2015 GALA Awards Each year, a panel of building-industry professionals is selected to judge new homes and communities in the Mid-Atlantic region and to choose their nominees for the Great […]

Ask the Pros Builder How should homeowners select exterior materials to withstand the elements on a waterfront home? First and foremost, look into swing-out casement windows and out-swing doors on […]

Ask the Pros Architecture What guidance can you give homeowners on how to select windows and doors for a waterfront home?  Selecting exterior doors and windows is an important decision […]

GALA 2015 Awards—Custom Presented by the Northern Virginia Building Industry Association and the Maryland Building Industry Association, the 2015 GALA (Great American Living) Awards celebrate achievements in categories ranging from […]

New Balance In life, making bold changes often means discarding the past. But in the dramatic transformation of a family home, architect Robert Gurney broke new ground while still preserving […]

Modern History When then-newlyweds Spence and Renata Patterson purchased a century-old house in Chevy Chase, Maryland, in 2009, they planned to update the kitchen and move right in. But the […]

Quiet Refuge A light snow covered a wooded Great Falls, Virginia, property in a lacy veil as a couple pulled into the driveway. On a whim, they’d followed “open house” signs […]

Artistic Eye Downsizing from a house to an apartment typically requires the shedding of possessions, from furnishings to books and artwork. But for Jackie Chalkley and her husband, C. Wayne […]

A Clear Vision As anyone who’s been there knows, home renovations can be overwhelming. Myriad choices, from footprint to finishes, put many homeowners in a state of stress, assailing ordinarily […]

Fresh Start When technology executives Patrice Wolfe and her husband Jon Bazemore decided to renovate the main floor of their Westmoreland Hills home, they had already lived in it for […]

All In The Details It’s a perennial question among couples who have bought their first house in DC’s close-in neighborhoods, where small, pre-War homes are the norm: When babies arrive […]

Custom Builder 2015 Awards Sponsored by the Maryland Building Industry 
Association, the annual Custom Builder Awards honor quality architecture, 
construction and remodeling projects 
in the Greater Washington, DC, area. 
Following […]

Simple Roots Architect Mark Buchanan remembers tramping through a barn and wandering around a pond, fields and outbuildings on his client’s horse farm near Middleburg when he first visited to […]

Perfect Panorama “Come in, you have to see this,” beckons architect Christian Zapatka, standing at the door of a recently completed project in McLean, Virginia. He and the homeowner are positively […]

Out on a Limb On a whim, while visiting a client’s job site in 2001, architect Mark Kohler walked down to the end of the wooded street to see a […]

Writer's Refuge A Virginia-based screenwriter needed a quiet space where he could work at home with a minimum of loving distractions from his three young daughters. He found refuge—and more—in […]