Designing Your Forever Home: A Guide to Forward-Thinking Design

by Charles Hendricks | Aug 25, 2025 | Accessibility, architecture, Harrisonburg Architect, Interior Design, resources

Three key pillars can take your new home to your dream custom home:

Accessibility

Smart Technology

Timeless Aesthetics

Accessibility: Designing for Life’s Changes

A truly well-designed home anticipates the future. We work to design using universal design principles that make the home easy to use, maintain, and navigate for everyone, regardless of age or physical ability. This isn’t about designing for inabilities; it’s about creating a home that works seamlessly for a person carrying groceries, a child playing, or a family member with a temporary injury. Our team is trained in these principles, including the NAHB Certified Aging in Place Specialist certification, ensuring we can provide the best possible solutions.

Large window with bench seating in a custom home.

Smart Technology for Seamless Living

Modern life is made easier with smart technology, and our custom homes are designed to integrate these luxury systems seamlessly. We can incorporate technology for:

- Climate Control: Manage heating and cooling with ease to ensure year-round comfort.
- Security: Monitor your home remotely for peace of mind.
- Entertainment: Control your audio and visual systems from a single point.
- Lighting: Create the perfect ambiance for any occasion with automated lighting systems.

These smart features are designed to be user-friendly, giving you effortless control over your environment and helping you manage your home’s systems proactively.

Durable Design for Timeless Aesthetics

Your home should be a reflection of your unique style and a source of comfort for years to come. We achieve this by focusing on durable, time-tested materials that require low maintenance. Our designs also emphasize a seamless connection between indoor and outdoor spaces through large windows and doors, allowing natural light to fill your home and creating a sense of openness. This attention to detail, from the structural elements to the finished trim, ensures that your home will not only be beautiful on day one but will continue to be a cherished space for your family for generations.

By combining timeless design with strategic, forward-thinking features, we design homes that are as durable and adaptable as they are stunning.

Thoughtful Design: Our Approach to Custom Home Design

by Charles Hendricks | Aug 22, 2025 | Charlottesville, Harrisonburg Architect, Not used, resources

When you start planning to build your dream home you’re likely thinking about how it will look, feel, and how it will function for your daily life. Beyond aesthetics, we believe your home should also be a smart, healthy, and enduring investment. That’s why our design process is built around delivering practical value, ensuring your new home not only looks beautiful but also performs exceptionally.

Designing for a Better Living Experience

Our core philosophy revolves around creating what we call “high-performance dream homes”. What does this mean for you?

Lower Operating Costs: We focus on design solutions that can reduce your utility bills, particularly energy consumption. This translates into more money in your pocket over the long term.
Increased Comfort: A well-designed, high-performance home maintains consistent temperatures, has healthy indoor air quality, and minimizes drafts or cold spots around your home. You’ll simply feel more comfortable in every season.
A Healthier Environment: We prioritize materials and systems that contribute to a healthy indoor environment, free from harmful toxins and allergens. Our design process is focused on creating a space where you and your family can thrive.
Durability and Longevity: We design with resilience in mind, aiming for homes that are built to last, require less maintenance, and stand up to the elements for decades to come.

For us, sustainable design isn’t an optional add-on; it’s fundamental to how we approach every project. It’s about making smart choices that benefit you directly, both now and in the future.

Our Integrated Design Process

We understand that coordinating a custom home design can feel overwhelming with many different professionals involved. Our team is structured to simplify this process for you. We aim to “pull all building elements into a single elegant and functional design.” This means we integrate various aspects from the very beginning:

Architectural Design: Creating the overall vision and layout of your home.
Interior Design: Ensuring the interior spaces are cohesive, beautiful, and functional.
Energy Consultation: Expert guidance on maximizing energy efficiency.
Structural Design: We work with an integrated approach to maximize the use of building materials to achieve a safe and comfortable home.

Our goal is to provide a comprehensive, streamlined experience so you don’t have to juggle multiple consultants. We believe this integrated approach leads to a more harmonious and higher-performing final design.

Dogwood Home Renovation: Project Update

by Charles Hendricks | Aug 19, 2025 | Harrisonburg Architect, Not used, project update

Our client had found the perfect spot for her forever home, but the house itself was cold and uninviting. It desperately needed a renovation, and she needed a design that would reflect her unique values and goals. She chose our team to help her achieve this.

We started by walking through the home, searching for opportunities and challenges while taking in the existing conditions. We made sure to hear her voice and understand her vision for the space, and our design would be guided by it.

Our solution balanced practicality with the client’s aspirations. We updated existing cabinets and added new ones where needed, which allowed us to stick to the budget. We changed colors, updated the lighting, and opened up some walls to make the space feel more expansive and connected.

The results speak for themselves. The house is now cozy and welcoming, with a style that flows beautifully from one room to the next. From the front door to the back porch, this home is ready for a lifetime of new memories.

The Ultimate Checklist: 5 Questions to Ask Yourself Before Designing Your Custom Home

by Charles Hendricks | Aug 14, 2025 | architecture, Harrisonburg Architect, Interior Design, Not used, resources

Here are 5 questions to ask yourself before designing your custom home!

1. What's Your "Why"?

The Story Behind Your Dream Home: Think beyond your features and budget and consider the emotional core of your dream home. How do you want your family to live in this new space? What kind of lifestyle works for your family to thrive?

2. What Does "Sustainable" Mean to You?

Beyond the Buzzwords: Where are your values when it comes to chemicals used inside your home? What about energy sources? How will indoor air quality impact your decisions as it directly impacts your families’ health and wellbeing?

3. What’s Your "Must-Have" vs. "Nice-to-Have"?

Prioritize Your Wishlist: This provides a practical, actionable list as we start our design process. It will also help us as we work to achieve your budget goals.

4. How Do You Envision Your Home Evolving Over the Next 20 Years?

Think about your long-term value and functionality of their home, not just the present. Do you have a family history of mobility challenges? Do you expect the kids to live at home for a number of years after graduation? Do you need to care for your parents?

5. What Is Your Communication Style?

Do you prefer emails, phone calls, or zoom meetings? How often do you need to be updated to stay comfortable with the process?

Iron Sharpens Iron: Communication and Knowledge-Sharing

by Charles Hendricks | Aug 8, 2025 | architecture, Charles Hendricks, citizen architect, Green Building, green term defined, Harrisonburg Architect

The most important element of successful custom home building is communication. One way we do this is by sharing our knowledge of building science with contractors, educators, students, and community groups.

Recently, Beiler & Co. in Winchester, Virginia invited Charles Hendricks and Nicole Rowe to meet their team and talk about high-performance custom design. Tyler Beiler and Charles have a strong track record of projects in the past and have learned to trust and respect each other. This opportunity brought together Tyler’s team along with Southland Insulation and Gaines Group Architects to talk about lessons learned, building science, and how to deliver the highest value to our clients. This is an example, as Tyler puts it, of “iron sharpening Iron:” bringing together three excellent teams together to build each other’s knowledge base.

The presentation Charles prepared encouraged conversation about building science, how high-performance HVAC and airtight insulation provide added value to a custom home design. He also talked extensively about indoor air quality, durability, energy-efficiency, and the importance of using local building products. The concepts shared encouraged conversation as Tyler’s experienced team asked questions, added insights, and talked about their lessons learned as they build high performance custom homes in the northern Shenandoah Valley. George Dimitrew with Southland Insulators was able to add expertise about available products, solutions used by his firm, and the efficiency of different insulation strategies.

Charles frequently shares his expertise on building science with contractors, community groups, college students, and even other architectural firms. His list of recent presentations includes stops at James Madison University, University of Virginia, Construction Specifications Institute of Central Virginia, Rotary Club of Rockingham County, Half Moon Education, NEED, Massanutten Technical Center, Hollins University, Sunnyside Retirement Community, Eastern Mennonite School, Young Architect Conference, and the Department of Energy. He welcomes all invitations to talk about adding value to your home through an application of building science, helping to create a healthier, more energy-efficient, and durable future.

Spanish Lab and Learning Center

by Charles Hendricks | Jul 29, 2025 | architecture, community, Harrisonburg Architect

We have worked hard over the last year to help add more options for Daycare and Preschool space in Harrisonburg and Rockingham, Virginia. This is a vital part of the economic success of our community – affordable and accessible options for working parents has to exist for business to grow. We partnered with the Shenandoah Valley SBDC, which through a program created by Harrisonburg City, offered business training for existing and hopeful Daycare business owners. We provided pro-bono design evaluations for buildings as these “clients” of SBDC started exploring their options. When the team at the Spanish Lab and Learning Center approached me to help them, I was excited to help.

The mission of the Spanish Lab and Learning Center is to provide high-quality language instruction and related services to students with the focus on bilingualism, cultural competency, and academic success. This growth of their business to offer a Spanish immersion pre-school in our community filled a need that I knew existed. Our clients are infectious with enthusiasm and I know they are going to do amazing things. After looking at several buildings that were just not the right fit, we found it. This renovation was going to be tricky, but the space is exactly the right place at the right time for this new business to take off.