Fisher Hill Group

Thrilled with Michelle Schwartz's expertise in our home renovation! From a comprehensive overhaul to a stunning 'great room,' her architectural knowledge and design skills shone. Seamless integration of our preferences, clever solutions like a laundry room overhaul, and exceptional communication made working with her a pleasure. Responsive, creative, and budget-conscious—highly recommended!

We hired Fisher Hill Group to plan a complete a major gut renovation of our 1857 brownstone townhouse in the historical Longwood neighborhood in Brookline, Massachusetts. The four stories townhouse was not renovated for over 60 years and had a very outdated look, old design and inadequate partitioning. The house needed a complete replacement of the kitchen, bathrooms, plumbing and electrical systems. We were challenged since we needed to rearrange and redesign our four floors to feel like a modern and updated home but without losing the charm of a Victorian house featuring magnificent trimming, stairway, fire places, high ceilings, large windows, and many other originally built characteristics. Michelle couldn’t have been more creative, attentive, helpful and accommodating to our vision and needs, not to mention she is an absolute pleasure to work with; professional and friendly, paying attention to the smallest possible details with amazing attitude and a calm demeanor. Since our home is on the historical registry, she was diligent about keeping true to its history while breathing new life into it. As we made progress with our one-year renovation project and wide open all walls, we had to alter and change plans to accommodate certain challenges related to the infrastructure and original frame. This could be a stressful process, but with Michelle’s way of managing such situations, it was always a fun teamwork resulting in better solutions and impressive results! We highly recommend Fisher Hill Group and look forward to working again with Michelle on any future project! Yael & Shay Gonen

Fisher Hill Group did an exceptional job renovating our residence. They listened carefully to our requirements and were able to add the needed square-feet to our home while preserving the 'feel' of a small house. We wanted to be involved and Michelle did an amazing job communicating throughout the work and keeping us at the center of the process. Thanks to that we are intimately connected with the design; we love the flow of spaces, the scale, the functionality, and finally – the interior detailing. Michelle bothers to ‘solve’ the space to its details and early on in the process examines interior schematics together with the rough architectural schemes. That way it all came together for us pretty early in the process and had no ‘second thoughts’ after walls were up! Design aside - Michelle is a good collaborator, seamlessly working with other consultants and the construction team. We enjoyed working with Fisher Hill Group and love our newly renovated residence; we absolutely recommend working with them!

I've worked with Michelle on multiple occasions now, and I can’t recommend her highly enough. I first worked with Michelle during the build-out and design of my company’s new office headquarters. The work she did there, in visualizing a high-end concept and then executing on a creative and wholly-unique new environment, was simply outstanding. What we were asking for wasn't particularly simple – to create a casual-yet-professional feel that reflected both our approachability and our high-end work – and Michelle was able to knock it out of the park. Our new space is a balanced, beautiful, and engaging place where people want to spend time, and it remains a point of pride for our employees (and usually a point of envy for our visitors). Due entirely to the success of our office design, my wife and I hired Michelle to help us lightly-renovate and furnish our new home. Michelle is highly intuitive when assessing space utilization, and she guided us to some fantastic (and fairly simple) renovation decisions that we'd never have thought to make without her. And as we were also faced with the tall task of furnishing an entire house, her product knowledge, local vendor connections, and experienced recommendations proved absolutely invaluable. Michelle also successfully talked us out of some decisions that we’re retrospectively very glad we changed course on! But that said, she never made us feel that we “had to” take her recommendations – she walks that difficult line well, providing the design logic behind her thoughts yet still encouraging your ideas and opinions at the same time. I think of all Michelle’s strengths, that’s the big one – she really is a great person to collaborate with and has proven (twice now, for me) to be a pleasure to work with. She has a passion and an excitement for what she does that’s both inspirational and infectious. I highly definitely recommend you talk with her about any and all of your design and architectural needs.

We are so fortunate Michelle Schwartz had time to take on our home renovation project. We wanted to completely renew our home, including a new kitchen, flooring, doors, lighting, bathrooms and windows. We were amazed at how Michelle integrated her vast architectural knowledge and design ideas into our final plan. She did all of this whie allowing us to feel we were leading the project. Every step of the way, she listened to what we told her about how we live and the type of home we were striving for. After careful review of several options, all of which would have been very good, we decided on the best option for us. It is far better than we could ever have imagined. The plan now incorporates an extra room and bath to serve as an office/guest room with ensuite bath, as well as a laundry room. The laundry room is just one example of how clever Michelle is -- it was achieved by simply moving the entrance of a bedroom from one wall to another. Michelle has always been prompt to reply to our messages and emails and has been especially flexible to arrange meetings to accommodate our schedules and the time zone difference. She visited our home on several occassions and the rest of the planning we managed via Skype, very successfully. All deadlines and budgets were adhered to. In fact she was the one to keep us on schedule. We never had to wait for her. Michelle is truly an exceptional architect and a pleasure to work with.