We’re not just a website. We are a full-service architectural firm. We offer our services several ways. Let me show you.

Three-Hour Design Consultation

This is our most basic service. It works like this. You send us your sketches or plans, even at an early stage, along with questions and notes about your goals for your house design or remodeling project. We’ll review everything and then make a list of recommendations, answers, and suggestions. Then we will discuss our recommendations with you through a one-hour video conference. If you haven’t done a video conference before, don’t worry. It’s very easy.

We sometimes do Three-Hour Design Consultations several times for folks as they develop their projects. Our suggestions often solve problems, suggest better ways to do things, and provide a valuable second opinion that might confirm what the builder, architect, or house designer is saying. We can give you some confidence and ammunition to push back on things you feel just aren’t right and need to be altered before accepting the design. Geography is no object. We have consulted on houses throughout the US and Canada, as well as, in Europe and Asia. Click here to get the full description and fees for our Three-Hour Design Consultation service.

“Design Only” Architectural Services

This is the next step up in our services and involves many, many hours of consultation and design services. Here, we will start with your Wish List, site information and a conference call and ultimately end with a complete custom house design for you. The entire process is interactive and will involve several web conferences to review and critique the house design as it progresses. If you wish, you can come to our offices in South Carolina or Delaware for in-person meetings instead of the web conferences. Or we can include one or more site visits, if you choose. We’ll provide floor plans, elevations, preliminary building sections, a site plan, three-dimensional images of the exterior of the house and other drawings to fully describe the design as we develop it.

You will be involved throughout the process in the same way you would be with our Comprehensive Architectural Services. This work can take several weeks or even a month or two, depending on the complexity of the project. When these services are complete, you will have full design concept drawings and three-dimensional views of the exterior of the house. From this point, you can retain a builder, draftsperson or local architect to prepare the actual construction documents and structural design.

Comprehensive Architectural Services

This is our full-service package and includes everything that’s in our Design Only Architectural services plus we prepare all the construction documents, structural design, specifications, and we assist you with the selection of the builder, bidding, construction contract review, periodic on-site construction meetings, on-line meetings, and construction administration services. With our Comprehensive Architectural Services, we are with you from start to finish. Usually, these services include monthly site visits during construction, even for projects that are distant to us. We have provided these services for projects from Maine to Hawaii and Florida to Wisconsin.

With our Comprehensive Services, we strive to be your guides and advisors in addition to being the designers of your house, even including helping with fixture and finish selections, review of builder’s payments, periodic site visits to review the construction, and final review of the completed project. Our goal is to be your “best buddy” and professional eyes and ears from start to finish.

We want to provide you with services you feel are highly valuable and we do not want you to feel you were obligated for services you did not need or were not valuable to you. For this reason, every service we provide is customized to the needs and desires of our clients. When it’s all done, we want you to feel we were well worth the cost and that we added value and quality to your perfect house.

If you are interested in finding out more about our design services, please drop us a note. We look forward to discussing your project with you.

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A recent and interesting trend in house design shows that many new homes include an outdoor fireplace. Sometimes this is a free-standing fireplace on a patio or terrace. It might be a part of an outdoor kitchen arrangement. Or, if you live in the land of nighttime bugs like I do, your outdoor fireplace might be on a screened porch. The wonderful thing about an outdoor fireplace is how it extends the season of your outdoor living spaces while providing a charming ambiance.

It used to be that you had to build these outdoor fireplaces the old fashioned and expensive way with bricks and concrete block. Then came the advent of pre-fab fireplace units that were built from stainless steel. The stainless steel allowed the pre-fab fireplaces to be used outdoors without rusting. This reduced the cost, but unfortunately, these units are limited in size. It’s tough to get a roaring fire in them, the kind of fire that keeps you warm even if you’re several steps away from the firebox.

Now We Have a New Outdoor Fireplace Option

I like fireplaces you can build from prefab parts. Earthcore and Firerock are two companies that manufacture these fireplaces. The parts are made of specially shaped lightweight concrete blocks that are made with volcanic ash and cinders. The volcanic material gives the concrete better thermal properties. It reflects heat out more efficiently than standard masonry fireplaces can. Because these kinds of fireplaces are built from a kit of pre-formed, manufactured parts, they cost less to build them than traditional masonry fireplaces. A skilled mason can assemble them in less time and even a skilled handyman can even do the job. The very best part is that these outdoor fireplaces, in my opinion, is that they are available in large sizes with openings up to five feet across. A fireplace that size will take some big logs and allow a nice, roaring fire.

The concrete blocks that make up these outdoor fireplaces are not simple 8”x8”x16” concrete blocks that have to be cut and chipped into the shape of the fireplace. These concrete blocks are manufactured in shapes that assemble “automatically” into a fireplace shape. Think Legos. Once the shell of the fireplace is assembled, any masonry facing, such as brick or stone, can be installed over it. The final result looks exactly like a traditional masonry fireplace, but just at a lower cost and with more heating efficiency.

You can find out more about them at earthcore.co and firerock.us.

I hope this information is helpful to you. You might want to get yourself a copy of my best-seller, Designing Your Perfect House. It is chockfull of valuable tips and advice that will save you many times the cost of the book on your house building or remodeling project. And check out my other book that will help you make your home a happy and “restorative” place. The Well-Centered Home.

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It’s tough to decide when to save or remove trees from a building site. Trees on your building site can be a blessing. They add beauty and character. But sometimes, they can be a problem and a surprise expense if you don’t know how to deal with them. Most of us view trees as an asset on any property. They beautify your land. They will provide shade and visual interest to a new or remodeled house. We all like to preserve trees. And the National Arbor Day Foundation has plenty of useful information about tree preservation. 

A tree that you think is terrific might actually be diseased and only have a few more years to live. How can you know? If you are like me and are not an arborist, you might not be able to see the telltale signs of a tree in distress.

Building your house or building your addition around trees and protecting them from harm during construction can be difficult and adds cost to any project. If it’s a great tree, then the cost and effort is worth it.

But taking all those precautions and incurring added expense to save a troubled tree would make no sense. Still, people do it all the time because they don’t know the tree is “troubled.” They end up watching helplessly as their cherished tree slowly dies away.

And that’s not the end of the expense. Removing a tree at the beginning of construction is quite inexpensive. The excavation contractor will simply knock it down and haul it away. But once your house or addition is complete, the cost of tree removal goes up fast. Often, it requires a tree climber and a carefully orchestrated removal process so as not to damage nearby landscaping and your newly built house or addition. It costs a lot more to take down a tree after construction is complete than it does to take the tree down during construction.

Before you go to the expense of protecting any of your trees, you should have your trees professionally evaluated by a certified arborist, like the people at Bartlett Tree Experts. For little or no cost, they will come to your property and examine all your trees. They’ll point out what trees have only a short life ahead. If your prized tree is in danger of disease or insect infestation, they may still be able to save it with proper treatment. Their expertise can help you decide if you should save or remove trees from a building site. Most healthy trees that are near a building construction area will suffer some stress during the construction. A tree expert can show you how to limit that impact. A feeding and watering program prior to the start of construction, possibly combined with correct pruning, can help a tree tolerate the disturbance better.

Saving trees is an admirable goal. But sometimes it makes sense to take a realistic, educated look at your trees and remove the troubled trees at the initial clearing of the site when the cost and difficulty is low.

Let an arborist be your guide. You can buy a good-sized specimen tree to replace one you need to remove with the money you’ll save. That’s what I did with a beautiful Southern Live Oak my wife and I “gave” ourselves as a Christmas present last year.

By the way, you can help us out. We are working hard to grow our audience. Please tell your friends about Designing Your Perfect House.

If you liked this tip, you can find lots of helpful advice in my bestselling book, Designing Your Perfect House and in The Well-Centered Home. And I welcome any comments.

The post Know Which Trees to Save or Remove from a Building Site appeared first on Designing Your Perfect House.

If you are simply looking for the least expensive railing, then wood is the answer. Most any carpenter can build it and wood is considerably cheaper than metal. Wood might also be your preference if you are looking to create a house in a particular style where wood railings are a key component. But two shortcomings of wood railings are that they require maintenance and they can block the view through them.

There are alternatives to wood that give the look of wood without the maintenance, PVC being one of them. But wood or wood substitutes are thick. there is no way to get the necessary strength a railing needs with a slender piece of wood. Slenderness increases the likelihood of warpage, too. The thickness of wood can often make a wooden railing seem more of a fence than a railing. It is a visually heavy component.

Metal railings, while more costly, can be nearly maintenance-free, if they are powder-coated initially, and the parts of the railing, balusters, posts, and rails, can be quite thin, allowing a view through, while still being strong enough to provide the required safety a railing must provide. They are the perfect solution for decks and balconies where a great view needs to be captured.

I hope this information is helpful to you. You might want to get yourself a copy of my best-seller, Designing Your Perfect House. It is chockfull of valuable tips and advice that will save you many times the cost of the book on your house building or remodeling project. You might also like The Well-Centered Home: Simple Steps to Increase Mindfulness, Self-Awareness, and Happiness Where You Live. It will show you how to make your home a happy place.

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