Sonoma City Home Design & Remodeling
Home design services for your next new build, remodel, addition, interior design or landscape project.
SDL Residential Design has grown from a humble design firm in Sonoma in 2014 to an experienced design team helping clients throughout the Bay Area. Our extensive history working with Sonoma City will ensure that your projects go through smoothly.
We are a full service solution for clients looking to build a new home, guest house or ADU from the ground-up, build an addition or simply renovate their kitchen or bathroom. We work with our clients to create a design, introduce you to contractors, and work with specialists like structural engineers to finalize the construction drawings required for a building permit from Sonoma City. Then during construction we’re on-hand for you and your contractor to provide additional details and problem solving if issues come up. In addition, all throughout the process we’ll work with you to hone in your project’s interior design & finishes.
We pride ourselves on working closely with our clients from the beginning until after a project is completed, providing as much knowledge, opinion, and coordination as needed. Behind us is a large network of professionals who are ready to support our clients and their projects.
Featured Sonoma City Projects
“Throughout the project Sam was always available for questions. He quickly developed plans and deftly guided the project through the City of Sonoma approval process. He is quite conversant in the various code requirements.”
— ED & MARGIE C.
FAQ
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Not all permits are created equal, so depending on the type of project you may wait a couple of weeks for a simple over-the-counter permit, vs months for a new-build home. Sonoma City does not publish current permit timelines, but we typically find for most projects you can expect it to take 4-6 weeks until first review.
However, recently Sonoma City has adopted an expedited permit approval process that fast tracks permits for certain kitchen and bath remodels that do not affect walls.
Time in permitting is not lost time. We plan our projects so during permitting we produce many details and dial in specifications so that your contractor can hit the ground running once your permit is approved.
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Sonoma City being largely flat is relatively easy to develop for. Despite this, many factors can still affect the economic feasibility of building new versus remodeling. Most notably in our opinion aging properties normally require extensive remodeling, to the extent that it may ultimately be cheaper to reconstruct portions of a home. Often times, the labor involved in working around troublesome found conditions can sometimes be more expensive than the cost in materials to scrape and rebuild.
As this question might require heavy consideration depending on the project, we can determine what the best path for you is through an optional Building Feasibility Study in the early stages of a working together.
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After a free consultation to evaluate the scope of the project, a total design fee will be created on a flat fee basis. This flat fee is then split up between the different phases of the project, giving you financial runway as we work through the project.
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2024 saw the adoption of state-wide regulations that aimed to ease the housing crisis by making the construction and use of Accessory Dwelling Units more flexible. This included expedited timelines for permit review, and relaxed building setback, height and parking requirements. However there are still site-specific constraints that may make an ADU untenable, so before design begins we would advise using a Building Feasibility Study to outline design parameters.
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We certainly do! Before we embark on any project we will always offer a free consultation so that we can get to know each other and see if we’ll be a good fit. If so we’ll be happy to provide design services, including consultation, for projects big or small.
Other Sonoma County Cities Served
…and throughout the bay area