Cate Comerford Design PLLC

Cate designed the new garage and breezeway addition to our house about five years ago. She did a beautiful job of matching the style of the house, and you can't tell by looking at it that the garage is an addition. We have been completely pleased with the design and outcome of Cate's work, and working with her was a pleasure. We highly recommend her for residential architectural design, due to our very positive experience.

Cate has designed three homes for me – all very different from one another. The first was a 4,000 sf modern one story single family home situated on a steeply terraced hillside in Upcountry Kula on Maui. The second was a total remodel of a bluff house in Port Townsend, WA built in 1879 and the third is a small indoor outdoor bungalow style home in Captain Cook, Hawaii. Every home has been perfectly designed to function beautifully for everyday living as well as esthetically appropriate specific to the site. Her interior design could be described as minimalistic or modern wherein elements have been simplified to present refined and gorgeous spaces that support an individuals own style. I highly recommend her as a professional and accomplished architect that understands, and will walk you through the process from concept to completion.

It began when Cate suggested that even before we hired her that she come to our 100-year-old Seattle home to get a feeling for the house, our taste, our art, our furnishings and us. As she left, she said what has proven to be true, "I think we'd be a good fit." Look at her website/look at the range -- from restoration work to hip bar design. Look at her attention to detail/her deep knowledge of architectural history. Her sense of color is perfect, as are her windows--the right windows in the right places. What you cannot see on her website is Cate's sense of humor, her gift for gently guiding first-time home-builders, her ability to translate our bag of ideas and photos into a compelling design. She can listen and she can lead. She has taste. She is frugal with our budget. Hire her now -- you will be glad you did.

We hired Cate from a friend's recommendation. She was able to work within our budget to design our home with creativity, patience, vision and professional expertise on a not-so-easy lot. She aptly translated the feeling and look that we wanted into reality. A good measure of her ability was reflected in the fact that we got our building permit in record time with no revisions necessary from a county where this happening is usually impossible. We are waiting to build until we sell our current home, but are confidant of Cate's willingness to brilliantly hand hold through the rest of the process as needed.

Cate and I did many projects together. She was alway a pleasure to work with. She has a great design sense.

We found Cate Comerford recommended on author and architect Sara Susanka's web site. Susanka, author of the "Not So Big House", encourages the building of smaller houses rich in detail. She urges the giving up of square footage to put more budget into the design of the interior of the home. But we needed more, and we needed help, and Cate brought it. The project was to take our 1930s 1200 sq. ft bungalow on the Toms River in New Jersey and convert it to a 2000 sq. ft., two bedroom retirement house with all the modern amenities.. In our first meeting, we said we wanted four things as guiding principles. First, we wanted the house to give tasteful echoes of the nearly disappeared craftsman tradition in our community. Second, we needed broad views of the river without feeling like we were a glass house. Third, we needed plenty of wall space for display of our collection of art and artifacts. And fourth, we needed as much book shelving as possible for our extensive library. Cate gave us all of this and much more. And she wrapped it in a perfect combination of respect for tradition, elegant design work and a gift for understanding, far beyond what we could visualize, how our spaces would be used. In that first laid back meeting, it quickly became clear that she heard everything we said and understood. Her relaxed, attentive style belied a ferocious work ethic and a love for detail. Ten days later we had floor plans. We had a few suggestions which she turned into marvelous opportunities and the layout quickly became better and better and better. Cate visited us at our apartment in Philadelphia to see the colors we surround ourselves with, our artwork and artifacts, and to get a feel for how we live. She asked us do do a plan for where the art and furniture would be placed in the new house so that she could design a lighting plan which made sense and a color scheme for the walls which would be complementary. Her work, always produced quickly, delighted us. The house has enough of an open floor plan that there are long views in the interior. This makes it seem bigger than it is and yet each functional space is well designed for its purpose and flows easily to the next. To use Cate's phrase, "The home lives big." Cate Comerford hit every deadline and worked well with all the town and state officials and particularly well with the builder. The project took one year to construct and we moved in during April of 2009. It is a joy every day to live in such a well thought out house. We have never had a more satisfying professional experience than working with Cate Comerford. Bob and Susan Brecht

Cate was just fantastic to work with. She presented plans and provided oversight for a sensitive renovation to our 100+ year old craftsman/colonial revival seaside home that continues to thrill us each day. Her design sense is impeccable, she has a solid point of view and an intuition to anticipate our needs up front that enabled us to capture all we wanted and kept the project on track. Her keen ability to navigate the complex world of codes, and her positive attitude brought us in on target. I would hire her again tomorrow if I could ever leave the comfort of the home she helped create.

Cate helped us remodel a 1970s Northwest house, keeping the elements that we loved while transforming dated rooms, cabinets and materials into a home that works today. Her architectural skills allowed us to keep a kitchen island while shedding tiny wall cabinets, as well as add a powder room on the main level. Her expertise was very valuable in creating the color palette for the house and selecting countertop materials and tiles for the bathrooms and kitchen. She designed a custom all-in-one bed, headboard, night tables, bench and built-in pop-up TV. Cate was always available, gently guiding us while giving us space to make our decisions. She was able to build a constructive relationship with our macho contractor who was not used to hearing from a woman!

We used Cate on many projects from 2004 to the present . The houses she designed for us were very sellable in a Very, Very down Market

Cate Comerford served as the Architect for the renovation of our 1844 farmhouse in Chester, NJ. We hired Cate because of her excellent reputation in historic preservation and adaptive reuse. Her design corrected the missteps of previous renovations and restored the period details of the original structure. She skillfully blended a new addition to complement the old farmhouse, but without mimicking the style, such that it appears as though it had been constructed by the original builder’s next generation. The results were outstanding, so much so that our house received the Historic Renovation of the Year award from our local historical society. Would we hire Cate again? Yes, absolutely, and we did when we renovated our cottage in Maine. And again we were extremely pleased with the results.