Custom Homebuilding
On a ground-up house, design and construction run as one program from the first schematic.
Custom Homebuilding →→Approach
The decisions arrive in the order the building needs them.
Interior design goes wrong most often not through taste but through timing. A sconce chosen after the ceiling closed becomes a patch. A sofa chosen after the joinery was built does not fit the wall it was meant for. A stone selected after templating means a second slab. When design and construction sit with different firms, the calendar is the thing that falls between them.
Working inside the build changes that. We issue a dated selections calendar at the start, tied to the construction program: what has to be decided before rough-in, before ceilings close, before cabinetry is released, before templating. You are choosing the same things you would choose anyway, but at the moment the choice is still free.
The work itself is unglamorous in the best way. Rooms planned around how you actually live — where you drop keys, where the dog sleeps, whether anyone has ever used a formal dining room. Materials chosen for how they age under Texas light. Millwork drawn rather than bought where it earns its cost, and left out where it does not.
What is included
Design runs from first plan to final styling. On a Hilltop build the whole list is available; on a project you are building elsewhere, see the note on standalone work below.
Space planning
Room-by-room planning against how the house is actually used: circulation, sightlines, where daylight arrives, and furniture laid out to scale before walls are committed.
Finish and material selection
Floors, stone, tile, paint, wall coverings and metals chosen as a palette across the whole house rather than room by room, and specified with the samples on site in the real light.
Custom millwork and built-ins
Cabinetry, panelling, bookcases, bars and closets drawn for the room and for what goes in them, then built by the joiners we work with rather than ordered from a catalogue.
Lighting design
Layered ambient, task and accent lighting with positions, beam angles, color temperature and dimming set on the reflected ceiling plan before ceilings close.
Plumbing and hardware specification
Fittings, valves, sinks, door hardware and cabinet hardware specified together, so finishes match across the house and every rough-in matches its fixture.
Furniture and soft goods
Furniture, rugs, drapery and upholstery specified during design against real dimensions, with lead times built into the construction calendar.
Art and styling
Art placement, lighting for it, shelves that hold objects rather than props, and the final install before you move in.
How design runs alongside the build
The same five stages as the construction, with the selections calendar threaded through them.
- 01
Consultation
How you live in the house, what you own already, what you would never use, and a realistic furnishing budget alongside the construction one.
- 02
Design
Plans, elevations, reflected ceiling plans, material palette and a first furniture layout, developed with the architecture rather than after it.
- 03
Pre-construction
The selections calendar issued and the long-lead items — stone, tile, appliances, lighting, upholstery — ordered against real dates.
- 04
Build
Site visits at each stage to confirm positions in the room: valve heights, sconce centers, joinery reveals, switch locations.
- 05
Handover
Furniture delivery and install, art hung, drapery fitted, lighting scenes set, and the house photographed before anyone moves a thing.
Selected details
Select an image to enlarge. Arrow keys move between images, Escape closes.
What holds up in a house that is actually lived in.
Everything looks good in a showroom under halogen. These are the properties that decide how a room reads after five years of Texas sun and family use.
Light and fade
South and west rooms here get punishing exposure. Solution-dyed and natural undyed fibers hold color; many blues and reds do not. Glazing coatings and drapery are part of the specification, not an afterthought.
Timber floors
Wide plank white oak moves with humidity swings; engineered construction and rift-sawn grain move less. Matte and oiled finishes are repairable in place, high-gloss lacquer is not.
Color temperature
Mixing 2700K and 3000K lamps across one open plan reads as a mistake even to people who cannot name it. We fix one temperature per zone and specify CRI, not just wattage.
Upholstery in use
Performance weaves have improved enough that they are no longer a compromise. Specify them where children, dogs and sunlight are, and save the delicate cloth for the room nobody sits in.
Metal finishes
Unlacquered brass will patina, and that is the point of it; polished nickel will not. Decide which rooms are allowed to change and keep the two families apart within sightlines.
Where millwork earns it
Built-ins pay for themselves at awkward geometry, around windows, and in storage you use daily. In a plain rectangular room, good freestanding furniture is usually the better spend.
Questions
Related work
Kitchens
The room where selections and construction are most tightly coupled, and where late changes cost the most.
Kitchens →→
Media & Entertainment
Theaters and media rooms where the finishes have to satisfy acoustics as well as the eye.
Media & Entertainment →→
Tell us how the house is used.
Which rooms you live in, which ones you never enter, and what you already own. We reply within two business days. Based in Dallas/Fort Worth and available for projects outside the Metroplex.
214-901-3655