway that looks like a little backdoor? There hasn't been a pizza delivery person who hasn't called us from the car wondering where to go and what to do. That needed to change, but we didn’t want to lose the majestic feel of the house or property. We're long time friends of Joel's. I always knew him as a woodworker, a craftsman, before I even knew his design background. When we bought this new home, he and my husband just had so many ideas and we knew we were able to trust him. It was really good to have Joel's expertise and high level of taste to put those ideas all in together into one plan. When we put all the pieces that we wanted together to make it our final dream house, it was just way too big of a chunk for us to chew off at once. Joel helped us really prioritize the luxuries we wanted, thinking about how to segment it and break it up into phases. Trust the process, because you're hiring someone with some creative expertise. You may have a certain idea in your mind about how things are going to be and how they're going to look, but if you let go of the reigns a little bit, you give your project more beauty and more practicality that you haven't even thought of. Having Joel's masterful eye to think about those things that didn't even occur to us was just really a relief, knowing that he was a professional who knew all the factors to consider. Now, we have a really inviting and a natural way to get into our home. With architectural features like a Mediterranean-looking roof and some parapet walls and arches, it has completely changed the feel of this house. It makes more sense for our family and reflects our love for the southwestern look. We just love it.

My husband and I spend a lot of time out and about exploring. We have a van that was converted into an adventure van and has been the inspiration for us to travel regularly. We have two kiddo's — eight and five — and a dog who rules the house...he’s trained us well. We purchased this home four years ago when I moved to Portland. Right before we sold my previous home in Portsmouth, New Hampshire and moved here, Jake and I did a full kitchen remodel in 10 days, on our own. So when we bought this home, we came into this house really confident. On Day 1 there was a peninsula that divided the dining room from the kitchen and over that was low cabinets. And so Day 2 in the house we tore out those cabinets and the drop ceiling. We learned very quickly that a 1920's home is a much different home than our previous 1940's home. We lived with holes in our ceiling and eighteen exposed fluorescent lights for over three years. Our kitchen is really the heart of the home and we hated the space. It was really just terrible in terms of flow, it aesthetically was ugly. We just were so unhappy, and then what we did to it on top of that, tearing it apart...we wouldn't spend time in it and we didn't like having people over. We had to do something and it was just overwhelming.Cost was the number one hesitation going into it, and we needed to understand what kind of budget we had. And then, because it is so intrusive, finding someone that we're comfortable with bringing into our home. It wasn't until we met Joel we were really excited about it at all. We discovered him through colleague and friend of mine who had used Joel for their kitchen remodel. They had nothing but good things to say, their style was similar to ours, and they were just so encouraging for us to meet with Joel. We never even considered anyone else because when we met with him there was just something about him in terms of his personality — he really matched with ours. He's got such an ease to him. The questions that he asked really sought to understand what it was that we were trying to accomplish. His approach was, “Okay you have a budget and so we will work within that to get you what you need.” He was, from the first meeting, always very conscious of protecting that. In fact, after we met with Joel a few times — with ideas and samples — we handed full control to him. We trusted him so much that we handed over the reins. He understood our style, was able to build that into the design, and he made it easy for us to work with him...so easy. The entire Fraley + Company team really went above and beyond. They helped facilitate a lot in terms of getting the design that we wanted executed. And then he was kind of like a therapist though parts of the construction where you know, you run into some decisions that have to be made — he was always there as a voice or as a sounding board if we needed it. For example, we come home from day one of demo and it’s down to bare studs, and that's really startling. Joel shows up that night with a bag filled with wine and cheese and sausage and sets it out for us on the front porch. He was there, he knew how startling it was gonna be. And so they're just a tremendous team to work with and I can not give them enough praise. Our new kitchen is glorious. It's fantastic. It has completely transformed our home and how we socialize. I truly don't think that we considered the impact that kitchen was having on us before. I think we created the adventure van because it was our escape pod, so that we could get away from the house. And now we actually are kind of in a predicament at times because we've become home bodies. It wasn't really until after the project was done where we realized how we weren’t inviting people over before. So the outcome was far more than just a new kitchen. A home is so much more than that. I found a team of people with experience and expertise, and who really demonstrated that they had our best interest at the heart of everything that they were doing. Everyone is professional and dedicated to the work that they do. They're fun to work with and they're incredibly thoughtful. I really cannot give the Fraley + Company team enough praise.

Jason and I are Mid-Century modern design enthusiasts and big fans of color. We love anything retro or vintage. We also own a local ceramic tile company called Clayhaus that specializes in color and simple geometric design. We had a very outdated and ugly kitchen that needed to be completely gutted. We bought the 1956 house from the original owner. The kitchen...it was just old, ugly, and really cheap materials. Everything was pink. I honestly was not going to be able to live with this kitchen, because it was so horrid. That being said, it was an open canvas for us to visually be like, "Ah. Perfect. We're just going to come in here and gut it down to the studs." We wanted to take everything back to how it was, with an update of course. In our previous homes, the remodels that we had done had never required an interior designer or a design firm, because we weren't doing a full remodel or gutting. It was like, "Oh. Let's just switch out paints.” This time we were like, "This is a little bit daunting for us," not to mention we're super busy at work. The combination of needing the expertise, someone who could source easily...I don't even know where to begin. Our goal was to create a Mid-Century modern kitchen and we needed an expert to help us achieve our vision. Jason and I are ceramic tile makers and we met Joel at an open house at our local showroom distributor. He was very cool and laid back, and really approachable. That's what we remembered the most about him. Plus, he dug our tile! When we approached Joel about working with us to design our new kitchen, he was stoked about the opportunity and we appreciated his enthusiasm. Every time you sit down with someone, you're kind of hoping, "Can this person understand my vision?" He was either going to get this...or not. When I told him what we were going for, he was like, "I'm on it." There was just no hesitation. He immediately grasped the vision that we were going for. We didn't want it to feel like a museum or some kind of hokey time capsule, because there are some mid-century modern enthusiasts who go all the way with it. You know? We're not living in 1956, and we are active people, and we're real, and we're going to live in this kitchen. We're going to use this kitchen. He had good recommendations and suggestions. He immediately made us feel at ease — that this was something that not only could he do well, but he's excited to do. I feel like he went above and beyond, accommodating our schedules, coming to our studio, showing us materials. He was very honest with us, helping us make calls based on our budget. Our favorite piece was the refrigerator, which is a Big Chill. And that was part of the process. What are you going to spend your money on? Where's the budget going? What's going to be the big piece? Where can we buy something cheap? Where can we go expensive? It was just a really cool refrigerator. It looks old, but it’s new. This was our first extensive remodel project and there were definitely emotional moments. We learned very quickly from Joel that what we were feeling was totally normal and he was very supportive through the process. You know, all those contractor stories you hear during construction...He always remained confident that everything would work out smoothly and it did. We are very happy with the finished result and can't say enough good things about Joel. He is a professional and he is also a friend. We love our new kitchen so much! It is what Joel likes to call "top quality bad-assery." We get tons of compliments. Every person that walks into our new kitchen is blown away at how cool it is. Not that it matters what other people think, but it is nice to hear people enjoy your space that you helped come up with and create, and that’s reflective of your style and your personality. It was a fun experience! It feels really good, and it looks beautiful, and we're really proud of it. All the materials work beautifully together and we have Fraley & Company to thank. It’s an amazing transformation.

So, I work in real estate, I'm an artist, I love cats, and I wanted to do an Airbnb. My garage was not a functional space at all. It was kind of a mess to be honest. So making that a usable space was really important to me. And I wanted something to help me pay my mortgage. They came up with some really innovative ideas that I loved — that I never would have thought of myself. They really did make this ADU a possibility for me. And I actually ended up living in it and renting my house. It's definitely a life-changing opportunity to have that kind of freedom.