New Homes & Cottages
Not many homeowners experience the one in a lifetime change to be involved in the design of a new home. We want you to remember it as a fun and creative process. A custom home is not about selecting tile and cabinets but to have who you are and how you want to live expressed in your personal spaces. We get to know you, your family members, how you entertain, cook, relax, work, what you store and what brings you a sense of peace and belonging.
When designing a home, we work with you and your builder to:
- Make the house unique while respecting the street scape. We never repeat any design solutions and select a style according to your taste and the context.
- Select long lasting and durable materials
- Employ passive solar strategies, especially limiting heat gain in summer
- Be net zero ready
- Keep climate change and especially preventable flooding from severe rainstorms in mind
- Prevent poor air quality and VOC pollution
- Be energy efficient and insulate above required Building Code levels
- Let building assemblies breathe and shed vapour
- Imagine your lifestyle and needs five, ten and twenty years in the future to let the house support for you at all life stages
- Fight clutter with sufficient storage
- Connect the inside and outside
- Create the illusion of spaciousness with sight lines
- Design for potential future Additional Dwelling Units
- Employ barrier free strategies even if not noticeable
- Increase roof load capacity for potential future solar panels
- Limit size, rather create the illusion of space
New Homes Project Showcase
Glass and Stone House for Family and Friends
It always is a pleasure to design a house that will be welcoming to the extended family, friends of all ages, the young adult children coming home for the weekend, teenagers and business associates. Modern spaces can easily feel cold, especially with a 22’ central atrium and stacked glass windows at the front and back. The owners created warmth with dark wood ceilings, in floor heat below the main floor tile, bedroom wood floors and stairs, stone walls and colourful art. The central atrium opens to an outdoor entertaining space with a pool, outdoor fireplace and pizza oven. The master bedroom refuge is on the 3rd floor with stair and elevator access and opens to a rear terrace with expansive views. Sleeping areas are divided into a small in-law suite, a teenage wing with a den, and a walk-out basement young adult bedroom. The House was constructed with ICF with the 3rd level master bedroom in 2×6. All floor systems are 18” truss joists to facilitate running ducts and plumbing perpendicular to the joists. The heating source is a boiler powered by an electric heat pump and in floor hydronic heat. The hydronic heat ensures that the heat generated at especially the main level atrium tile floor level makes the lower 5’ feel comfortable.
Brick and Stone House with Wrap Around Porch
We might dream about a wrap around porch, but in Canada we sacrifice coveted natural light. The backyard in this house faces south and since we were going to have the family room at the rear, we designed the house in two parts: The front has a wrap around porch with the master suite, a second bedroom and a bathroom, and is connected to the rear south facing and sun filled family room with a kitchen area and courtyard. The bedrooms have 11 ft. ceilings and transom windows above the wrap around porch roof level. To prevent the bedrooms ceilings from appearing too high, we have decorative beams below the transom windows about 8’ ft. above floor level. Above the garage is an attic bedroom, bathroom and den for the teenage son and this area can be converted into a secondary dwelling unit.
Magazine Featured 1700 Sq Ft Solar Powered Home
We can all be challenged to build smaller without sacrificing function. The owners of this 1,700 Sq Ft home might not have set out to create an off the grid home, but the house turned out to be so efficient that the only utility cost is propane for the gas stove. The concrete main floor is a heat sink for hydronic in-floor heat and since we installed 4” rigid styrofoam below the basement floor slab, the owners barely activate the basement in-floor heat. An operating skylight in the front entrance and strategically placed awning windows ensure convection air flow to cool down the house. The front entrance leads to a roofed screened porch with the living area to the right and the bedrooms to the left. Space was at a premium and even the hallway became multi- functional with a nook for sewing, a desk and closets to divide craft and writing areas. Access to the basement is an open staircase to make the basement feel part of the main floor living area. Construction is ICF with fiberglass windows and doors, exterior stucco, a steel roof, Hambro structural concrete floors and the trusses have been designed to support the weight of solar panels. There is a storage room in the garage for the solar batteries.
Urban Infill Close to Harbour
A structurally unsound house was demolished to make way for this urban infill close to a sailboat harbour. We paid homage to the nautical location with horizontal white corrugated steel siding and blue doors. We design all new homes with the option of a future SDU (Secondary Dwelling Unit) and in this case we have a separate door at the front porch leading to a bike room and basement access. The building permit included fire and sound rated basement ceilings and we roughed in a future kitchen. The owners do some or all work from home and the basement serves as a media & photography workspace. A second workspace is a mezzanine IT Programming office overlooking the living area. A large double-pane interior window ensures sufficient sound control. The master bedroom is at the attic level and leads to a roof top deck with views of the harbour. The basement is ICF and the remainder of the framing is lumber. The corrugated steel siding and roof with fiberglass windows and doors will ensure a durable exterior.
