David Whitney Architect

David remade our home.  And we are over-the-moon-delighted with the result. The house was built in 1952, an 1825 square-foot, 3 bed, 1.5 bath garrison colonial in a spacious corner-lot yard we love.  We?ve had it for 38 years and want to live in it for as many more.  It needed a lot of work when we bought it in 1978, but we raised two daughters in it without fixing anything much and staying way behind the curve on maintenance.  By 2014, there was a lot of repair and upgrading to be done.
We asked David to make it bigger inside, keeping it small outside, in keeping with the original and in defiance of the trend to overwhelm nice yards with overbuilt houses.  We didn?t want to lose any of our yard or gardens to house expansion.   We wanted a much larger dining room, a complete kitchen overhaul, an upstairs laundry, 3 full bathrooms and in general more spacious, better-lighted living.  We had many preconceptions about what we wanted and how it would all work, but needed to be careful about cost.
You can read elsewhere about how extraordinary David is, his thoroughness, efficiency, punctuality, project management skill and probity, command and control of details (aesthetic, structural, procedural?), careful documentation, imaginative problem solving.  He really is!  He made the transformation of our home fascinating, exciting, manageable and affordable.  We?d had no experience working with an architect or construction contractors.  David made the whole process work really well. 
Like most people, we feel that we?re independent-minded and smart, that we know our own home and understand the way we live better than anyone else could.  David never made us feel any differently.  Still, what he knew about how things we thought we wanted would really work for us was as surprising to us as it was comprehensive.  From the day we first met him, he prepared us for the next steps in the process, suggesting how we might feel about the choices to be made and how best to work through them. He anticipated stages when we might feel that things were going slowly and what was really happening, how rapid progress would be at other times and how to be ready for that.  When he explained how a space would feel or look, how it would affect the way we moved through it or used it, or how it would stand tests of time, his expertise and experience were beyond doubt.  His manner of showing us something we didn?t expect was considerate, patient, thoughtful, sometimes cautionary, often humorous, frequently backed up by quick, skillful sketches in his notebook of a space, a view, a structural part, or alternative views of any of those things. He would leave the sketches with us to think about.   He listened attentively and patiently and considered our requests thoughtfully.  After every meeting, he sent an email specifying everything agreed on in the meeting, noting who was responsible for what.   I emailed or telephoned him many times over the course of 18 months.  He always responded quickly and well. Every time.
As the new design concept unfolded, we had a sense of excitement and anticipation of the new house that we hadn?t expected as we began the process.  Moving to the stage of documentation, David produced careful drawings and detailed schedules and went over them in detail, preparing us for working with him to engage a contractor and plan for the purchase of many different kinds of materials.  David?s guidance kept us feeling that we were in control in what was, to us, very unfamiliar territory.  He recommended materials vendors to us, visited them with us at just the right time to anticipate the need for the materials, and helped us consider what we should buy and how it would work.  Throughout construction, he visited weekly, inspected the work closely, made recommendations, required changes, helped us understand what was happening and what came next, and continued to follow each visit with detailed notes about decisions made on the work and assignments of responsibility for next steps.  He told us he?d stick with us through the last item on the last punch list and he did.
Once upon a time, we weren?t sure we could afford an architect or whether the service would add significant value to our own sense of what we wanted.  Now, I can?t imagine trying to do this without David.  His fees were modest in proportion to what he did and lower than other bids we got.  What we paid David for his services gave us the greatest return by far of all we spent on the renovation.

David was outstanding from start to finish. He asked questions and provided what was desired both in the aesthetic of the renovation and the practical needs of the space. David is an excellent listener and designs and builds what is requested. He influences the design using excellent taste, training and experience to produce an outstanding result. He would attend weekly builder meetings and provide excellent input in a low-key yet clear and firm manner. His drawings were, of course, done quickly and with precision. He worked seemlessly with the builder (whom he recommended and was also excellent).
At one point, there was a need to build some finish carpentry on stairs. David quickly drew what was needed on his pad as we all stood there, after a thorough discussion. The builder hung the drawing on a wire next to the spot where it was to be built. The moulding was built exactly as drawn. These ad hoc drawings were done throughout the project and were exactly what was needed for this job. The fact that he is a solo architect was a tremendous advantage because if there were ideas or questions that arose, David was available and responsive in a postive and quick manner.
I would absolutely and highly recommend David (and have) as an architect on any job.

To begin with, David assured us at the beginning of the project that we should try to forget our ideas of a timeline, especially if it turned out a variance was needed (as it did). The timeline did take longer than we had initially hoped, but not unreasonably so, and David never raised expectations (he worked to do the opposite), so we can't fault him for the length of time the project took.

We could tell from David's portfolio of work that he showed us at the start that his taste was in line with ours. We trusted his judgment from the outset and in the end we were basically right to trust his judgment: we love the final product and the decisions he made were good ones.

There were various back-and-forths with drawings and plans, which gave us plenty of time to see his work and his process. He was occasionally slower to produce plans than promised. The first time he had to get back to us, it was a little unnerving to see only a few simple sketches come in after weeks had gone by; it didn't seem obvious that he had produced much more in all the time that went by since our meeting than he might have produced just sitting with us in our living room with a pen and paper. And in fact, what was most valuable by far were face-to-face meetings with David: he always had a professionalism and competence about him that put our minds at ease and worked through whatever concerns we had about the latest round of drawings.

In the end, however, David did produce thorough and professional drawings and worked with us through every step of the project, including coming to the variance hearing with the town. The packet I put together for the variance using his materials was so impressive the town clerk told me she was going to use it as a model for homeowners, so I can say that when it came down to the final drawings, David got the details right.

Nonetheless, from our perspective, it was sometimes hard to get David to talk about the project in as much detail as we wanted. For example, we tried to raise questions about how new windows would affect rooms on the inside but David seemed reluctant to engage in a discussion of the interior of rooms, perhaps because he felt the options were constrained based on the exterior look and thought it was a waste of effort to think through options from the interior perspective. Nonetheless, I know from family who have worked with other architects that some are very thoughtful and intentional about placement of windows in bedrooms, etc., and it would have been nice to see him engage in this discussion with us a bit more, especially since limiting the flexibility of space inside was the one major potential drawback to our plan to add more windows to the house.

David put off various other details until later in the process (during construction), which ended up delaying construction somewhat. For example, we hadn't talked through the details of gutters until they were just about ready to install them. It turned out that there were some non-obvious decisions to be made, and because we were on vacation at that phase of the project, it ended up delaying the project substantially since the builder had to wait for us to come back and meet with him and David before ordering gutters, which then took time to come in. It seems like this is an example of a detail that could easily have been thought through in advance rather than on site.

David also didn't talk through pricing in as much detail with us as we might have liked (again, this perhaps is really the purview of the builder, but he had much more knowledge of pricing than we did and we were counting on him to guide us through the process). He may have sensed that our budget was quite flexible, which it was, but we didn't get much of a sense of what the trade-offs were in the project, which sometimes was a problem. The biggest problem was with the bids we got on the initial drawings David made for us. David had been hesitant to say exactly how much he thought the project would cost, but he had given a range, and the bids came in well over that range (we were expecting 50-65k and bids came in at 75-120k).

Later in the project, with more minor adjustments, David was hesitant to talk in as much detail as we wanted. For example, David planned a porch built of mahogany from the get-go, and never talked about how that choice affected the price, though it was something one of the builders mentioned when explaining what seemed like a very high bid. We love the mahogany so perhaps he was right, but it might have been nice to know how much it was costing us.

In contrast, David planned to keep vinyl siding on the faand ccedil;ade of the house, which we hated (because we were removing a gambrel roof, we were adding more siding, and one of my chief concerns was adding more vinyl to the front of the house). In the end, we had to push David and the builder to give us the cost of using wood siding instead of vinyl, and the price was much cheaper than we'd anticipated given how hesitant he'd been to discuss it. We ended up going with wood and we're very happy we did.

We had generally decided that we liked David's taste and we were happy to trust him with the details, but this is one key example of where he was making assumptions about what we wanted that really weren't accurate and we had to push to get him to talk about options. There were more subtle details that perhaps were out of his purview, but that we would have liked to have talked through -- for example, he never asked us any details about the windows we ordered, and the builders ordered windows with only half screens when we have and use full screens in the rest of the house (which are much more convenient when you want to open the top half of the windows, as we usually do since we have small children). I can special-order new screens for a few hundred dollars, so I realize this is not exactly a high priority issue given the scale of the project, but still, it would have been nice to have paid a bit more attention to some of the little things.

That said, these are small details. Overall, David was very responsive to our needs, flexible but always tasteful in his designs, and ultimately understood and delivered what we wanted. Though he was sometimes a little slow to respond to things remotely (via email or post), he was thoughtful, considerate and easy to work with in person. Our house has been completely transformed for the better by the project and we have him to thank for that.

Designed the entire project, keeping in mind the age of the building and what needed to be done. He was very receptive to our suggestions and had a lot of foresight. It was a huge project.

We hired David to help us design and manage construction of an addition to our house, including a new larger kitchen, new half bath, new mudroom, and a new rear entrance. Overall, we are very pleased with the result, and enjoyed working with David.
The initial phase of the work involved discussing our goals and budget with David, and then working through some sketches of how we could accomplish those goals. David's experience as an architect definitely showed here, as he was able to steer us to a design that was both workable, and also was (roughly) in the range of our budget.
Next, he prepared detailed drawings, which were sent to contractors for bids. David's approach is to provide as much detail as possible in this stage, in order to avoid 'surprises' later on and get bids that included everything up front. David has experience with a number of general contractors, and we ultimately chose one of the contractors that he works with often (Leo Arria) which proved to be a benefit, in that there was little in the way of miscommunication later during the construction phase. David organized the entire bid process, communicating with builders, managing walkthroughs, etc.
During construction, David remained involved; we had weekly meetings with him and the builder, where he would review the work completed, and go over decisions that needed to be made. David did a good job of preparing us for the number of decisions, and went with us to showrooms to help with the decision process. Sometimes we felt like we wanted more 'lead time' for some of the decisions, though partly that is just a function of the sheer number of decisions that needed to be made.
David's experience as an architect on single family remodels/additions ultimately ensured that our addition was completed without many of the usual remodeling headaches -- there were no major incidents where something was done incorrectly as a result of a miscommunication, and he helped us through the many decisions that needed to be made. He is very meticulous, detail-oriented, and very organized, which we appreciated. He charges a flat-rate on his work; while it is not cheap, for the amount of service he provides and the experience that he brings we felt that it was worth it.

It went very well. David was great to work with in the design phase and that carried through the work with the contractor. David was always helpful thoughtful and considerable. I would recommended him without reservation.

David was very responsive and flexible with our changing wants and needs. He was very articulate and professional, and asked all the right questions. He delivered a beautiful and functional design and made sure it was built exactly to his detailed plans.

David was excellent. He always did as he said he would, and said what he did. His work was excellent an he offered great guidance throughout the project.

Excellent! We love David Whitney! He listened to us to produce a result that was reflective of our tastes. He is detail oriented, ensuring nothing fell through the cracks. He is an effective communicator with both the client and contractors. He really knows his stuff, which allows him to be a creative problem solver.

David was extremely professional, punctual, a great listener, and manager of the process. Very intelligent and competent.

How it went: From the first phone call with David we had a good feeling about him. He was the first one we spoke to and met with and we were ready to hire him on the spot. We forced ourselves to shop around a bit (because everyone says you're supposed to do that) but in truth we knew from the beginning we were going to hire David. We sure are glad we did. David was there for every step of the process, from the initial meeting and creation of our "wish list" to overseeing the completion of the final items on the punch list with the contractor. He worked with us to create several revisions of the design, listening carefully to our ideas as well as coming up with innovative solutions of his own. Once we came up with a design we liked he settled in to produce precise CAD drawings and extremely detailed schedules of materials, from the species of framing lumber, to the thickness of the plywood (not OSB!) to the color of the switch plates. This came in handy during the bidding process as there was never any question about what materials the contractors were using for their estimates. Once the drawings were done he led us all the way through the bidding process. He gave us the name of a general contractor (GC) he had previously worked with but he was always very careful to never influence us in our decision or steer us towards "his" guy. Though we ultimately went with the guy David brought to us (and were very happy we did!) I feel like it was 100% our choice and David would have been just as happy to work with whomever we finally decided on. In truth, it was a huge help having a GC who already knew and respected our architect. David scheduled all the meetings between the various parties, always taking notes and distributing detailed minutes the next day, or often the next hour, after the meeting. Action items were spelled out and there was never any question about who said what to whom or who promised to do this, that, or the other thing. Emails or phone calls were always returned promptly; if he said he'd take care of something you could be sure he would. We never had to remind him about anything. When building a house, the number of decisions that must be made can be overwhelming. Tile choices, paint colors, light fixtures, faucets, kitchen cabinets... everything must be decided on. Did you know there are about 7647 different types of bricks? And that's only the red ones. David helped us make all these decisions, often meeting us at show rooms or kitchen design centers for hours at a time. He brought us material samples and literature. He told us what materials he was fond of and which ones we shouldn't use and why. He even told us why Toto toilets are better than the other low-flows out there. Although he shared his own opinions he always respected ours. During the building phase David could often be found walking the site with his tape measure, making sure the house was being built to his specs. He was never afraid to point out when the tiles were being installed crooked or the shingles were out of alignment. In the rare event there was confusion on the part of a contractor (or the home owners), David always acted as mediator and made sure everyone was happy in the end. When he did need to correct a contractor about anything he did so in a professional manner. There was never a sense that he was the "pretentious architect" talking down to the blue collar grunts, only mutual respect. It was so nice to have a happy worksite! As the job progressed, David made sure every detail was taken care of. Towards the end, David made sure no punch list item was checked off until it was completed to everyone's satisfaction. Unlike the horror stories I've heard about (and fully expected to experience myself), all parties walked away not only still speaking, but still friendly and eager to work with each other again! Today we live in a beautiful house, which we were able to see go up nail by nail, and we don't have ONE bad thing to say about the project we undertook. I believe most of the credit for that goes to David. Did I mention it was built on time and on budget? He's awesome. You should totally hire him.

David is extremely professional and detail oriented. He was willing to give personal attention to decisions ranging from foot traffic flow in the house to types of tile in the bathroom. Good working relationship with contractors.

We are very satisfied with David's work on the project. He was able to listen to our wish list and translate it into plans that really transformed our house. His plans were highly detailed. He worked well with the general contractor and set up weekly meetings during construction. He was a perfectionist about many construction details that contributed to a better result. We had never done a renovation project before and sought out David's advice and aesthetic input on many things, from paint colors to light fixtures. David was always willing to go the extra mile, giving us suggestions and even joining us on trips to select tile, cabinets, and the like. He handled well the bumps in the road during construction. He was extremely responsive, helpful, patient and pleasant throughout. We could have spent less on an architect who would would simply deliver a set of plans, but David's involvement through construction was invaluable to us and well worth the additional cost.

David's initial design of the space suited our needs very nicely; in many ways what he envisioned for our house matched what we wanted. Where it differed, he wasn't the best listener: some aspects of the design favored aesthetics over practicality. Also when we had a dispute with the contractor over scope of work and cost, David encouraged us to pay the contractor (who he had many jobs with) rather than being a strong advocate for our side. It came out over time that one of the factors that led to the dispute with the contractor was a lack of detail in David's plans and finish schedules.