Designing Your Home

Design Collaboration Is Key

Over the years I’ve worked out a highly collaborative process in which my clients get to participate in the key decisions about how we lay out their house. It’s a multi-step process in which we build the design together in a process that is sometimes methodical and other times fun and full of brainstorming.  I never want to be in a position where I’ve made major design decisions without this input and then have to impose a design on my client.

Having fussed over my own house in two large remodels, I know what it’s like to spend hard earned money on these decisions and what it feels like to fret over decisions that will affect your life for years and years to come.

I believe this: To improve one’s home, to make it uniquely yours – and to want to do so in the best possible way – is a basic human desire, one that often makes my clients’ projects a major life milestone for them, one that can produce feelings of satisfaction and excitement unlike any other.

We start by creating a comprehensive “wish list” at the first meeting. Subsequent meetings are all about design and sketching. I’m “old school” in my use of tracing paper during these early sessions to quickly explore different possibilities. After that we use Autocad computer drafting to efficiently create the final construction drawings. Along the way, good ideas accumulate, evolving into better ideas. We share images, discuss budgets, and do things like visit the roof to see where the best views will be from the new second story. After we’ve pursued alternatives, explored tangents, and found the breakthrough ideas that make it all come together, a house, unique in all the world, takes shape.

I then consolidate all our good ideas into a well resolved set of blueprints that homeowners and builders will appreciate for their clarity and thoughtfulness. (Please ask builders that have used my plans about their user-friendly aspects!)

Finding The Right Builder  

I can help put you in touch with builders I’ve come to know who do good work and leave their clients happy. I have no official or financial ties to these builders, other than mutual respect, and a desire to see my clients have an easy and successful project.

Thinking of adding an “In-Law” unit? You can learn more about Accessory Dwelling Units here.