General Contractor:  Driftless Homewrights, Soldiers Grove, Wi

I designed this home for a lovely young couple with a property located a few miles outside of Viroqua.  The site was challenging due to the steep slope.  As a result, the home is bermed into the hill, so that the second floor primary bedroom suite is level with the ground behind the house.  Retaining walls built from locally-quarried stone carve out space for the driveway in front and an outdoor sitting area in back.

The scissor-truss roof is assymetrical, giving the primary bedroom a full-height ceiling, while the ceiling of the loft on the other side of the house slopes down to a 3' wall height.

The house utilizes double-stud construction, creating thick walls with 12" of insulation.  The concrete slab doubles as a finished floor.  

The combination of light-colored wood and white drywall, in addition to the tall ceilings and abundant windows, gives the home a light, airy feeling, reminiscent of Scandinavian design. 
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Lighting is an incredibly important but often overlooked part of a building.  It not only affects how well we can see but also how good it feels to be in a space.  Although we may not be conscious of it, we are attuned to the sun's light, which cues our bodies to when we should wake up and when we should go to sleep.  Ideally, a home will receive abundant natural light through windows and glazed doors.  But how does one best light those parts of a home which do not receive daylight or light the home during the hours of the day when the sun doesn't shine?

David Warfel is a lighting designer and founder of the lighting design company "Light Can Help You".  He has written extensively on the subject in Fine Homebuilding, The Pretty Good House and other publications. In The Pretty Good House book, David lists three principles of good lighting, which are illustrated in the four drawings below.  Each drawing shows common but not so good lighting practices on the left and good lighting practices on the right.

Principle #1:  Light What You Want To See
In a kitchen, light the countertop rather than the floor.  In a living room, light the book that you want to see with a floor lamp, or light the art that you want to see with a downlight.  The brightest spots in the room should be the most important things to see.

Principle #2:  Be A Glare Hunter
Think of glare as a bright spot in the wrong place - your eyes.  When choosing recessed lights for the ceiling, choose ones that are truly recessed so that you see the object lighted, not the glare from the light itself.  Avoid disc or wafer lights which are easy to install but create a point of glare.  When choosing decorative fixtures and lamps, look for shielded and shaded sources.  If you can see the lightbulb, then you should choose a different fixture.  

Principle #3:  Make Change Easier
The best light is natural light;  the worse is fixed white light that never changes.  We need different light for different tasks, moods and times of day.  Provide flexibility in each room by using different types of fixtures and putting them on individual dimmers so that you can get just the right for any situation.  

I've recently been working with clients on the re-design of their primary bedroom suite.  The existing suite is short of closet space, so one of the primary goals is to expand that space through a combination of walk-in closet and built-in drawers and shelves.  I was reminded of an article published by Fine Homebuilding a few years ago, which I found to be very helpful.  Here it is below:

Built in the same valley as Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin, this home maintains a low profile on its hilly site.  The three bedrooms and den are aligned along the north side of the house, facing the road, while the public living spaces face south toward the private hill top.  The partially exposed basement contains additional finished space.  

Horizontal bands of windows, a continuous light deck encircling the great room, a built-in window seat, earthy colors on the exterior and the use of limestone accents reflect the Wright inspiration.  

With its vaulted ceiling, the great room feels more spacious than one would expect from the home's outward appearance.  An adjacent screen porch and deck provide additional space for entertaining family and friends.  

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I'm amazed at how much our garden has grown and filled in since it was first planted in the spring of 2024.  We now have a very lush planting alive with bees and other pollinators, as well as an abundance of flowers providing changing colors throughout the season.

Our garden designer, John Pohl of Folly Afield, did an amazing job of planning and installing the garden last year.  He continues to tweak the design, as well as offering ongoing weeding help as the garden gets established.  

Here are some before and after photos showing how much the garden has changed since July 2024 when I last posted photos.

This was a truly special project in which I worked with a lovely couple from the Chicago area to design a home for their rural property near Westby, Wisconsin.  The clients were willing to keep their home fairly modest in size in order to be able to invest more money in beautiful detailing, finishes and custom cabinets in keeping with their appreciation for Craftsman style design.  

The clients wanted spaces that would provide a home for their Stickley-style furniture, period lamps and rugs, as well as an extensive art collection and a grand piano.  The vaulted living area, dining area and kitchen all flow together for ease of entertaining, while the inglenook provides a cozier space to enjoy a fire.

An exquisite island with curved legs is the centerpiece of the kitchen, and plenty of storage space is provided by the abundant custom oak cabinets.

I worked on this project with architect Ralph Rorem of Kanakee, who was responsible for much of the interior and exterior detailing of the project, including the interior trim and cabinets and the exterior brackets, rafter tails and other exterior trim.  The client selected tiles, paint colors, fabrics, countertops, light fixtures and plumbing fixtures, as well as designing the tile pattern on the mud room wall.

There was a large team the worked together to achieve this beautiful home including DeWitt Construction (general contractor), Justin Glasbrenner (mason), Enterprising Woodworks (cabinetry and custom woodwork), Rocky Ridge Woodworking (wood trim), Southside Finishing (door and trim finishing) Elegant Stone Products (granite countertops and fireplace hearth) and Coulee Region Stone and Tile (tile installer).

If you are planning to remodel or build an addition onto your home, or if you plan to build a new home, here are five tips to help you get off to a good start.

1.  HAVE A BUDGET IN MIND - Before you even begin talking to architects or home builders, figure out how much money you have to spend on your project.  This may depend on a number of factors including how much money you have saved for the project, how much you feel comfortable spending on a monthly mortgage or loan payment, and how much your lender is willing to lend you.  (SEE What Will It Cost?  and Construction Budgets and Setting Priorities)  Note:  the square foot costs in the "What Will It Cost?" blog post are very much outdated, but the article can give you a general idea of how different decisions affect the cost of your construction.


2.  ALLOW PLENTY OF TIME -  It's easy to underestimate how long a building project can take.  There's selecting an architect, schematic design, construction drawings, bidding / choosing a builder, getting permits and finally construction.  Depending on the size and complexity of your project, it could easily take from 6 months for a small remodeling project to 18 months (or more) for a unique home with many custom details.  And that's assuming that your preferred home builder has room for you in their schedule when you want to build.


3.  CONSIDER YOUR FUTURE NEEDS - Consider how your life may change over the years.  Are you planning to start a family soon?  Are you expecting to become empty nesters in the near future?  Or perhaps want to have a space where aging parents can come to live with you?  Or are approaching retirement age yourselves and want to have a home that will allow you to stay in your home as long as possible?  (See Aging in Place and The Aging-Friendly Bathroom)


4.  CHOOSE YOUR BUILDER WISELY - You'll be spending a lot of time with your home builder and entrusting a huge investment to them.  You'll want to select one who does good work, whom you trust and can work with and who is well-suited for your project.  (See What To Expect From Your Home Builder, Choosing Your Contractor, Part 1 and Choosing Your Contractor, Part 2).  I can provide you with a list of questions that you should ask your builder and references for that builder.


5.  UNDERSTAND THE PROCESS - See my series of blog posts: Working with An Architect:  Getting To Know You, Working with An Architect:  Programming, Working With An Architect:  Schematic Design, Working With An Architect:  Design Development, Working With An Architect:  Additional Details, Working With An Architect:  Bidding or Negotiation, and Working With An Architect:  The Construction Phase

I don't often get the chance to work on modern designs, but in the last few months I've been working on projects for two different clients which have mono slope roofs, in other words, roofs that have a single low pitch from front to back.  

The first project is a home that will be constructed on a rural site in Vernon County.  It will be built into the hillside, with entry into the home on the lower (walkout basement) level and the main living spaces and primary bedroom suite on the upper level.  It will have flat 9' ceilings on the back (hill-facing) side of the house, rising up to a height of nearly 15' on the front of the house.  The result is a dramatic home that opens up to the views.  

The second project is a garage, which will be built in rural Sauk County.  Purely by coincidence, it has the same type of roof and roof pitch. although on a smaller scale than the house.  It will have a wall height if 8'-6" at the back wall, rising up to 12' at the overhead garage doors.  The roof extends past the walls of the garage to create a covered porch shaded by cedar slats.

I first presented drawings of this project in a blog post in March of 2022, with an update in July 2023 showing the addition under construction.  Construction is now complete.

The homeowners are from the Chicago area and plan to retire to this farmhouse in the country.  The purpose of the project was to replace the existing kitchen and mud room, add a first floor primary bedroom suite and add a family room / guest bedroom on the second floor.

​The general contractor on this project was Aaron Hubbs of Hubbs Construction Inc.

For decades, the focus of sustainable building has been to decrease the amount of energy that buildings use over their lifetimes for things like heating, cooling, lighting, and operating appliances. Building codes have required increasingly better-insulated buildings, manufacturers of heating and cooling equipment have improved the efficiency of their equipment (such as with highly efficient heat pumps), and lighting has become more efficient with the development of LEDs.  There's also been a growing switch to renewable energy sources such as wind and solar.  All of these changes reduce the amount of carbon released as a result of the energy used in the day-to-day running of buildings over their lifetime - known as their "operational" carbon emissions.

In recent years there has been an increasing interest in and acknowledgement of the importance of a building's "embodied" carbon - the emissions from harvesting, manufacturing and transporting  the building materials used to construct it.  Some materials, such as concrete, steel and aluminum, release a lot of carbon in their manufacture.  Other materials, such as cellulose and timber, can actually store more carbon than is released in their manufacture.  Architects can choose materials which have low or even negative carbon emissions and reduce the use of those with high carbon emissions.

Studies have shown that it can take 20 or more years for the cumulative operational carbon of a building to equal the carbon produced by its manufacture - its embodied carbon.  Given the urgency to reduce our carbon emissions as soon as possible in order to reduce the catastrophic effects of climate change, it's become apparent that reducing new buildings' embodied carbon emissions is extremely important in addition to reducing their operational carbon emissions.

There are a growing number of resources available for estimating the embodied carbon of a building during the design process.  One popular tool is the BEAM Estimator, a "pay what you can" calculator put out by the organization Builders for Climate Action.  The BEAM Estimator can be accessed here:  https://www.buildersforclimateaction.org/choice-to-contribute-to-beam-update.html.  

​And for a more in-depth explanation of the new emphasis on embodied carbon, here is a link to an article in Fine Homebuilding:  ​https://www.finehomebuilding.com/project-guides/energy-retrofit/a-better-path-to-a-low-carbon-future