Paul and Rebecca had been planning this home for a long time.
Not in the passive, someday sense. In the active sense — the kind of planning that accumulates real information and makes real decisions, even when the build is still years out. Twenty years of military service meant twenty years of moving, but it also meant twenty years of noticing what worked in every place they lived, and what they were going to do differently when the time was finally right.
When they retired, the time was right.
The House They’d Always Had in Mind
Paul and Rebecca found Springhouse the way many clients do: a Google search. They had specific criteria and they searched until they found a firm that matched them. When they arrived at that first meeting, they were not starting from zero.
“Sheri was a gold mine,” Paul said during the episode of Home: The Second Story. He meant it as a description of capability — the sense that the person across the table had exactly the knowledge and experience the project required.
That kind of recognition matters in the early stages of a build relationship. When a client with real expertise and real expectations meets a firm that can engage at that level, the project moves to a different kind of footing. Not easier, necessarily. But clearer.
A Site That Required Real Thinking
The lot Paul and Rebecca had chosen presented genuine complexity. Built on a hill, the home required engineering decisions that became architectural decisions — foundation systems, retaining strategies, drainage management, access design. The elevated site was part of what drew them to it. It was also the source of real technical demands on the project.
Paul’s military background shaped how he engaged with these challenges. He approached the technical complexity not as an obstacle but as a problem set to be worked through methodically. He had done his research. He came in with informed questions. He expected real answers.
That is the kind of client engagement that produces better architecture. Not because agreeable clients are hard to work with, but because clients who push for precision at every stage catch things that might otherwise be glossed over. The details get better when everyone in the room is paying close attention.
What Multi-Generational Living Actually Looks Like
The project was designed to accommodate multiple generations of family — not as an accommodation to circumstances but as a deliberate choice about how Paul and Rebecca wanted to live.
Multi-generational living is one of the most misunderstood categories in custom home design. Most people picture it as a compromise — one household accommodating another, with everyone giving something up in the arrangement. That is what it looks like when it is not designed well.
When it is designed well, it looks entirely different. Multiple generations under one roof, each with the independence and privacy they need, and the proximity that was the whole point. The architecture carries the weight of both requirements simultaneously — private spaces that genuinely function as private, shared spaces that bring people together without forcing it.
This is exactly the kind of complexity that reveals whether a firm truly has experience with it or is approaching it for the first time. The difference shows up in the details — the placement of entries, the acoustic separation between living areas, the way circulation is designed to allow independence without isolation.
Precision as Partnership
Rebecca brought something that balanced Paul’s precision: a clear sense of what the home needed to feel like to live in. The warmth alongside the rigor. The two of them together gave Springhouse a complete brief — the technical requirements and the experiential ones — and the project was built to honor both.
Their home is built on a hill in Dayton, Ohio. It uses the elevation rather than fighting it. The site that presented the greatest technical challenges is also the source of the home’s most distinctive quality — its relationship to landscape, its sense of placement, the way it sits in the land as though it was always supposed to be there.
Your Next Chapter Deserves This Level of Care
Paul and Rebecca’s project represents something we see often among clients in the second half of their careers: the convergence of the means to build well, the clarity that comes from decades of experience, and the readiness to invest in a home that will serve the life they are actually living.
These are among the most rewarding projects we work on. Not because they are easier — a hillside multi-generational build for clients with high standards is not easy. But because every element of the work matters in a way that is immediately felt and ultimately permanent.
If you are in that place — if you have been planning long enough to know exactly what you want, and you are looking for a firm that can keep up with the complexity of what you are trying to build — we want to hear from you.
The conversation starts with a consultation.