Carl Colson Architect

I met Carl five years before my wife and I hired him to design our custom home. Carl is a true professional that will listen and meet you in person to understand your vision and goals for project. He is very personable and has a passion for his craft. He also understands construction and will take that into consideration with his design and your budget. We are so happy we hired Carl and look forward to using him again for future projects!

It's taken awhile to write this review, I have so much to say... Hiring an architect was one of the hardest parts of building a new home. We found the perfect lot and I had a vision of what we wanted there. We interviewed three architects and Carl blew us away. (He was also very busy with other projects.) So after meeting him, we knew immediately that we wanted to hire him for the house. Carl doesn't take on multiple projects, so we felt pretty lucky that he was able to take ours. Carl asked a lot of thoughtful questions to drill down on what we valued in a home. He was interested in flow, size, budget, the view, style, room count... We had a lot to think about. Because of the thoroughness of his questions, he had a great feel for the project immediately. After each breakthrough, Carl would come over with the latest design. One of my favorites came to him while trying to sleep. He was always creative and excited about our home. He blew us away with his tissue paper designs and he often had more than one to choose from. Carl is very easy to communicate with. He understood the changes we made. He was efficient with his time, with our time. He visited the job site during construction, often. I feel he had a great relationship with our builder and the contractors on-site. And almost everyone building our home remarked at the wonderful design. If you are looking for a custom home, Carl is the guy. I marvel at what he created. His design offers a view from all five bedrooms, our kitchen and dining area, the living room and the lower TV room. Our bedrooms are situated away from the noisy street. He added beautiful finishing elements and maintained the integrity of the style. "I love my house"only begins to describe how much I enjoy and appreciate what Carl designed.

My husband had worked with Carl on several builds he'd done with his business so when it came to designing our new home, we couldn't imagine anyone else helping to bring our dreams to reality. Carl is one of the few left in the architect field that has a true passion for what he does. He does it with precision, respects your timeline, and makes the entire experience enjoyable. His expertise shines whenever we go to get permits for his designs, there are never critiques from the city because he knows his work and makes sure things are designed right. I can't recommend him highly enough.

If you are looking for an exceptional architect to translate your conceptual home remodel ideas into permitable plans, then you need to talk to Carl Colson. We found him by asking friends for an architect who did terrific job and whose work needed minimal revisions done to his submitted plans and Carl’s name came up as being the best. We are very happy with the results of our home remodel project due to Carl’s involvement and we would highly recommend him to others. Carl really listened to what we wanted and did what we asked and did not try and add features we did not need. He offered very insightful and great suggestions based on his previous experiences and guided us in getting the end-results we desired. For example, we initially had wanted a new fireplace that would have been located on a wall at the front of the house. He correctly pointed out that the chimney pipe would be sticking up like a sore thumb right where people would see it as they drove up to the house. He suggested another location that turned out to be perfect and something we had not thought of, and could not visualize within our existing layout, but this location was perfect in the new floorplan he had designed. He was able to visualize the floorplan before any walls came down and guide us to understanding what the final result would be. He brought up issues of traffic flow in the house and worked with us to meld our ideas with a practical room layout. The finished plan set is very impressive and beyond complete. Comments made by the local city where they were submitted and by the contractors we engaged for bids (and for the final construction) indicated that they were also very impressed with the details of the drawings. No questions are left unanswered on the plans and only nit-picky changes were required to get the plans approved. Carl handled all the interaction with the local city permit department and educated himself on the idiosyncrasies of our particular city to make sure they got what they needed. He was very responsive to change orders we initiated, even though he was working on new jobs and he took care of these updates immediately. He was able to provide us a contact for a structural engineer to do the design work for some changes to load-bearing truss work, and this frim was top notch and reasonable priced. The fees that Carl billed us for the work done were exactly where we thought they would be (this was due to the fact he properly set our expectations up-front on what it would cost). He provided billing statements that were detailed and accurate and easy to follow. We highly recommend that you check out his professional services and see how easy he is to work with.

Carl’s work is unique, exceeds expectations, and is brilliantly practical with timeless, exceptional quality all woven into one marvelous design. The contractor's following his plans state that they are the most detailed and useful they have ever seen. This helps everyone meet the timelines associated with building and remodeling.

We had a vision in mind when we decided to add a third floor to our 1925 bungalow in Seattle. Maintain the original appearance, make it look like it was not a remodel but original to the era, add light from all directions, have open spaces but charm, have some touches that give it class, keep it easy to take care of, have an amazing bathroom and allow it to flow. Carl spent untold hours fulfilling our vision 12 years later we love it, can't think of many things we would change even with the innovations of the last decade. We have passed his name on the several friends who also have been delighted with Carl's architectural skill.

We hired Carl Colson to draw up plans for a major kitchen remodel. He was helpful, knowledgeable and aware of our needs and budget. We appreciated his ideas, enjoyed working with him and would recommend his work. Carl worked very well with our re-modeler throughout the process, gave us several ideas we hadn't considered and was very thorough in his work. We felt very comfortable having Carl in our home and felt he served us extremely well!

Carl has a wonderful gift of taking the rough ideas and turning them into a lovely and well designed home. Carl did an addition/remodel to our adult family home (AFH). He came up with a wonderfull design that meet all of our design. The required ramp possed a major issuse given our lot area. The final design was really great! He was super to work with and would highly recommend him to anyone who want's a insightfull and talanted designer. He acted as his own general contractor on his own home a few years back and has a full understanding of what it takes to get a concept to finnished product. R.R. Rickert