soundesign LLC

We hired Tom to take our custom home dream into reality. We had difficult mandates and a strict budget. He used his expertise to design and then build an extremely cost effective, practical home and still add elements of style and character that made it beautiful. We could not have asked for more but were overjoyed that Tom finished the project under budget and sooner than promised.

We first met Tom Froning when we toured his lovely, self-built straw bale home on Lopez Island. We were very impressed not only with the quality of his workmanship, but his imaginative and efficient use of space. He has done a beautiful job using 're-purposed and alternative building materials and fixtures, something in which we are very interested. For that reason we sought out his services. Since then he has drawn the preliminary design for our future home on Lopez and helped us through the permitting process. He has been extremely prompt finishing tasks, helpful, attentive with our requests and positive about our project. Kurt Fuller and Jan Enderle

Tom Froning is just great to work with. While being very imaginative himself, he listens very well and is highly skilled in design and execution. A wonderful person to have on the job site; professionally organized, brilliantly multi-taskable and totally reliable. I would highly recommend soundesign for any project.

Designed and built a stunning tree house on our beach front property. Met all deadlines. It was a learning experience for all of us and Soundesign did a great deal of studying before starting the project. It was a pleasure working with all of the staff and we look forward to do more remodeling with Soundesign in the future.

If anyone had told me in November that you could start building a 1400 sq. ft. house on Lopez Island in the San Juans in the middle of winter and actually have a structure with a difficult crawl space foundation, framed, sheathed and papered by the middle of February I would have been more than skeptical. Lopez is a difficult environment in winter due to a weak topsoil layer that rapidly saturates and can become very squishy, making the use of heavy equipment very, very difficult so lot of manual labor can be required. Yet Tom Froning and his crew of head carpenter Collin and helper Dave have not only accomplished what I consider a herculean task, but have done it on budget, with great efficiency and with solid workmanship. Please realize that I fully anticipated waiting till spring to start, and was very much afraid that the excavation would turn into a swimming pool, but Tom convinced us to go ahead and I can tell you how pleased we are that we have done so. The windows have gone in this week and the metal roof will be put on in the next two weeks. The siding should go on next week, and to think that Tom and his crew could only start working on the project during the third week of December (and some of the weeks since have been miserable with rain and wind and cold) it's really quite remarkable. I also want to credit Tom with helping us realize the design and doing the plans. He also helped us with the permitting process and the land use and storm water permits which in the San Juans can be a bit exacting. He has also given us excellent advice and has worked to contain costs as much as possible. (Hey, it is an island after all.) All in all it has been a truly satisfying experience and I can say that at no point have I found the work to be anything less than professional and solid and that we are very, very pleased! I also want to make it clear in passing that I'm no starry eyed novice, I have done a lot of remodeling so I have some knowledge of building construction. Also, this project was done on a handshake agreement. There was no formal written contract, but we felt confident in Tom and he has not abused that trust. I recommend Tom and his crew with the utmost confidence that if you use his services you will not be disappointed. I'll write another review when the shell is finished and painted and will include pictures. If you should need us for a reference please contact Tom and I will gladly talk to you.

He listened, was available, and reliable. Very pleasant to work with, able to adjust the plans as we went. If I didn't like something, we worked together to revise or add what I wanted. He was knowledgable, and knew great products available.