LEED Certified Home, Stage 1 - "Picking the Perfect Design and House Plan"

Garrell Associates appreciates when homeowners involve us and share their experiences on building our homes. We are especially excited about the upcoming project from homeowners who have decided to build a LEED Certified Home.
Please see below the testimony written by this homeowner on her experience with picking the perfect designer and house plan.
She writes..
The culmination of thirty years of wishing, reading, thinking, looking, and dreaming - we have a set of plans!! We wanted it to look like an old log cabin, built on a Kentucky hillside by people of modest means. Over time, they survived, then thrived, and added on to their old home using local materials...limestone and brick, which then aged.
Our thoughts: Maybe if we find a house we like, we can keep our costs down and still have the house we want.
Architects and designers are an odd mix of artist and engineer. Perhaps because the good ones have great left and right brains, they sometimes take the approach, "tell me what you want, I will design something, and you will like it". We interviewed several architects/designers on the phone. If they were slow to return our phone calls, they probably won't give us the service we want. One online design company said that we would just communicate by email, there was no need to talk to the designer. This is not what we wanted. We did preliminary work with three other people who either couldn't create our vision or had their own (different) artistic views, before we went online and found Michael Garrell of Garrell Associates, Inc.
Garrell Associates - Loved the designs, even those that weren't our "style". The use of light-filled spaces and variety of exterior designs gave us hope we had finally found the right person to design the home where we both hope to live until carried out feet first. Michael Garrell was the best!! He was timely, professional, and responsive. "Here is what I will do, here is how much it will cost", said Michael Garrell. A semi-custom home seemed perfect from time, style, and cost standpoint.
We sent Michael photos of the site, of us, and of our horses. In order to design for us, we thought he needed to know us. It was a pleasure to work with Michael. If I wanted something, he would figure out a way to incorporate it. At times though, he would say "I don't think you want to do that" or "What about trying this instead"? It was and remains a wonderful collaboration.