Michael Gaertner Architects

I absolutely love this man! He stood up for me at the City Board Meeting in Galveston! This Gentleman is one of the most Honest people, I have had the pleasure to meet! He takes Pride in his work. He designed an addition to my child care facility! His designs are Awesome! I Highly recommend Mr. Gaertner!

We hired Mike as the architect for our future bay house in Galveston. We had 1 face-to-face meeting with Mike initially to go over the scope and design that we wanted for our home. We even gave him a copy of a floor plan that we wanted him to use, thinking that it would make the process easier and faster. All further communication was by text or email. Once the documents were "ready for permit", we sent the docs out for builders to bid; but there were so many glaring inconsistencies and mistakes that no builder would give us a bid. I scheduled a meeting with Mike to review all of the items that needed to be corrected; 12 days and 2 revisions later and the plans were still incorrect. A process that we thought would take 4-6 weeks has now ballooned to almost 3 months... Mike did not explain any of the construction documents and/or reasons for his design choices that we did not approve (I.e. Fur downs in main areas of home), and instead just sent the files to us. As clients, we should not be responsible for vetting each page and pointing out mistakes for the architect. As one of the most expensive architects in Galveston, I would have expected more attention to detail, a quicker turnaround time, and a more personal experience with face to face interactions. We truly regret hiring Mike as our architect.

Michael Gaertner was hired to design a beach house. He is a very nice person but seems to be somewhat poor at communication. We felt like he rushed our design to construction documents. We didn't feel we got ample opportunity during schematic design to discuss options with our design professional. We never met with him a single time after our initial meeting. My expectation was that we would meet several times in person during the design process. He sent out PDF drawings for review via email and then complained that we made too many revisions to the design. The problem was that there would be a week or more between communications. He would make our earlier revisions and it would affect something else. This was frustrating for both parties. He is primarily a commercial architect.