Atlanta, GA

Social media for a remodeler whose customer is not sure which city they live in

Two things decide how a kitchen and bath account behaves in this metro. The first is the tree canopy, which turns every interior frame slightly green in a trade where the only question anybody asks is what color that cabinet is. The second is that many of the cities here were incorporated long after the houses were built, so a homeowner writing to you from Brookhaven or Dunwoody may still describe the place as Atlanta and be inspected by somebody else entirely. Add a canopy that drops oaks through roofs and turns into bathroom work months later, plus a design trade that decides when a kitchen may be published at all, and the working parts of this channel look nothing like the advice written for a company with one city hall.

A message that says Atlanta does not tell you which government inspects the job

Several of the cities in this metro are younger than the houses they inspect, so a homeowner's own description of where they live is unreliable.

Sandy Springs, Dunwoody, Brookhaven and Johns Creek were incorporated within living memory. A house people still describe as Atlanta may now answer to one of them, and plenty of owners write the address one way and get inspected by somebody else.

So the first line of every reply is the same. Where is the house. Not the neighborhood and not the school district, the address, because it is the only reliable way to know which government the project belongs to and which of your crews can reach it before the afternoon fills up on I-285.

Asking it in public does work of its own. Every reader learns that the question was never simple and that you knew it, which is more convincing than a confident answer would have been.

It changes how captions read as well. Naming Decatur or Marietta tells somebody something. Naming Atlanta covers Fulton County, DeKalb County and a spread of cities that do not consider themselves the same place, and a Sandy Springs homeowner reading it does not feel addressed.

A kitchen under mature canopy shoots green, and color is the only thing they asked about

Tree cover decides what your footage looks like, and cabinet and stone color is the entire conversation in this trade.

Leaves filter light green. Under a heavy tree canopy intown and across the northern suburbs, a kitchen with generous windows still reads cool and green on a phone, and a warm white cabinet comes out looking like the wrong white.

The first comment on nearly every post is what color is that. If the answer on the screen is not the answer in the house, you earn a callback, a disappointed selection meeting and a customer who believes something got changed.

Control the light rather than the schedule. One light on a stand, a white balance set once and left alone, and the door and stone samples shot outside on the driveway where open sky can judge them. Countertop material especially should be filmed out from under the trees.

Then shoot the room at the same hour with the same lamp every time and let people compare honestly. Under this much canopy a remodeler who never overstates how bright a kitchen came out is trusted on everything else, which is worth more in this trade than any single dramatic frame.

An oak through a roof in October is a bathroom job in January

The canopy that makes intown houses beautiful also sends a share of this metro's remodeling demand through an insurance claim first.

Storms drop mature oaks across the older intown neighborhoods and the northern suburbs. The roof gets handled quickly. The water that came down a wall or through a ceiling becomes a bath or a kitchen problem weeks later, once the framing has dried and the cabinets have not recovered.

The person who arrives that way is not the person your account was written for. They have an adjuster, a claim, a scope somebody else wrote and a deadline you did not set. They are also not shopping on style.

So there is a second kind of useful thing to publish here, aimed at them. What water damage looks like once it reaches a vanity or a cabinet run. What a scope tends to leave out. At what point a homeowner should stop drying the room and start planning the rebuild.

Stay in your lane while you do it. You are not a restoration company and should not sound like one, and what you can honestly describe is the work that starts once the roof is closed and the drying is finished.

The designer sets the reveal date and the credit line, and that decides your calendar

A real share of this metro's kitchen and bath money moves through the design trade, which has publishing rules of its own.

There is a working to-the-trade design community here and a showroom culture around it. Designers carry clients across Fulton County, DeKalb County, Cobb County and Gwinnett County, which is a wider reach than any one remodeler's crews have on a Tuesday.

They judge you on the install rather than the styling. Square cabinet runs, clean scribes, a tile transition that lands, what you did about a wall that was not plumb, whether the site was swept at four in the afternoon. Publish that and you are talking to them without announcing it.

The reveal belongs to them. A designer sets the publication date, expects the credit, and will not send another job to a company that posted the kitchen first or cropped them out of it. Agree the credit line in writing at the start and hold the photography until they say go.

It also settles what your own calendar can be built on. A kitchen finished in March may not be publishable until somebody else's schedule allows, so the account cannot be planned around reveal dates you do not control, and the install and the site are the material you own outright.

The parts of this that would be true for a remodeler in any metro are set out on our kitchen and bath social media page at /industries/kitchen-bath-remodeling/social-media, and everything above is what Atlanta adds to them.

Questions we actually get

Somebody messaged us from Atlanta but the job turned out to be in Sandy Springs. Does it matter?: It matters to your schedule and to theirs. Which government inspects the job and which of your crews can reach it are both answered by the address and by nothing else, and a house people still call Atlanta may sit in a city that incorporated long after it was built. Ask for the address in the first reply, every time, before anything else gets discussed.
Our photos always come out with a green cast. Is that the camera?: It is the trees. Mature canopy filters daylight green, so a kitchen with generous windows in Decatur or Brookhaven still reads cool on a phone and a warm white cabinet looks like the wrong white. Add one light, set the white balance once and leave it, and take the door and stone samples out to the driveway where open sky can judge them.
A homeowner reached out with an insurance claim after a tree came through the roof. Is that our kind of job?: The rebuild often is, and it arrives on a different timetable from a planned kitchen. There is an adjuster, a scope somebody else wrote and a deadline you did not set. Treat it as its own line of work rather than judging it against your design inquiries, and be plain that the roof and the drying belong to other trades.
The designer will not let us post the kitchen for months. What do we publish instead?: The install. Square cabinet runs, clean scribes, a tile transition that lands, what you did about a wall that was not plumb, a site swept at four in the afternoon. All of it is the material the trade judges you on anyway, and none of it is the styled photograph the designer is holding. Agree the credit line and the release date in writing at the start so the wait is a schedule rather than an argument.
Do we credit the designer even when the client hired us directly?: If a designer drew it, yes, and say so in the caption. Designers here carry clients across Fulton County, DeKalb County, Cobb County and Gwinnett County, which is wider than any one remodeler's crews reach on a Tuesday, and the cost of cropping somebody out is the next several jobs they did not send you.

What is different here

Work that disturbs paint in housing built before 1978 brings federal lead-safe certification and disclosure obligations, which affects a meaningful share of older coastal stock. Permitting and inspection sequencing is municipal, and in condominium buildings an association's own approval process frequently governs timing more than the building department does.

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Written by KC Thompson, Morgul Marketing.

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