The Value of Residential Design Services

By: Jerome McInnish
Architect
H. Jerome McInnish, LLC

The value and importance of your house cannot be overstated. It is the redoubt that protects you from the elements – the cold, the sun, the wind, and the ravages of storms. It provides you with a measure of peace, security and calm from an often hostile environment. It is your most important investment and therefore plays an important role in your present and future financial health.

But wait! I must write of the most important thing about your house. You want it to become your home. A home might be a castle in Europe or a tent on the street in the Mission District of San Francisco. But as a reader of this essay you are fortunate to be able to aim for a home in the interim between these two.

Your home will be a place for memories. If you are newly married, you will remember with joy when you built your first house and how you were looking forward to it as a place for the continuation and nurturing of your marriage. Certainly, you will remember the time when your newborn child was first brought home from the hospital, the time when the toddler was first able to walk, the time when the child was sent off for his first day of school.

But don’t settle for a house lacking in aesthetic quality. Be careful not to build a cookie-cutter that is gaudy, pretentious, over-sized, or that embodies a foreign or inappropriate architecture that doesn’t blend in well with that of the neighborhood.

I frequently see a misplaced front entrance that is cold and uninviting, a garage that is too prominently placed and therefore looks like the primary element of the house, or redundant porches and exterior decks that detract from the architectural wholeness.

Ironically, despite the central importance your house plays in your life and the financial investment of building or adding on, you, like others, may hesitate to spend a small sum on an architect whose advice could pay you a large dividend.

I am a sole practitioner, and I work with low overhead expenses, so I’m able to offer affordable design services to the mid-level home builder or to one who wishes to add to or modify an existing house. Should you ask for my help I would propose that we work together in a series of meetings during which proposals and counter proposals would be aired, then refined and finalized, and documented in a set of drawings suitable for discussing with a builder. This design process would also benefit from 3-D virtual reality modeling that would facilitate the homeowner’s understanding of the final design.

Please give me a call at (404) 353-2102. I would love to meet you and would enjoy chatting during a no-cost social visit over a cup of coffee.