Most of JST’s strongest client relationships started with something small. Here’s why that first project matters more than its budget suggests.
By Chris Griffiths, Vice President and JST Studio Director
A lot of funeral home owners see our work and hesitate to call. They see the new mortuaries and the chapel additions and the cemetery master plans, and they figure JST is for someone with a bigger budget and a bigger project than theirs. I hear it differently once they do call. “If I could afford you,” they say, “this is what I would do.” And then they describe something they’ve been sitting on for years.
That assumption has cost a lot of owners time they didn’t need to lose. JST takes any project: a restroom update, a failing porch repair, a single arrangement room, an interior refresh on a tight budget. In fact, we’ve built some of our best client relationships by starting exactly that small.
How One Small Project Became Three
One of those relationships started with two restrooms.
A funeral home in Natick, Massachusetts needed its restrooms brought up to ADA compliance. Not a full renovation—just two rooms, accessible route corrections, proper clearances. It was the kind of project an owner might wonder whether calling a funeral home architect makes sense. We took it.
About a year later, the same owner called again. The front porch had collapsed. They needed a full replacement, and they knew by then that we’d show up and do it right. We did.
Two years after that, they came back with something larger: a chapel addition, roughly $1 million in construction. They had a seating capacity target, specific operational requirements, and a clear sense of how the new space needed to connect to the existing building. We built it.
That’s three projects over four years. From two restrooms to a million-dollar chapel. Have you ever held off on calling a firm because you weren’t sure the scope was big enough to be taken seriously?
The Natick owner didn’t ask that question. They just called.
Why the First Project Matters
Research published in Architect Magazine on how firms align with client needs found that 83% of building owners rank previous firm experience as the most important factor when selecting an architect, above cost and above reputation. That shouldn’t surprise anyone who has spent years in this industry. You can read a firm’s portfolio in an afternoon, but you can’t read how they handle a problem at 7 a.m. on a Tuesday.
Hiring a funeral home architect for a small first project is like bringing a contractor to look at one leaky window before you hand them the whole building envelope. You learn things no brochure shows you. The first project is where JST earns the call that comes next: working the space as carefully as we would on a large one, looking at the floor plan, the operational flow, what’s already there and what’s failing.
| Small projects reveal how a firm actually works—before the budget, the stakes, and the relationship are large enough to make switching costly. |
Here’s what that first engagement typically reveals:
- How we handle what comes up. Something unexpected almost always turns up in an older building: subfloor damage under a tile, a wall that’s not where the drawings show, clearances that don’t match the existing layout. How a firm responds tells you more than any proposal they ever wrote.
- Whether the communication works. Owners have facilities to run during construction. Funeral home remodeling can’t shut a building down. The logistics of phasing and continuity of operations matter as much as the design, and a small first project shows whether a firm understands that before the stakes get bigger.
- Whether the finished work functions. Not just looks right. Functions: door maneuvering clearances that work for guests with mobility aids, accessible routes that don’t create a secondary path through the building, toilet room clearances that meet code without cramping the space.
What Counts as a Project Worth Calling About
I know what some owners are thinking. Their situation feels modest: a restroom that hasn’t been touched in 30 years, an arrangement room with failing flooring, a side entrance that doesn’t serve guests using wheelchairs. They wonder if those things register at a firm that designs chapel additions.
They do.
ADA restroom upgrades in existing facilities involve real code analysis. The NFDA maintains a summary of ADA requirements funeral homes face, but applying them to an existing building is more involved than the summary suggests. A contractor can handle the physical work. What that alteration legally requires—which elements need full compliance and which fall under a different standard—is a code question, not a contractor question.
A contractor can do the physical work. But a specialist in funeral home facility planning can tell you what the permit drawings need to show and catch what a reviewer will flag before it becomes a change order.
Small funeral home projects are where we do some of our most careful work. The constraints are real: tighter budgets, a live facility that can’t go dark, no cushion for surprises. We’ve done phased interior refreshes, ADA restroom renovations, and single-room additions for owners who weren’t ready for anything larger. Some came back later for something bigger. Some didn’t, and that was fine.
There’s also a practical reason to start small if you’re uncertain. Owners who’ve hired us for one modest project can see exactly how we work before committing to anything larger. They know how we communicate on site, how we document decisions, and whether the finished work holds up the way we said it would. A small first project is a low-risk way to answer questions that a portfolio can’t.
“If I could afford you” is not a budget problem. It’s an information problem.
The owner in Natick could afford two restrooms. That was enough. The relationship grew because that first project gave them a reason to call back, and the one after that gave them the confidence to think bigger. That pattern repeats more often than most owners would expect, and it always starts with the same thing: someone picking up the phone about a project they thought was too small to mention.
If you have a project, we’d like to hear about it. Reach out to the JST Studio and tell us what you’re working with.
Don’t hesitate to reach out. The call you don’t make is the only one that doesn’t go anywhere.
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