PHILOSOPHY
FOLLOWING THE PRETTY GOOD HOUSE GUIDELINES
Although building a home is a thrill, it’s important to evaluate what your goals are and how they can be achieved. We are happy to follow a green building standard (Energy Star, HERS, Zero Energy Home, Passive House) but more importantly we want to follow the goals of the families we build with in a sustainable, functional, and beautiful way. Pretty Good House encourages us to do what’s good for the people, and for the planet.
CUSTOM NEW HOMES
BRINGING YOUR HOME TO LIFE
A custom new home is personal and special. It meets the needs of your family, your style, and your site.
Detailed to fit into the landscape of the site that you chose, the home should nurture and inspire you. The act of creating healthy indoor environments that promote physical, mental and emotional health is important to us and our clients.
The goal is to build a durable home that you love and continue to maintain for many years to come.
Many homes are beautiful, but all homes should require less effort to operate and maintain. Our design philosophy is simple, attractive, and durable homes that use space efficiently. We are not hung up on the square footage of a home, but are more interested in how you live and how your home can best meet your needs. Our design approach is to continually weave architecture and sustainability together in every project creating a truly integrated design. You may not have come to us with energy efficiency in mind, but we hope to leave you with a thoughtfully designed, functional, energy efficient space that uniquely fits you and your lifestyle.
We are diverse in our style of design, if you have an arts and crafts home we will meet your design aesthetic. If you have a mid century modern home, that’s great too! We love design, as architects we aren’t married to one style or option. We are committed to making your dreams a reality and remaining diverse, while providing energy efficient design options from the moment your project arrives at our door.
RENOVATIONS & Additions
BREATHING NEW LIFE INTO YOUR HOME
People ask all the time if we do renovations. The answer is yes for a number of reasons. First, we are finding that it’s harder and harder for people to find homes in neighborhoods they love when they are thinking about upgrading to a different house that might better suit their needs.
Maine has a lot of the oldest housing stock in the country. We love the idea of keeping things that have been here for 100 years. But the way they built then doesn’t jive with the energy and economics of today. What once was a farmhouse with a back 40 acres of wood, is now an oil guzzling masterpiece. The craftsmanship that existed then is expensive to replicate now. So keeping what we have, might just do the trick. And making it as efficient as possible along the way, now you’re talking! Alas, making an existing structure super-efficient isn’t cheap or easy. But we do promise to make your addition or renovation as efficient as we can within your budget and your needs.
We typically design for cold climates, as we are based in Maine. Renovations can be tricky when you can’t visit the site regularly, so for now, we are limiting our renovation projects to Maine.
