Today we’d like to introduce you to Trina Ashour.
Hi Trina, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
As a young child, I loved to rearrange my room, paint walls, refinish my furniture, and totally change the look of my space. When I got to high school, they offered an elective in interior design, and it was the first time I really learned that what I loved to do was actually a career field. I took the elective and never looked back. Of course that meant that I was going to attend a college that offered interior design and get a degree in it, and run my own business. That was the dream.
I went to school in Northern Arizona which had a wonderful design program that earned me a bachelors of science in interior design. I also was blessed to work for a small business owner (just like I wanted to be!) and do an internship during my college years. It was there that I learned all the most important things about design.
Well, as life often does, things got slightly more complicated when I met the love of my life in college who happened to be entering the military. We fell in love, got married the week of graduation, and off we were to start a military life of moving around.
When we made it to our first assignment, I was determined to not let my dream die and got my first “real” job as a junior designer at a design firm in Phoenix Arizona. The hours were grueling, my bosses tough, but we did the type of design that you dream about in college. Large resorts, medical offices, restaurants, etc. This job was integral to the following years of my career.
We got orders after less than a year to move away, and thus became my realization that my career was definitely going to be put second. Because of the nature of our frequent moves, I was forced to speed up the timing of that dream of becoming a business owner. I realized that if I wanted to be able to practice design, I would have to do it on my own and just pick up again with each move.
Eventually that landed us in Tampa where Renovate Interior Design was born. Thankfully, the military lifestyle changed a bit and this little business has grown to become what I always dreamed it to be. We’ve been operating since 2018 and my love for design has only grown. Since it’s inception, I have earned my national licensing from NCIDQ as well as become licensed under the state of Florida board of architecture and interior design and take a serious interest in continuing education. We love what we do every single day and hope to only continue growing and serving both commercial and residential clients in Tampa Bay!
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
As mentioned in my story of how we came to be, I definitely was faced with challenges. Because of the military lifestyle and having to move so frequently, it was not possible to maintain jobs with real design firms, which meant I had to go out on my own pretty early. In the early years, I remember feeling inadequate or embarrassed with situations that would come up because I should have known the answer, and would have known the answer if I had gotten more experience working in the field before going out on my own. The little bit of experience that I had from both my internship in college and the one “real” design job I had, I held onto full force. I dug deep into every situation I experienced from those to pull from in order to be successful in what I was doing on my own. That’s why those two jobs were so important for me in growing and becoming the designer I wanted to be.
Additionally, interior design is a field of many trades and vendors and relationships. Picking up and starting over every single time created quite the challenge in each new place we moved. I had to re-form relationships with trades people, vendors, contractors, etc. And, as soon as I formed those relationships and felt that things were operating smoothly, we would get orders to move again.
While these were real challenges that I had to overcome through the years, I do believe that they paved the way for success.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
Interior design is my specialty and we do both small commercial and residential work. While we do primarily residential work, we absolutely love small commercial and enjoy the difference in designing between the two.
What creates the most pride of anything would be successfully completing a space for a client that they truly love. I always view it as a challenge to see a space for the first time, listen to the clients issues and complaints about why it isn’t working for them, and then to make sure that we turn that around to be a completely different story at the end of the project. Nothing feels better than a client being blown away by their new space and then following up, even years later, to let us know how much they still love it. That will always keep me going!
As a designer, it is extremely important to me to LISTEN to what the client needs and wants. To investigate what is not working for them in a space and to be a problem solver. Functionality comes first to me and beauty second. When those two are married in the right way, everyone wins.
It is also very important to me to really understand the clients style. It has always been of utmost importance to me to understand ALL design styles and pinpoint specifics about what a client likes and design accordingly. My hope is to always land on designs that express the clients personality, not mine as the designer. While I have my own style and preferences, it is so much fun to work outside of that and design spaces that are completely different than what my own preferences lean towards.
Lastly, one of my greatest skill sets is spacial organization and layouts. Give me a complicated floorplan that needs to be completely rearranged, and I am in heaven. It is like a puzzle for me, where I can see the end picture and I just have to place the pieces in the right way…..My favorite projects are the ones where I’ve had to rearrange the floorplan and it makes a huge impact.
Is there any advice you’d like to share with our readers who might just be starting out?
If I were starting out again, and had the ability, I would definitely have gained experience from design firms before going out on my own. The stuff you can learn from working for someone else first is truly invaluable. Maybe I was able to see that because I had so little of it, that I held onto each nugget of information so tightly, but it truly was the only reason I was able to do this at all. It would have been a much smoother road for me if I had had that opportunity.
My second piece of advice is to put the pride away. Specifically in design, there are so many details and situations that you will ALWAYS be learning new things and run into issues you haven’t before. It would do everyone well to take on a learning attitude and take it as an opportunity to keep filling up your wealth of wisdom versus trying to act like you know the answer .
Contact Info:
- Website: https://renovateinteriordesign.com
- Instagram: renovate interior design
- Facebook: renovate interior design
Image Credits
flawless moments photography
