Win, Win, Win: There Are More Than Two Parties in the Remodeling Equation

My friend Jeff DuBro, an Architect/Remodeler in Falls Church, Virginia, faced a decision most remodelers would have resolved in an afternoon. A 100-year-old oak tree stood in the footprint of a new addition. It had to come down. But rather than disposing of it in a typical manner, Jeff took the tree to his kiln, seasoned the wood, and used the oak to build rail systems, stairs, and furniture for the new space. That tree has happily lived on—and become a family memory, too.

Think about what Jeff actually did there. He found a win for the client. A win for his firm. And a win for the home itself—honoring what it had been while shaping what it would become. That’s win-win-win. And once you start thinking that way, it’s very hard to stop.

Most of us are familiar with win-win. In real estate, you structure the deal to serve both buyer and seller. In selling a business, you protect both the founder exiting and the buyer taking over. When that balance breaks down, the result is bad feelings and difficult transitions. The discipline of finding it is valuable—but in remodeling, it isn’t enough. Because there are never really just two parties at the table.

There’s the client. There’s you. And then there’s the home—sitting quietly in the room, unable to speak, and too often unheard.

Fans of The Office will recall that Michael Scott—the well-meaning, catastrophically self-unaware regional manager of Dunder Mifflin’s Scranton branch—once proposed his own version of this idea: everybody wins, including him, especially him. The joke, of course, is that Michael’s third win is always just the first win wearing a different hat. He hasn’t added a new party to the equation. He’s simply found a more flattering way to count himself twice.

Strip away the 'World’s Best Boss' mug, though, and the instinct is sound. Win-win-win is not just a clever combination of words. It is an important recognition that the stool has three legs, not two—and that ignoring the third doesn’t make it disappear. It just makes the whole thing wobble.

Here is the frame I’ve found most useful: think of the home as the patient. You are the doctor. The client is the guardian. The guardian has strong feelings, real authority, and genuine love for the patient—but the patient has its own needs, its own history, and its own integrity that must be respected. A good doctor doesn’t simply do whatever the guardian asks. They advocate for the patient, even when the patient can’t speak for itself.

A friend of mine told every new client the same thing: “We must address this because we cannot let the house die.” Most people have never thought of a home as having a life of its own. But it does—and the moment you and your client accept that, every decision in the remodeling process gets clearer. You’re not just managing a project. You’re caring for a patient.

There are three reasons this framework makes practical business sense—not just philosophical sense:

1.     The home is your client’s greatest asset—and a client for life. Treating it that way signals to your client that you see the full picture, not just the project at hand. That perspective immediately differentiates you, and the home’s ongoing needs will bring you back long after the punch list is closed.

2.    A beautiful home is your best marketing. It validates your work, attracts new prospects, and contributes something real to the neighborhood and community around it. The home and the site are gifts—to the client, yes, but also to everyone who lives nearby and everyone who comes after.

3.    It makes the hard decisions easier. When the home has a seat at the table—when you and the client are jointly acting as its guardians—the right answer tends to clarify itself. You’re no longer negotiating between two sets of preferences. You’re both trying to do right by the patient.

Try this the next time you visit a new prospect: arrive a few minutes early, look around, and breathe in the house, as if it were the patient. Take its history seriously. Listen to what it’s telling you. And then let it have a voice in how you improve it.

Jeff DuBro didn’t just solve a problem when he milled that oak tree. He made the home whole. That’s what win-win-win looks like when you get it exactly right.