From 9 Projects to 40: How Michaela Shields Scaled M. Shields Design With Twindo

by Cameron Lund in Blog, Case Study, Chief Architect, Interior Design, Kitchen and Bath

For interior designer Michaela Shields, founder of M. Shields Design, the problem was never creativity. It was time.

Before Twindo, every project began with a tape measure, hand sketches, and hours spent rebuilding spacesmanually in CAD. Measuring existing conditions could take anywhere from 30 minutes to 4 hours, depending on the scope. Then came another full day or two drafting the as-built in Chief Architect before the real design work could even begin.

When Shields was managing 8 to 9 projects at once, that process added up quickly. Today, Shields is managing closer to 30 to 40 projects at a time. That shift changed the trajectory of her business.

Building a design practice around real life

Shields earned her degree in interior design before beginning her career at a custom cabinet design studio. Over time, her experience expanded far beyond interiors alone, touching construction, estimating, project management, and whole-home renovations.

Her Kentucky-based practice focuses on:

At the center of all of it is a practical philosophy: creating spaces that actually fit the way people live.

The challenge: As-builts were slowing everything down

Like many residential designers, Shields’ workflow started with manual site documentation.

That meant:

For larger remodels, especially, the documentation phase became a bottleneck before design work could really begin. The time investment limited how many projects her business could realistically take on.

How Twindo changed her workflow

With Twindo, Shields no longer spends days creating as-built drawings manually. Instead, files come back ready to work with, allowing her to move directly into design development much faster.

That means:

Rather than rebuilding spaces from scratch, Shields can immediately begin refining layouts and making design decisions. In practice, that has fundamentally changed the scale of the business.

“It completely changed the game for my business and helped me scale,” she says. “I’m no longer spending days measuring and drawing as-builts.”

More room for the work she actually loves

The most important part of the shift now includes a combination of both efficiency and focus. The design work Shields loves has not changed. Twindo simply created more room for it.

 

A Twindo scan/model by M. Shields Design in Twindo’s 3D Web Viewer

 

Instead of spending large portions of the week documenting existing conditions manually, she can spend more time on:

For firms balancing documentation, drafting, and active project work simultaneously, that difference compounds quickly.

Why this matters for residential design firms

For many interior designers and remodelers, existing conditions are still one of the most time-consuming parts of the process.

Accurate as-built documentation is essential. But creating it manually often slows down:

Twindo helps firms move from site capture to design-ready files faster, reducing manual drafting work and helping teams spend more time designing instead of reconstructing spaces from scratch.

For Shields, that shift created the ability to grow from managing under 10 projects at a time to managing several times that volume, while staying focused on the work that matters most.

Interested in spending less time measuring and more time designing? Try Twindo today.