New Valve, New House, New Me!

New Valve, New House, New Me!

A Note From Bill

I have shared the details of my forever home journey with you all for over a year now, and I am beyond happy to report that we have moved in and the finished product, with a few minor exceptions, is exactly as I hoped. As it goes with most home construction projects, I can’t reliably tell you when our forever home will actually be “done”—we still have boxes to unpack, details to finish off, and, of course, photos to take and a final episode to film. In my tenure, I have built many houses—a few my own—and this point is one of the best feelings out there. Homeowners go through months of planning, stressing, and daydreaming about it all being finished, and when that moment finally arrives, it feels like the weight of the world is lifted off your shoulders.  

In our last issue of Studio Pages, I had mentioned the heart surgery I had coming up, and I would get to really test out the aging-in-place amenities of our home. A few months later, and the surgery was a success; my old heart valve has been replaced with a brand-new bovine valve—technology really is crazy, isn’t it? Every so often, I even get the urge to say MOO!  

The procedure itself was far less exciting than taking your car in for a valve replacement, and the recovery was not as arduous as I previously expected, either. By the time I was back home and ready to test-run the grab bars and no-threshold shower, I didn’t even need to use my hospital-issue walker. Don’t get me wrong, I was moving slower and had to be more careful, so the aging-in-place features we added to our home were certainly a convenience. Ultimately, I didn’t get to experience the benefits of our home’s design to their fullest potential, but in my temporarily limited state after surgery, I do feel confident that our home will work wonderfully if it ever becomes necessary. 
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Watch Design+Build Decoded

With all that said, our move-in date skated pretty close to my surgery date and that, coupled with the recovery time, has unfortunately delayed the unveiling of the final finished home. Unpacking and “making it home” is going slower than I personally prefer, but it has given me a chance to reflect on the journey of designing and building this home, as well as the process of documenting it for this series. I’m sure many of you are patiently waiting for the final walkthrough, and I can say without a shadow of a doubt that the finale of Design+Build Decoded will be out soon(-ish)! 
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Thinking back on the thirty-two (and a half) episodes we’ve uploaded, I do hope that our viewers feel more knowledgeable and confident in the journey of building a custom home, at least in some small way. Designing and building a home is a huge undertaking—months or years of work, lots of money spent, never-ending selections, and endless expenditure of emotional energy. When we first sat down to film episode one, the goal was to peel back the curtain on this process so that homeowners going on this journey themselves can feel confident in the steps and the choices to make.  I believe we have achieved that goal. ​

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By: Bill Styczynski

Bill Styczynski is the president of Studio21 Architects, as well as an architect in his own right. Every month, Bill writes an article for the Studio Pages newsletter about design topics that he believes will be informative, helpful reads for all of our clients, established and potential. ​