I spent last week traveling the west coast with Colin Russell, the video producer here at Fine Homebuilding. We bounced from Seattle, WA to Santa Cruz, CA and finished up the week in Sonoma County north of San Francisco. We worked on three stunning projects that will be featured in our HOUSES awards issue that comes out this summer.

This was definitely the kind of trip where I stopped often to ask myself, “Is this really what I get to do for a living?”

In talking to the homeowners and the architects I was easily caught up in the details of each home. In fact, I was so enthralled by the design of each project-discovering every detail, talking about every element of the house, photographing as much as I could-that I almost overlooked what I think matters most.

A home is a reflection of who you are. The houses we visited last week were bold and original. I can’t imagine the families we visited living in any other place. Each design was incredibly in-tune with the personalities and lifestyles of the families who live there. That was something I couldn’t photograph.

The projects that we visited are loaded with design lessons that will help you create attractive, comfortable and functional places to live. Above all, I hope they inspire to create the home you dream of no matter how different that dream might seem.

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