Black Bear

This project was done for a builder for his personal residence.  He anticipated going to the county with the drawings for approval for the building permit and to construct the home himself.  The builder provided us a rough sketch of the floor plans, defined the ceiling heights and heights for crawl and floor in the garage. We determined a roof pitch that would provide him the look he wanted in the gables and lower roofs. He anticipated some suggestions as part of our design process but pretty much wanted to stick to his floor plan.  This project really was more about producing plans that would pass muster for his local county building department. In the end, being able to get floor plans with dimensions and see how the home was built in a setting, allowed he and his wife to quickly make decisions which made their design process both cohesive and efficient.

In addition, we provided framing plans, which are within our capacity, but not normally part of our Concept design services. These framing plans allowed him to see in 3D roof truss systems, floor joist systems using I joist and determine the quantity of prefab materials to order.  The builder had very specific guidelines for dimensions to allow for ordering standard size prefab floor joist, and multiple other standard size lumber for framing. This was done to save on material costs.

We were able to show the builder and his wife, in 3D, what the build would look like including setting the house plan on his terrain elevations to show him how it would lay with the land.  As an extra, they requested that we do cabinet designs for bathrooms and the kitchen, which allowed him to quickly get a quote from the local cabinet builder. 

In all, our specialized set of services tailored to exactly what he “needed” and no more allowed him to keep his design budget in check. The design project from start to finish took less than 2 weeks and we also provided him exterior finish colors and materials to allow them to land on selections for these materials in advance, showing him what pre-painted lap siding would look like in his build as well as a Certain Teed shingle and how they went together on the home as designed.

The result was a very cute home set in the blue ridge mountains that provided them all the rooms they desired as well as a recreation area on both the upper and lower terraces off the front of the home to enjoy the views.  The builder did add gas burning fireplaces on both terraces as well and our dimensions allowed him to get from a structural engineer what he needed to support this two-story fireplace.