Architects, Architecture Firms, & Building Designers in Union Hill-Novelty Hill

“Armentrout Residence Our home was roughly a 1560 square foot Cape Cod cottage on a large lot. Originally, we intended to enlarge our kitchen, that eventually led to a larger addition and a full remodel. Our contractor, Norm Ferkingstad, introduced us to Bruce, an architect he’d worked with on other projects. We enjoyed working with Bruce as he really listened to what we wanted, he gave us so many choices, and introduced options we didn’t realize we had. Our home is now approximately 2900 square feet, including a new master suite. We wanted the original feel of a cottage to be maintained. Bruce did a great job. From the street, the house doesn’t look any larger than it originally did. From the sides and rear, the addition blends seam-lessly with the existing structure. Bruce did an amazing job expanding our small home, blending old with new, while keeping the charm. During early design meetings, Bruce stressed that we should interact with our home, not just exist in it. Bruce insights and recommendations added so much to our family’s home life experience. We really enjoy his creation of a variety of spaces to fulfill a diversity of moods. We have a large extended family, so we often have people visiting during the summer. We always hear from guests how comfortable our home is. They say it has a flow that leads you through the home. Parties and gatherings are comfortable and people are never clumped in the kitchen, but are spread throughout our home. Everyone comments there is a great balance of private space and inviting public space. We can easily have 30 people in our home without it feeling crowded. Yet, when it’s just the four of us, the house still feels cozy and warm. The design of our deck and outdoor space is inviting and in constant use. As a result our home has become the “go to place” for family events and parties, including a small private wedding in our backyard. We couldn’t be happier with our home. We love how Bruce blended our traditional desires with contem-porary ideas. Many times we have stood on a small hill on our property at night, looking down at our home, lit up, and take delight in what we have. We are so very thankful for what Bruce created for us. From design through construction, Bruce provided great customer service. He is patient and very respon-sive. He charges fair fees for superior design service. Not only do we highly recommend Bruce; we also hired him again for our next project, a separate carriage-style garage and home office. For us, Bruce is clearly an exceptional architect. Paige and Doug Armentrout”

“JT was clear, helpful, open to design ideas - with plenty of his own. He clearly has a lot of experience and patience with his clients. He is a clear communicator, and was very helpful to work with.”

“Vassos Demetriou and his team do an amazing job. They designed our dream home for us, made necessary adjustments when we needed to meet our budget, and now are helping us through the permitting and building process. They are a fantastic full-service architect team.”

“We LOVE working with Heidi at H2D A+D. Down to earth, super creative, and exceptionally organized. Having completed projects of all types and sizes we know first hand how important it is to have an effective leader guiding things from the beginning. Each time we work with Heidi the plans are thorough, clear, & easy to interpret… so that by the time we show up to perform our tasks, we are set up to do nothing but succeed. Each job has that enjoyable, team approach and energy. And who wins? Everybody! Thanks Heidi!”

“I have collaborated with Scott on several projects and can assuredly recommend him as a fantastic architect to work with. As a client you want your architect to listen and understand your goals, to put his/her ego aside and design what is practical and esthetically relevant to you and your family, and most importantly support you through the entire experience with utmost professionalism, knowledge of the process and understanding of your budget. Scott delivers all that and more; he is experienced in a variety of styles, has creativity and skills coupled with the analytical sense to construct a solution that is not only visually stunning but delivers good cost/benefit balance over the future years maintaining the space. If you happen to review his work be it modern, traditional, or Nantucket beach-home style you will find a correlation among all of them - spaces he designs are elegant and classy without loud statements that transients through time and connects each home with their owners.”

“Bottom line: as a contractor who has worked with many architects Eric Gedney is one of the best I've worked with. Here's why: 1) Eric places the highest priority on serving his clients needs first. He has nothing to prove and no ego that needs constant stroking. 2) Eric is highly personable and is a great listener - he also has a wry sense of humor that makes his projects fun to be a part of. He works hard to establish a good connection with his clients and has an amazing ability to translate client wishes - even odd ones - into build-able reality. 3) Eric understands the importance of collaboration and team building and seeks to build the team early in the process. Contractors can easily be marginalized in this relationship and its not uncommon for them to be made the "bad guy" especially as costs grow with design. Eric listens and even defers to contractor input and will revise his plans to accommodate. 4) Eric has a great sense of design, scale, proportion, balance, flow and style which of course is important in an architect. But Eric also possesses a clear understanding of "real life played out in a space". Nothing frivolous, rather, there is a purpose for everything even if the purpose is just to create a deeply personal statement which sums up the clients taste and style. Further, nothing Eric does is run-of-the-mill everything is custom tailored to support the clients desires. 5) Finally, Eric can design to meet budget requirements and even though compromise may hurt he is able to scale a project down to help it get built (he is also happy to scale it up!). This is a very important trait in an architect as many projects in our industry die after design and clients are left with a really nice project that will never be built. A final word of advice to potential clients: when Eric suggests you choose your contractor early on in the process - do it! This is the best way to ensure your project hits your budget goals and building the team early pays off in many remarkable ways.”

“Sketched up some ideas for our future home and got exactly what we were looking for. The drawings turned out great. Gabe was very easy to work with and supportive of all our ideas and little changes to make this our perfect forever home.. I would highly recommend him.”

“We genuinely LOVED working with Highland Design. The product they delivered, and the communication was genuinely outstanding. We could not have been happier with our experience and have referred several friends and family members! Jeff and his team not only cared about the project, but about us as people, which made all the difference. They were there to support when things got tough and were willing to increase the scope of their work to pick up new elements of our project like cabinet layout. We interviewed several firms and worked closely with an architect in the past and can tell you that without a doubt, having Highland Designs plan our home is one of the best decisions we've ever made.”

“Lane Williams took our dated and very tired looking 1960’s one story, pitched roof home with a daylight basement and transformed it into a beautiful modern home with strong horizontal and vertical planes and cantilevered masses. Lane's vision for the house really came together when we decided to spend the money to expand the carport to two cars. We were thinking it might not work, but when he showed us the renderings we both just thought wow – it balanced everything out and got us a look that was spectacular. The finished house got great reactions from the neighbors, and it still thrills us when we overhear the bicyclists as they zip by saying ‘Cool House!’ http://coop15.com/images/house_shows/Enatai/Enatai2before.jpg http://coop15.com/images/house_shows/Enatai/Enatai3.jpg http://coop15.com/images/house_shows/Enatai/Enatai1.jpg”

“Steve is the architect and designer for our current remodeling project. He's been so great and helpful from the beginning on designing our house structure to recommending style of furniture that would match the design. He offers creative and excellent ideas and alternatives based on our budget. He devotes 120% of his thoughts and ideas in accommodating the style of the house that we like and the tight budget we have. It's a big project and we've formed a great team that we have been feeling comfortable to work with each other. There is only 1 month left before the project is finished and we are very happy to see the progress. I highly recommend Steve to anyone who wants to do their house remodeling.”