15 Year Anniversary -Thank you!

Today we’re celebrating the 15th year of opening my office, Steven Secon Architect.  I want to say a heart-felt thank you to my clients, builders, subcontractors, peers, building officials, municipal boards, friends, family and prospects! It’s been some ride…. It’s that season of reflection- with graduation and the pending “empty nest” around the corner. This […]

Survey This!

Don’t get lucky…. Here’s a cautionary tale about a lousy survey that we recently received for a small project: the house was situated on a small lot on which we were going to do an addition.  The house was located on the survey 2 feet in error closer to the side yard property line.  If […]

Zip Code, Genetic Code, Building Code

Who knew? The enforcement of the building code-  can be a not-so-subtle form of discrimination. You move  between various zip codes and see the highly varying code enforcement differ from project to project. It’s bizarre.  Let’s face it we (architects, engineers, subs and builders) all talk and question where some municipalities lack of inspections and […]

Emergency!

There have been a few…my daughter laughed when a few years ago after I received a call and had to leave in the middle of dinner to suddenly go to a clients house- “Dad, c’mon really what is an architectural emergency?” …”I’ll fill you in later”. The water was already ankle deep in the basement and […]

It Takes a Village

Each town, village and city is unique…not just in it’s feel, look and population, but in it’s ability to approve a building project. This is not so obvious to somebody that has not gone through the process before. It’s really insane.  The review boards, the applications, the sequence of approvals vary dramatically from year to […]