Additions & Renovations | Residential Design+Build

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Mountain Modern Design+Build focuses primarily on zero energy ready residential design-build of custom designed and built additions and whole house renovations. We focus our additions & renovations around the same standard we strive to utilized when building a new home, integrating as much as we can where it matters most. 

At Mountain Modern Design+Build, we believe in a collaborative design process in our residential building design, construction management and design build services, custom homes and remodeling services and our outdoor living environment design and building services that involves our clients every step of the way. Our process follows three steps.

1. The initial phone consultation - this is a basic conversation to determine if what you are looking to accomplish is a good fit for what we do. We value our client relationships and in doing so we want to ensure that we are the right family owned business to provide you that working relationship.
2. Onsite meeting or in-person consultation and meeting. This is typically on onsite meeting taking place where the work will be conducted. Further discussion regarding your goals, ideas and plans will take place as well as gathering basic information from the project site to allow Mountain Modern Design+Build to create a cost to begin the planning steps.
3. This final step can take place by phone consultation, however it is preferred by Mountain Modern Design+Build to conduct  this meeting in person. In this step we will go over the design process and cover the cost to create a plan from which a proposal of estimated costs and target budget range can be generated. Depending on the information gathered in step 2, we may be able to provide an estimated budget or target budget range, simply from historical data pulled from previous projects. However, this is never a replacement for the planning and pre-construction process. This third step is important. This is where we begin our relationship with the owner as architectural building designer a construction manager and owner's representative or general contractor. While we find that about 50% of our potential projects have a budget already planned or in mind, the other 50% are unsure. And even if there is already a potential budget amount a client is looking to spend, often generated thru a pre-qualification process with a financial institution, this may not address the plans, ideas and goals the client has in mind. Creating a plan provides not only a plan to work forward from, but also a tool from which initial information can be gathered to generate a target budget range or verify a potential budget.

Having a good plan, we feel is absolutely vital to the success of additions & renovations, or really any building project for that matter. Depending on the type of project, the plan may be as simple as a sketch to provide a basic idea and cost of building materials for say a garden box or chicken coop even. This is not how we work. Our zero energy ready focused residential design-build plans are based on the jurisdiction and building code requirements, but we take that several steps further to ensure the details and information required to not only gather accurate cost proposals, but also to build the project. A good plan should reflect how the project will be built. We don't create plans that are just enough to get by. Having built projects from that type of plan, we know that the goals, plans and ideas of the project owner are very often not met and if the builder of the project is not very good, the completion of the project will fall short of what the client or owner had expected and hoped for. A good plan in a remodel or addition is absolutely an essential step in the success of the project.

Our goal at Mountain Modern Design+Build is focused around a sustainable or energy efficiency focused design and building approach. This is zero energy ready. This method is going to vary with each project based on what the project is. Home additions & renovations are not going to have the same measured approach to energy efficiency as a custom home for example. An addition or remodel will have its own approach. Whether the addition is part of a whole house renovation project where additional energy efficiency focused measures may be included as part of the overall remodel. Or in the case of our addition to a family home we recently provide the residential design-build and construction management, the additional space is nearly a separate home unto itself. The additions was designed and built with a energy efficiency focus and significantly tighter than standard building envelope and constant fresh air recovery thru the use of a Energy Recovery Ventilation system. Or a simple addition such as a master suite onto an existing home, the basic approach is still very similar however.  The detail that goes into plans and design, ensuring that that addition is being designed and built to last is something we consider and focus upon. Better than average insulation, advanced framing techniques or even insulated concrete form construction and a conditioned attic and sealed crawl space. Fresh air recovery, filtering and ventilation and windows with higher R-Values and UV transmission. And locating natural lighting to in the most energy efficiency focused manner possible are just a few examples.