My husband and I required a new architect midway through our major home renovation. Tracey came on board at the end of the framing stage when we needed to do a minor bump-out on the family room. After she provided that drawing, I asked her in an open-ended way for additional input on the house. Next thing I knew, she was up on the roof, pointing out a nearly flat area where she felt snow and leaves would accumulate. She worked with us in creating a better solution, and then she turned her attention to the kitchen where she showed us how we could greatly improve flow in and out of it without losing storage space. Tracey's aesthetic sense turned out to be as keen as her more practical skills, helping make our house unique and beautiful; the response from neighbors, strangers and passersby has been overwhelming. Her design recommendations were very precise and carefully thought out, and she was always ready to provide suppliers of high quality materials (while mindful of seeking lowest prices) to the contractor and myself. She took what I would call a holistic approach to design, advising us on everything from the woodwork to the light fixtures to the exterior stone walls. She even created a technical drawing of our exterior front light so that it could be custom-made (by a very reasonably-priced supplier) to fit the space. It was these kinds of details that made the difference. To ensure that a design was right before money was spent, she sometimes mocked up pieces in foam core or plywood and had them held up in place, so that she (and we) could actually see the size of brackets or the shape of light or a column before money was spent to create them. There was nothing haphazard or cookie-cutter about her designs or the way she worked. She was also mindful of future maintenance, and made recommendations with that in mind. Tracey's incredible design sense carried over to nearly every remaining decision in and around the house. Some of her design recommendations cost nothing to implement such as arcing the top face of the stone retaining walls downward at the bottom of the hill rather than leaving them with a hard right-angled edge. These small decisions added up and made a big difference. One of my favorite of her suggestions was a curved garden wall that not only broke up a steep drop from a retaining wall into two levels, but that created an additional planting area as well as a soft, curved edge on the lower level lawn. By far, her greatest contribution was the exterior front entryway. She took an existing design flaw (the entry was too wide) and, with the deft use of woodwork, made it the focal point of the house. The wrap-around porch is anchored by her tapered square columns (first mocked up in plywood, to ensure the size and taper of one was just right before ordering eight of them.) Also impactful, she replaced the small, ready-made brackets called for in the plan with generously-proportioned ones of her design. We learned much about design from working with Tracey. Elements we thought were "a given" aren't necessarily so. The gutters and leaders are a good example. As originally designed, they would have been a distraction, and one leader would have crowded a rear light fixture. But her reconfiguration of the gutters and leaders drastically minimized their intrusion without compromising their job of removing water from the roof. Tracey is not one to over-adorn, and she kept the design simple, classic and very functional. Working with her was a great pleasure. We thoroughly enjoyed the time we spent talking to her about our job. She was very accessible, both in person, on the phone and via e-mail, and was always willing to help locate the materials that would make her visions a reality. At the end of the job, she worked over the weekend to quickly deliver an "as built" drawing of the house, as required by our town. I wholeheartedly recommend Tracey Brown.
