Universal Designers in South Hill

“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.”

“Candace Nordquist is a Certified Kitchen design professional. She transformed our kitchen, seating area, family room, and entry into beautiful, highly functional, and comfortable spaces. She provided the design, material selection, coordination or purchase of materials, and recommended highly capable subcontractors I used to finish the project. Our waterfront house needed to have the view maintained or enhanced, the materials and colors needed to be capable of intense direct sunlight, and the traffic flow from the kitchen to the deck supported. She reorganized the kitchen placing flat surfaces between the arriving guest and the view. The tall elements were concentrated on the back wall giving a solid welcoming feel. Her 38" high waterfall granite table provides seating to enjoy the view. There are 28 cabinet drawers for storage, and the food prep, cooking, and clean up areas are all well organized. The electrical plan was also an integral part of the overall design. The under cabinet power outlets are especially nice and have minimized wall outlets. The lighting is able to be changed to create a variety of moods as well as provide specific task lighting. It is a pleasure to cook and entertain in this kitchen.”

“Elliot Gesang and his crew have helped us on several projects. We added a master bath and the work and craftsmanship was excellent. We got a lot of bang for our buck! Much less than we expected. Even our kids want to use our shower instead of theirs! We also added a new front entry which looks awesome! I get compliments on it all the time. Then we re-sided the entire home, painted and put up all new seamless gutters. His crew did an excellent job on this as well. Finally they are just finishing our new huge patio and cover, the patio is exposed aggregate and looks great and the new patio cover will give us needed shade during the summer, cover from the rain and safety from the snow (our old cover nearly collapsed under the weight of the snow last winter. All in all they have done fantastic work. Gesang Inc. is a small company but works with you on everything from concept, to design to finish! Their prices are reasonable, they are responsive in all matters concerning the project, the employees are polite and respectful, they clean up after themselves and are just good hard working people! I would absolutely recommend Gesang, Inc. to anybody in Pierce County.”

“Ms. Johnson recently provided consultation and design service for our bathroom remodel. She listened attentively to our general ideas and helped distill them down into the perfect plan. Her knowledge, expertise, and attention to detail were invaluable in helping us choose the best materials, products, and color scheme for our bathroom from the overwhelming and myriad choices available. She was very prompt and efficient in providing any information or service needed and offered wonderful tips and advice throughout our consultations. We really enjoyed working with Lucy and are thrilled with the results!”

“Scott is a great listener with a broad scope of experience to add to his value as a design and renovation consultant. He has been a repeat favorite in regional "Best Of" consumer polls for good reason. An all around great person to know.”

“We engaged the services of Don Larkin, Architect, to design our new custom home in Manchester, Washington. We selected Don after reviewing and interviewing several other architects because of his previous experience in construction, his design style, and his easy-going manner. We were not disappointed. We brought Don a conceptual layout, discussed with him our priorities -- needs, wants and desires -- and after a site visit, he flipped our concept 180 degrees which resulted in a far superior layout for the site. I guess that's why you hire a professional. His initial exterior design so captivated my wife and me by delivering on our tastes and styles that we hardly made changes to his exterior concept. Throughout the design process, Don brought us excellent ideas, and as we suggested changes or modifications, he was always good natured in dealing with our ignorances by pointing out why what we suggested would not work, but offering alternatives that blended our vision with reality. Once we settled on a design, he was there with us throughout the permitting process and the construction phase, making necessary or desired changes as requested. He has remained in contact after we completed construction to ensure we are satisfied with the home he designed based on our vision and our lifestyle. Throughout the process, both Don, and my wife and I learned a lot about the architectural design process. Don recognized some of our spatial visualization issues and developed some 3-D depictions of his 2-D drawings. These 3-D renderings helped tremendously in our ability to visualize the finished product, and to communicate with our contractor and trades people on the desired finished look. If Don does not offer these to you, I recommend that you ask him about them. They were an excellent aid in our design and build process. I absolutely and without hesitation commend and recommend Don Larkin for anyone who is interested in new or remodel construction architectural services. He listens to what you want, brings to you what he heard, and works with you to refine the product to meet your dreams. Don certainly delivered on our dream. Dave Pabst”

“Victoria Clark is wonderful to work with! She has helped me freshen up my family room, kitchen, Living room, dining room and redesign my teen son's bedroom. I love her sense of style, use of color and her ability to understand what I like and make it work with n budget. She took the time to get to know me and helped me to find new updated fabrics, wall paper, paint and furniture. What I really appreciated was her unique ability to repurpose furniture that I already owned and helped me to find new quality pieces at very affordable prices. Bowman & Clark has a wonderful team of professionals from painters, floor refinishers, fabric specialist, you name it she knows who to go to for good quality work. Check out her shop in Lakewood and ask her about the lines of furniture that they represent. She is very knowledgeable and connected to many manufactures in the local area and across the country. I would highly recommend her to all my friends and family and would be happy to work with her in the future. Thank you!!”

“My wife and I have a difficult lot to build a house on due to its irregular slope, steep in some areas. In order to have a view of Puget Sound the main floor had to be as high as possible. Before hiring Rhodes Architecture + Light we met with a few builders who do their own design work. They were unable to come up with an acceptable way to achieve the floor height we need. This drove us to look for an architect. We selected Tim Rhodes because we liked his portfolio of completed projects and after meeting him felt we could trust him to do the job. Tim came up with a very clever design that incorporated all our requirements. We've been living in the house 14 months and are quite pleased. Tim's design gets many compliments from first time visitors. The only reason I didn't give Rhodes Architecture + Light five stars is cost estimation and control. Our construction cost ended up 40% above my desired target. To be fair this is common when building a house.”

“I started working with Nancy Finneson of DeMane Design, to remodel my master bathroom. To date, I’ve remodeled all four bathrooms in my home using her design services. She listened to my ideas and preferences and expanded on them to give me beautiful, updated rooms that are better than I could have imagined. Nancy designed a built in cabinet for my master bath that gave me storage I never thought possible, in addition to upgrading its entire look. In one of my guest baths her use of tile and glass accent tile made a simple bathroom into something elegant. Nancy was tireless in her search to help me find just the right paint color, cabinets, tile and lights which all came together beautifully. I love my new bathrooms and couldn't have done it without her!”

“We contracted with Todd Schulte regarding our upstairs dormer project, which enlarged bedrooms and reconstructed our bathroom. He was responsive and responsible,. We were on a relatively tight budget and Todd was open to thinking through significant issues and allowing us to do some work on our own. We were quite happy with the work done”