Healy M. Rice, Architecture

We hired Healy to design a complete renovation of our kitchen and to convert our attached garage into a family room,. Working with Healy was a delight—she took great care to understand our wish list and to come up with creative and innovative solutions that incorporated everything we wanted within our budget. The result was a seamless transformation of our 1928 home into a beautiful new family space that we continue to enjoy to this day! This was our first renovation project and we were so happy to have Healy at the helm. Since then, she has become our go-to architect for any and all projects. She is always professional, attentive, and thorough. We have recommended Healy Rice to many friends and would absolutely hire her again.

We worked with Healy on two houses. In 2010, we bought our first house that needed a complete renovation. We received Healy's name through a friend. She was easy to work with, provided great guidance and was very realistic throughout the process. We absolutely loved how everything turned out! So when we decided to buy / renovate another house (2019), we called Healy right away. She was able to walk through the house, see the potential and help us meet all of our design needs for our family. She was available any time we needed her and always had a pulse on the project and the permits/village. I honestly have zero hesitation using Healy again and recommending her to others!

Healy created the design and schematics for our gut renovation and addition in East Wilmette. She was instrumental in obtaining the permits with the village and also helped us with our variance on the front porch. We are thrilled with the finished product.

Healy was great to work with. She is extremely knowledgeable and talented - her eye for design and space was really helpful with our remodel project. She helped us take an old home and update it all the whlie maintaining a lot of the original charm. She wasn't pushy with her opinions and we felt like we could have an opinion. She listened to our feedback and worked with us. We were very satisfied and would work with her again! Highly recommend using her for your next design project.

Healy has a great design sense with an innate understanding of interior space. Moving walls, windows and adding architectural detail...all well done. She knocked our project out of the park.

We have worked with Healy through two major renovations. The first was a gut rehab of the main level of our 100+ year old home including the kitchen, mudroom, dining & living spaces. The second was an addition to the second floor (master suite) and finishing our attic space. Throughout both projects, Healy was wonderful to work with - always available and able answer all of your questions. As complications would present, she was the calming force to figure things out. I would give her my highest reccommendation!

We Purchased a 100 year old house with the intention of "fixing it up a little." Interviewed several architects in the local area and decided to work with Healy based on her experience with older homes, familiarity with the local market, and her genuine personality. The final product of our home and our experience working with Healy has far exceeded our expectations. She walked us through the design, approval and remodel of our home as a true consumer advocate. Her design allowed us to retain the character of our "older home" and enjoy all the amenities and desires we had for our new home......and then some. We really had no idea all of our vision could be attained within budget, but, Healy found a way. We certainly give Healy our highest recommendation.

We hired Healy Rice to do two projects - an addition and an interior remodel. Healy was professional, worked within our budget, meet our deadlines, was thorough and made our house look beautiful! She did an amazing job at blending the addition to the old part of the house. Would highly recommend her and we would use her again!

Working with Healy is the smartest and easiest decision when it comes to home remodeling and design. We have worked with Healy twice on two different homes and very pleased with her design. She quickly understood what we wanted and what was practical that made our new homes very livable and comfortable. Best of all Healy knows the zoning codes within our town that made the permit and inspection process very easy. We would use Healy again and would highly recommend her to anyone looking for home improvements, remolding and additions.

Healy designed our mudroom addition, our kitchen and our master bathroom renovation. I can't say enough good things about her and the sub-contractors she recommended. She is creative and responsive and our first choice for any project we do locally.

Healy took my 100-year-old home that we purchased and made it exactly the way we wanted. The home needed much more than expected and the project became a bigger experience than we wanted, but Healy helped us through it and it turned out perfect. Our project began in May 2014.

Healy is amazing. We've worked with her twice now and it's always a pleasure. She's attentive, responsive, and highly collaborative with creative solutions. Our main project could not have gone more smoothly and it all started with her. Plus, her contractors are top-notch. Ask for Jim and Tom Stenger and you can't go wrong. The whole team fires on all cylinders. We LOVE our remodel! Thank you, Healy!

My wife and I purchased a 100 year old home in late 2018 and planned to completely gut the inside of the house. We hired Healy to create the architectural plans for this job and couldn't have been any happier with the final product! It was important to us that the final product live like a modern home but honor the original architecture and style of the house. Healy listened to us and created a plan that was updated and functional yet fitting of the 1920's feel. We would HIGHLY recommend Healy to anyone and everyone!

I hired Healy Rice to do a complete first floor and kitchen remodel in my home. She was terrific. Her knowledge and skills are top notch. What also was great was that she helped to assemble my whole team, the contractor and the interior designer. They worked great together. She is very personable and I would recommend her to anyone.

Healy is a leader in her profession and our community. She provided us with top notch architectural advice and outstanding customer service. We would highly recommend Healy for your next project- big or small. Her talent and dedication are unparalleled.

We've worked successfully with Healy for years on multiple North Shore renovation projects. She "gets it" with extensive experience, a quick vision for what can and should be done, and a firm grasp of what buyers are looking for in homes. Healy's understanding of the design phase, permit process, and construction steps is a major benefit to renovation projects. In addition to good construction plans, we've also avoided more than one costly mistake by following her good advice. We recommend her without reservation.

We originally met and hired Healy (Healy Rice of Rice Architecture) through a friend and referral on the North Shore when we bought our first brick starter house in Wilmette. Healy had great ideas about how to work with the constraints of an old small home. She was very creative, giving a galley kitchen a much larger designer feel, while still allowing the kitchen to be very functional for cooking and entertaining. Healy also did the family room renovation and added a deck at the same time. Finally, one of the biggest challenges was turning a small cement floor open "cellar" into a terrific kid's play room, guest room, full bathroom, and laundry room. With each of these projects, Healy was timely, worked within our budget, worked well with the contractors, and always took into consideration the flow of the house and how it would impact other renovation projects and our lifestyle. Healy was instrumental in helping us qualitatively and quantitatively evaluate and compare adding on to our smaller first house, versus buying a larger house and starting the renovation and addition process again. Healy helped us consider various homes on the market in terms of which one might work best for our growing family size, needs and budget. With Healy's renovations, we were able to stay in our first home for over 10 years, with two children and a nanny. We decided to move as the kids and our family size grew. We purchased a 100+-year-old four square (Prairie Style) home in East Wilmette in 2004. From initially walking through the home and talking about ideas for renovation, Healy was terrific to work with on this fairly large scale home renovation and addition project. We wanted to ultimately add-on and renovate more than we could afford to do initially, so we asked Healy to create a master plan to allow us to plan for and do the renovations and addition in three phases, as our budget would allow, with the addition being the last phase. Healy's master plan for three phases of renovation and construction for the addition was terrific. Healy identified up front things to think about so we could plan for and allow for them as we worked through each phase of the project. It also allowed us to do a budget for each of the three phases up front and then figure out the timeline. The house had very poor flow, so for Phase One, Healy had great ideas about opening up the floor plan for better flow, putting in a large chef's kitchen, relocating a staircase, adding back stairs to the kitchen and moving a bathroom. Phase Two was tearing off the original front porch which was the width of the house. Healy had researched with the Historical Society old pictures and realtor listings of the house, so she could draw plans for the porch as close to the original as possible. We worked with the Historical Society at the state, along with Healy, to stay within the state guidelines since the area we live in is deemed a historical area, and we were interested in keeping as close to the style and design as when the home was originally built around 1900. Phase three was the big addition, typical of this style home in East Wilmette, adding on a family room to the already renovated kitchen, digging out the basement underneath and then putting a master bedroom and bath above it, with a third-floor bedroom and bath as well. So we just added one room, but four stories of it. Healy worked very well with our contractor and was in constant communication with all. Healy has a great working relationship with many builders, contractors, and GC's. Healy is a master craftsman, she is a gifted architect specializing in creative solutions, renovations, and additions, to meet family needs and lifestyle, in particular specializing in old homes on the North Shore. Healy is creative, has a meticulous attention to detail, does high-quality work, and has a great sense of style. Throughout the project, Healy communicates well, is easily accessible, is timely, and charges fair and appropriate fees. These are traits we looked for, asked about, and valued in considering architects. We have worked with Healy on the only two homes we have owned since we moved to Wilmette over 20 years ago. And we will hire Healy again when we downsize in a few years and need to renovate that home!

Healy designed a wonderful and seamless addition to our 1940s home. She added a kitchen, family room, garage, and master suite. The design was incredibly well thought out and is beautiful as well as functional. Healy was always very conscious of our budget, which was much appreciated. Healy takes great pride in her work and was a pleasure to work with.

We hired Healy Rice to create plans for a two-story addition to our 1939 Cape Cod home: specifically, a first floor living room & mudroom and second floor master bedroom & bathroom. We wanted an architect who would make our addition look original to the home. Healy did not disappoint us. She was very sensitive to our needs and her design was what we were looking for and more. She set forth a reasonable budget and she did not exceed her estimations. Healy was very attentive and responsive and her work was excellent. We would highly recommend Healy Rice without reservation.

I can't say enough good things about working with Healy and the result. She was smart, creative, available, courteous and flexible. She worked with the Village to progress our complicated project on time and on budget. She had great resources and discounts available for us. She worked well with the contracters and ensured that our needs were always priority. I highly recommend Healy Architecture.

Healy took our 1920's colonial and updated every room without losing any of the homes' integrity. We were and are still thrilled with what Healy did for our home.

Healy is easy to work with, very talented and detail-oriented. She has great ideas and works with the client on all aspects of the project, even beyond the architecture. She cares about her clients and her projects and is very responsive. We loved working with her.

After interviewing 5 architects, we hired Healy because she was very bright, professional, and personable. She created some beautiful conceptual drawings for an exterior renovation we were planning on our home. After reviewing the conceptual drawings, my husband and I hired her to proceed with creating construction drawings for us to bid out our project to contractors. She agreed to complete the construction drawings for us this past July. Healy never completed the work and will not return our phone calls and emails. Her low standard of professionalism is disappointing and now we have to go through the process of interviewing and hiring another architect to complete the work.