About the studio · Colchester, Connecticut
Sheet A-002 · Title block
We draw the houses other people dream about, so that a framer, a plan reviewer and a homeowner can all read the same page and agree on what is being built.
The studio / 04
Ashcombe & Lindqvist works out of a converted barn loft on Bulkeley Hill Road, where the light comes in low from the east and the plan chest is older than the software. The studio exists because a certain kind of job kept falling between professions: too small for an architect’s full service, too consequential for a sketch on the back of an estimate.
A kitchen opened into a dining room. A second-storey addition over a 1960s ranch. A deck that has to survive a plan reviewer and a New England winter. These projects all begin with the same unglamorous question — what is actually there? — and they are won or lost by the answer.
So we start with a laser, a notebook and a tolerance of an eighth of an inch, and we draw the house as it stands, crooked corners included. From there we draw what you want to change, and then the full set a building office expects to receive. Homeowners, contractors and small architecture firms all send us work, and all of them receive the same thing: sheets that need no translating.
We are a drafting studio, not a licensed design firm. We don’t stamp, and we say so early. What we do is make sure that whoever does sign has a clean, honest set under their pen.
Convictions / 04
Not a values statement. These are the things that decide what a sheet looks like when it leaves the studio.
A drawing of the house as someone remembers it is a fiction with dimensions. We draw the stair that is a half-inch shy of code and the wall that leans, and we label both.
The reviewer’s question about egress, the framer’s question about the header, the owner’s question about the ceiling height: each is on the page, in the place a reader would look first.
Structural calculations, energy compliance and professional stamps belong to the engineer or architect of record. We draw to their markup, and we tell you at the quote stage which hands your project will need.
A fixed fee means you can decide about the work without watching a meter. Half holds the measure day; the balance is due with the final files. Firms buying blocks of time pay for the block up front.
At the table / 04
Ashcombe · Field & as-builts
Ashcombe takes the measure days: laser first, then diagonals, then the attic hatch nobody has opened since 1994. Every as-built that leaves the studio has been checked against the photographs from the visit before anyone calls it finished.
Lindqvist · Permit sets & coordination
Lindqvist assembles the submission sets, writes the code notes and sits across from the building-office comments so you don’t have to. If a sheet could draw a question from a reviewer, it is reworked before it goes out.
The kit / 04
Software gets the credit, but the drawing is only as good as what was written down in the field. This is the working list.