Archive for June, 2010

Oklahoma Timber Frame Architecture

Friday, June 25th, 2010

Rand Soellner Architect is a popular choice for people looking for timber frame architects for their proposed homes in  locations across the USA.  Some of these people want this timeless architecture for their dream retirement houses, or for a new family compound estate village, or if they are down-sizing and want a more modest residence.

oklahoma timber frame architecture

Rand Soellner’s work can be authentic or conventional + hybrid timber features, as you wish and as your construction budget permits.  He will help you get what you want for your next house in Oklahoma, or wherever you happen to be located.

Timber Frame Architecture in Oklahoma

Why are we talking about Oklahoma timber frame architecture?  Because some of Soellner’s clients are there and others have made inquires.  Broken Bow, Eufaula, Oklahoma City, and other towns and counties have been very interested in Soellner’s work in timber frames.

Please let us know if we may be of service to you.  We also service Arkansas, Texas, Colorado, Kansas, Missouri, Mississippi, Louisiana and other parts of the USA, no matter where your land happens to be found.

Rand was having lunch recently with a provider of timber frame trusses, beams, and posts.  The manufacturer’s representative made an interesting comment about when people might decide to have their dream home designed and built.  The representative became philosophical and commented that “None of us are going to live forever.”  His point was the sooner someone gets started having their wonderful residence designed, the sooner they can get it built, move in, and start enjoying life there the way they have always wanted.  And they can do so for a longer period of time if they don’t keep putting it off.

oklahoma timber frame architecture

Prioritize what is important to you in life. It just might be your next dream house.

Why do you keep putting it off?  There are many convenient things to blame: the economy, your nephew’s graduation, wanting to earn an arbitrary amount of money before proceeding with your dream house.  Sure, any of these reasons seem valid at the time.  However, in the grand scheme of your lifetime, getting what you really want to make you happier then you have ever been before really should become a priority, shouldn’t it?  The payback to you is in how many years to get to enjoy your dream residence.   Every year you put it off means another year you won’t be able to enjoy it.  That is irretrievable.   Only you can adjust things in your life to allow you to proceed with the best house of your life.

That’s where Rand Soellner HOME ARCHITECTS TM come into the situation.  They can help you program, design, and assist in administering the construction of your special home.

tags: oklahoma timber frame architecture, post and beam, custom, mountain, castle, mansion, small, cottage, green, log, arts and crafts, rustic, oklahoma, texas, eufaula, city, searcy, fort smith, charlotte, cashiers, hendersonville, atlanta, chicago, greeville, las vegas, hilton head, denver, aspen, telluride, whistler, vancouver, new york, rocky.

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Why Hire a House Architect? 10 Reasons

Saturday, June 19th, 2010

One main reason to hire a house architect is: you will receive a better design and ultimately a better house because of having that better design.

What constitutes “better design?”  Well, how about these considerations:

1.  A FLOOR PLAN THAT WAS CAREFULLY CONCEIVED TO PARALLEL YOUR DESIRED LIFESTYLE: The spaces you want, the arrangement of them and their size and features for your maximum convenience, comfort, and functionality.

2.  VIEWS: Real architects carefully plan their clients’ homes to take advantage of the special views on that acreage that they bought for their dream home.   If you have ever seen a home that ignored its site’s views, you will understand.  Such inattention to spectacular views borders on the criminal, from the perspective of a talented residential architect.  No self-respecting architect would ignore the wonderful vistas that you have on your land.  Your architect wants you to enjoy the views that charmed you enough to buy the land, through the windows and porches built to house you and your family.

3.  ENERGY CONSERVATION / HEALTHIER HOME: Real architects are sensitive to energy efficiency and will design your residence with higher quality air-conditioning equipment, higher R-values for your insulation, better windows and doors, better roofing, Energy Star appliances and hot water heaters, and other features relating to the path of the sun and winds around your house, resulting in less expenditures from you to your utility companies.  This helps your pocketbook over decades.  Now that’s a real lasting value that increases your comfort and lowers your monthly bills, attributable to your hiring an architect to design your house.  Real architects are also knowledgeable and sensitive to products and systems that are healthier for your family.  For instance, specifying construction materials with little to no off-gassing of vapors that could have effects on your breathing or other life functions.  Also, specifying air-conditioning systems with cleaner air machinery so that your children and other family members breathe cleaner air.

4.  DURABILITY: Architects typically want you and your residence to have good quality components that will last a long time.  Quality and durability are part of an architect’s training.

5. VALUE ENGINEERING: Some architects, like Rand Soellner HOME ARCHITECTS TM regularly build Value Engineering into every residence and other projects they create.  This results in their clients receiving the highest quality for just about everything, at the least cost.  It entails a rigorous examination of nearly every aspect of your project in terms of range of cost versus features and benefits.  Nothing is taken for granted, and you are the one that makes the choices as to what you wish to pay for in your house.

6.  LOGICAL & PRACTICAL CONSIDERATIONS & ADVICE TO YOU, RESULTING IN MAJOR COST SAVINGS: Most real architects seriously consider client wishes and then report to their clients the pros and cons of various options.  You make the choice; it’s your house but your architect will provide you with wise counsel as to what makes sense and what does not.  This advice can save you from wasting hundreds of thousands of dollars on something that you may have thought was insignificant, but which your architect understands in greater depth.

7.  CONTROL: Your architect puts you in control of your new home.  Not your builder, not your designer, not your Realtor.  You.  And that’s where you want the control.  You are going to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars (or even more, if a normal sized residence) and you should feel confident and be the one making the decisions that impact your costs and features that you will enjoy for decades to come.  Your architect has no particular axe to grind on your project, particularly an older, well-seasoned architect who has the experience to have “done it all,” and not have any agenda other that to make you happy with the house you want.  Your architect will help you understand what others on your project are doing and how your money is being spent.  They  will help you start out in control and stay in control, throughout the entire process.  Now that is worth having your architect involved from start of design to completion of construction.

8.  SENSE OF ACCOMPLISHING SOMETHING WORTHWHILE AND SPECIAL: An architect elevates a mere house into the art of becoming “your home.”  Your architect makes sure that it incorporates all of your wishes including your functional and aesthetic preferences, and perhaps some of the architect’s particular style as well, which is probably one of the reasons you engaged him or her in the first place: you liked how their projects looked.  Architecture is the combination of Art and Technology.

9.  A HOME THAT LOOKS GOOD AND WORKS WELL/TRAINING: Your architect will make sure that your home looks good and works well.  That is part of their training and their “religion.”  Those abilities are part of what helped them excel and graduate from a major accredited university, typically with honors, and helped them pass a multiple-day grueling in-person exam to become licensed.  It is also what allowed them to obtain years of internship with other experience architects looking over their shoulders, critiquing their every move.

10.  LICENSURE/ PROFESSIONAL MEMBERSHIPS: Your residential architects must be licensed in at least one state in the United States in order to even call themselves architects.  Mere “residential designers” have no requirements whatsover and have absolutely no oversight from any official agency watching what they are doing for or to you.  Real Architects have to take CEUs (Continuing Education Units) each year in order to remain licensed, continually updating their knowledge about architecture in the world of today.  The states in which they are licensed monitor their activities.  Architects, like Rand Soellner, that also belong to organizations like the AIA (American Institute of Architects) and the NCARB (National Council of Architectural Registration Boards), have additional requirements further polishing their abilities and credentials and subjecting themselves to even greater scrutiny and higher professional standards.  That is the sort of professional you want designing the very thing in which you and your family live, isn’t it?

Why hire a house architect source of information:

Rand Soellner Architect: 1-828-269-9046
http://www.HomeArchitects.com

tags: why hire a house architect, cashiers, north carolina, greenville, asheville, timber frame, log home, custom, cottage, mountain, luxury, green, healthy, oklahoma, las vegas, chicago, atlanta, hendersonville, rosman, charlotte, orlando, newnan, fresno, canada, denver, telluride, aspen, colorado, rocky.

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Timeless Custom Home Designs

Thursday, June 17th, 2010

Once in awhile, clients ask Rand Soellner what “timeless custom home designs” means.   Rand’s definition of timeless is: “not of any particular period, era or style, but  rather a quality house design that evokes a feeling that it could have been designed and built a century ago or a century in the future.”

Today’s conveniences are provided within the timeless designs in each custom home.

Of course, Soellner houses have all of today’s comforts and conveniences: the latest appliances, the most efficient and energy-efficient heating and air-conditioning systems, built-in whole-house vacuum systems, double-pane glass, the latest communications systems, and many other features that provide convenience to their proud owners.

The idea behind Soellner’s timeless aesthetic is really to include features that their clients have come to know and expect from them, while avoiding the temptation to use trendy stylistic “popular” elements that may seem appealing today, but in a few short months appear dated and obviously from a given bygone era.  For instance, doesn’t everyone know what decade “avocado green” and “harvest gold” came from?  (Hint: 1960′s, early 70′s).  No self-respecting owner would be caught with such a palette in their kitchens today.  While designers in that era were immersed in that rather camp and kitschy trend, those that yielded to that stylistic influence suffered the fate of being called passe only a few years later, which forced their hapless clients to have to update their houses or appear outdated.

Rand Soellner Architect doesn’t believe that his clients should have to update anything within just a few short years, because their designers wanted to conform to some current stylistic “trend.”   Soellner believes it is better to have evolved his own palette of timeless features that are just about impossible to date as belonging to any particular decade or even century.  True design quality endures and stands the test of time.

They constantly update their features, appliances, insulation, glass, doors, windows, roofing, siding, foundations and other elements to insure that clients receive some of the best technology available for their residences today.  However, the timeless artistic features used cannot be attributed to any precise “trend.”

Many of Soellner’s clients inform him that they never intend to sell their house that he is designing for them and that they intend to live out the rest of their days there.  This makes it even more important to arrive at a timeless design aesthetic that can last.  That’s another reason Soellner also specifies materials that should last, like special tiles and grouts in which mold and mildew cannot grow.  This is just one example of the rigorous functional attributes of this timeless design philosophy.

Soellner also uses special roofing underlayment that is much more substantial than the tar paper typically used by others.  Soellner’s specified underlayment is much thicker and more elastic and long-lasting and seals around the thousands of penetrations made while your builder is attaching shingles and other exposed roofing materials to your roof.  The added price to your construction cost is minimal, but the impact on avoiding leaks is lifelong.  Now that’s a wonderful timeless feature to have in a house in which you intend to spend the rest of your life.  So, it is not all just about aesthetics, although a substantial portion of the timeless approach does have to do with how your residence appears.  After all, that is one of the reasons clients come to him: for the special “look” of his designs.  Most clients find it beneficial to discover that beneath the appearance lies solid, dependable technologies at work for them that are durable as well.

If you believe that trendy designs are not for you, and you want a residence designed for you that stands the test of time, decade after decade, you may wish to consider contacting the Soellner firm.

Contact for timeless custom designs:

Rand Soellner Architect
rand@homearchitects.com
1-828-269-9046

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Please Let Us Help You with Your House Project

Friday, June 4th, 2010

It’s what we do: design houses.  We also create modification drawings and specifications for house renovations and remodeling.  Once in a while we get a call from someone asking about us building their residence.  Rand Soellner is an architect.  That means: we mainly design, not build.  Our specialty happens to be the design of houses.

Contractors build.  An architect designs the project, drawing and specifying the layout and materials the builder is supposed to use when constructing your residence.  That’s the general way of things in the architectural and construction world.  We have teamed with contractors often in the past, to create Design-Build teams in which a closely-knit group of both design and construction professionals work together to meet our mutual client’s objectives.

We are here, ready to help you with your residential design needs, however you would like to engage us.  Sometime clients feel that the modest nature of their project is not something that we would consider.  That is not correct.  We will work on just about any project, anywhere, whether it is a new residence of a large size, medium, or small.  We also design additions, which are generally part of a remodeling, being accomplished to an existing residence.

We enjoy what we do and are eager to help you wherever your project may be located.  That’s another issue we try to explain.  Because we are housing design specialists, we have a broader area in which we work : the world, all of the United States, North America, or wherever you are.  That’s right.  We are interested in your house design project anywhere in the world.

We design small cottages in the woods, as guest quarters, or as your new down-sized house.  We also create medium-sized suburban houses in conventional neighborhoods, when clients just can’t seem to find what they want from any other source.  They come to us and we help them by creating a design that is a better fit for their functional and aesthetic objectives.  We also custom-craft large estate houses, family villages and even castles, if that is what you want.  And don’t forget the revisions and renovations to all of those; we do it all.

We know that you might think that perhaps you should look to your local designers or another architect in your town.  If you really like their design work, fine, do that.  However, if you believe that your local pool of talent can mimic what we do overnight; that may not happen to your satisfaction, unless they have been doing it for decades.  Especially if quality residential design is not what they have been doing most of their lives like Rand Soellner Architect.  It pays to hire the specialist, who will do the best job for you.  Would you hire a doctor who specializes in wrist surgeries to handle a respiratory problem?  Of course not.  Sometimes you might have to go a farther distance to find just the right professional to handle your situation.  I suppose you could call us the “house doctors.”  That’s why we work all over the USA.

Please give us a call or e-mail and let’s talk about it.

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