Susan Hough

There’s an old saying that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. Clearly, whoever came up with that was not a builder. I’ve been building for more than 20 years, although I didn’t start out building homes from the ground up. I started in remodeling, which, in hindsight, may have been the best education I could have received. When you tear apart someone else’s work, you learn very quickly what holds up, what doesn’t, and which...

There’s a moment in almost every project where a client looks at me and says some version of, “I wish I knew this earlier,” not because something went wrong, but because building a home has a way of revealing things you simply don’t think about until you’re in the middle of it. After more than 20 years of doing this, I can usually see those moments coming. The first is decision fatigue because while everyone starts out excited (with fresh plans, big ideas, and more inspiration than they know...

Somewhere along the way, luxury got confused with excess: Bigger. Shinier. More dramatic. More statement pieces. More of everything. But after more than 20 years of building homes, here’s what I know: real luxury doesn’t shout. It doesn’t need to. The most sophisticated homes I’ve built aren’t layered with trends or overloaded with features, they’re the ones where restraint wins. And restraint isn’t about doing less— it’s about doing the right things, intentionally. For example, restraint...