TouchStone Design

We hired Terry Stone, TouchStone Design in Scottsdale to draw plans for a whole house remodel. AJ Gates, of Gates Custom Homes, the general contractor we decided to use, worked exclusively with Touchstone for architectual services and with Meagan Tignini, Area Interior Design for interior design services. We hired Gates, we hired them all. Paradise Valley requires a licensed architect to draw up the plans. Gates told us that Stone worked well with the building codes people in our area. He would get the plans approved for us. He also told us he was an experienced residential architect. The house was non conforming and grandfathered into the town. We asked Stone whether or not renovating made sense and we also needed to confirm whether we could add an addition to the side of the existing house before we proceeded with work on the floor plan and elevations. We think Stone worked reasonably well with building codes people but didn't advocate for us on building the addition up to the side setback. I searched the building codes and learned we could build in the side setback. I showed our architect that we could build. I felt Stone should have been more knowledgable about this. The first set of plans Stone submitted to Paradise Valley had our house listed in Scottsdale. It was a careless mistake and gave me concern. Although he advertises himself as a residential designer, he wasn't very helpful in giving us guidance on materials selection. I felt like our plans were cut and paste and were uninspired. Stone never produced a program of what we asked for in the house before he spent time developing floor plans and work for specific areas of the house. He measured the site and the site plan with his tape measure and said he could come up with an accurate plan without ordering a survey. His measuring was incorrect. He should have ordered a survey before wasting time doing the measure. We sent look book pictures to Stone but the renderings didn't reflect the elevation we wanted. His computer drawings were difficult to read and confusing for the subcontractors to follow. The drawings did not anticipate changes to the floor plan taking into account insulation in the walls so that baths and kitchen measurements were off and required much rework.