Sayler | Owens | Kerr design studio

I'm not sure that I can accurately find the words to fully describe how incredible it is working with Matt Kerr at SOK. What I can say though, is that he's kind, patient, and brilliant with design. He listened to everything I told him, stepped back and let me run wild with my thoughts, then would perfectly put them into our plans while adding his own creatively genius touches. If his design skill wasn't enough, he's easily one of the greatest people to work with. I could not recommend him enough!

Working with Matt Kerr on a lake home on Bottle Bay, Lake Pend Oreille. Matt has been great to work with on this project. He has taken all my artistically, “out there” ideas and brought them to life, yet has managed to marry form with function! He has designed a beautiful home for us that is unique, yet practical. He really took the time to listen to what we wanted and make it work on a challenging build site, and has done it with great patience! He understood that this is a really big deal for us and seems to care as much about getting it right as we do. Without hesitation, we highly recommend Matthew J Kerr at SOK Design Studio in Sandpoint, Idaho.

Mountain lake home designed and completed by Matt Kerr of SOK Design in Sandpoint Idaho. Beautiful floor plan with every room having a Lake /Mountain View. Matt is a joy to work with. He is professional with his presentations and ideas. He designs gorgeous homes, including mine.

We worked with Eric Owens as our architect and were very impressed with his commitment to our project. Through his creative design, he was able to turn our ideas into a very comfortable, efficient, and beautifully built custom home. We found him very flexible, cost efficient, and enjoyable to work with. We highly recommend him.

We stumbled into Sayler Owens Kerr by chance and have been absolutely happy with the project we created together. From start to finish it has been easy and our ideas have been translated into reality with great success. The estimate of costs were right on...rare, to my mind. Eric was efficient and the work that was produced from the office was excellent. We recommend this group, confidently and with no hesitation. I wish all our projects would be this good.

We are extremely pleased with design of our house. Every visitor asks who designed our home. We get comments that it looks like a Frank Lloyd Wright design. It is very unique with the angles. The two protruding decks overlooking that come to a point turned out fantastic. The entry has the same angles and we get just as many compliments about the entry as we do the rest of the house. Overall, we are very pleased with the design. We are also very pleased with the friendly service and cost efficient advice that the team provided. The contractors had no problems with the designs, but we will say it was not an easy house to build. But easy was never on our wish list.

In my 38 years of experience with Architects in the custom home building industry, few who can meet the demands of form and function like Jon Sayler. He excels at blending his beautiful exteriors with natural site surrounding. He brings the outdoors inside with view corridors and interior architectural elements that blend well together. He is great with creating fun, whimsical and dramatic with the true feeling of quality all around. Every collaborated project was a giant success. Thanks Jon!

Jon and his firm are amazing. Most use him for large houses however they love to design smaller well designed homes.

We have worked with Jon R. Sayler Architect, A.I.A. P.S., along with his associates Eric and Matt, on numerous projects over the years. Jon and his crew are meticulous and thoughtful with their designs, creating unique custom homes of the highest quality while keeping the client’s wants, needs, budget and lifestyle in mind. We often refer potential clients to Jon because of his ability to understand the dreams and goals of our customers and translate those ideas into exceptional homes. Jon Sayler and his team also ensure that the homes are elegantly constructed to feature the contours and views of the surrounding area. What we like best about working with them is that they are always available to sit down or meet us at a construction site; they are up to speed on the latest building trends, practices and materials; and they have a willingness to listen to a builder and include our thoughts into the design process. Jon, Eric, and Matt are a pleasure to work with, we highly recommend them, and look forward to continue working with them in the future.

I can't say enough about the experience of working with Jon during the design, construction and completion phases of our beautiful home in Sandpoint. He is imaginative and yet never loses sight of the practicalities that need to be considered when building a home. He listened to all of our wishes and needs and responded "just right" to every single one. He worked smoothly with our builder and our interior designer so that our home would turn out to be the dream home we have always envisioned on the lake. He also stayed within budget on what was a pretty big project! I recommend him and his firm with no reservations and would be happy to provide further information if that would be helpful.

We selected Jon Sayler Architects to design our home at Priest Lake, ID after interviewing three firms in Sand Point, ID. Our selection criteria included; a firm with experience in North Idaho/Priest Lake, people who would listen to our wants/desires, a firm that could share the design electronically with us as it developed because we would be in another state during most of the design process, a firm that could take on our project and have it completed in a reasonable time, and people who were genuinely interested in our project. We chose a payment method of hours worked versus a percentage of the construction cost. We are from out of state and did not know the full extent of the firm’s high quality reputation and experience until we were talking with local friends. We were thrilled to have a firm with quality credentials working on our project! We met with Jon in his office and talked about what we wanted. We presented him with a collection of magazine photos of homes that reflected our taste, and photos of features and finishes we liked, in an effort to give Jon a good idea of what we were looking for. Jon said this was very helpful to him and his staff. Jon took us to his home (I think he said it was the 13th he had designed and built for his family) to show us some of the design ideas he was proposing to incorporate into our home. We then paid Jon to visit our building site and he walked the entire property with us to get a feel for the place. He helped us select the building site and came up with a unique design concept based on the site topography. Jon and his staff (Eric and Matt) developed a few alternative designs and presented them in Google Sketch-Up, which is a 3-D modeling program. This allowed us to see what the building would look like from all sides and we could rotate the building in 3-D to get a good feel for it. They also prepared preliminary floor plans for each alternative and sent them to us electronically. After discussions over the phone (we were out of state for the entire design process), and some internal competition between Jon and his staff, we settled on the final design concept. Jon and his staff then took the concept to a set of biddable drawings and incorporated our comments as they went along. Our builder found the drawings complete and accurate, and we found them very valuable during the construction. We were heavily involved in the building and the drawings were helpful to make sure the builder was constructing the building as it was designed. Jon and his staff were always available during construction to answer phone calls from us and the builder for clarifications, changes etc. Jon and his staff were easy to talk to, and are good listeners. They are very knowledgeable in material selection appropriate for the area, are very familiar with the peculiarities of working at Priest Lake and are a pleasure to work with. We have a one-of-a-kind home that we love living in!

Jon Sayler and his team designed a beautiful house for us on Priest Lake. The unique lot is angled to the lake front, but adverse to the best view. Additionally, the lot is steeply sloped and the architecture needed to integrate driveway access. Sayler's design dramatically opened the view while increasing our beach frontage appeal and meeting our parking needs. We had wanted to maintain a Priest Lake rustic feel without the traditional, dark, North Idaho log cabin appeal. The result is an open, airy, light and clean modern home with a heavy, overhanging beam roof which carries through the interior ceiling and structure. Although far from a square building, the unusual angles just happen naturally with a perfect flow. During the design phase, visualization of the end product was not always easy for us. Jon knew when to encourage us and when to offer alternative solutions. We think he nailed it - and could not be more pleased.