Shelter Building Design

Shelter Design was great. Easy to communicate and prompt replies. Good design ideas relevant to the mountains. Thanks for all your help.

Kirstie made our build experience effortless!!! My wife and I hired Kirstie to design a granny flat, with the intent to build the walls made of hemp. It was a new material that we had no experience with, and after a few conversations, we were sold on the qualities this building material would bring to our property. We hired Kirstie to complete the design, submit and manage the design through to council approval, oversee the build of the hemp walls, and consult on all matters regarding the build. This was the first time my wife and I had attempted to build a dwelling. For starters, she managed to get the design approved by council in record time. We were expected a long drawn out process, but found that she handled the interaction with council so efficiently, and guided us through the steps with ease. Then when the time came to build, she consulted on various aspects of the build (as we were building it as owner builders), and she also ran a workshop to get the walls built. With her guidance, patience and experience, the build experience exceeded our expectations. Everything went smoothly, and her meticulous planning ensured the workshops were a success, and the final finished product was sensational. We thoroughly recommend using Kirstie for your next build, and can confirm she will be our architect / consultant on all builds moving forward. Thank you Kirstie for a great build experience.

Kirstie Wulf (Shelter Building Design),helped us design our dream home. Kirstie spent endless hours with us to try to ascertain what we actually wanted in our home. We had idea's,but didn't know exactly how to put it together. Kirstie was able to give us independent information to research all aspects of the build. Through these links we were able to research all the essential components required,compare and choose what was the correct/right products for us. Our build was not a straight forward build. We had many restrictions, covenants Bal ratings etc. to overcome, Kirstie's understanding of these was paramount in the successful approval of our application. Kirstie's extensive knowledge of building and design, combined with her real passion in the industry has resulted in us having a home design exceeding our expectations. We have a unique mud brick home with a maximum 6 star basix rating. Thank you Kirstie!

Kirstie Wulf work closely with me to develop plans for a two bedroom strawbale house in the Blue Mountains. She does not drag her feet, nor does she impose her ideas. Rather, she honoured my original vision and made some very sensible tweaks and suggestions, all of which I adopted. She quickly created and rendered a 3D explorable computer model of the which included a little movie of how the light would pass through the rooms at different times of year. She really knows her stuff when it comes to sustainable building and passive solar design. Having a legal background she is very competent with getting things through regulatory processes such as Basix and Council approval procedures. She was realistic, thorough, positive and supportive throughout the whole endeavour.

It was wonderful working with Kirstie! She was attentive to our needs and was always happy to try and integrate our design ideas into her creation. She also really helped with every aspect of the DA process and provided a ton of useful information! All in all, great design, great service and very knowledgable!

We used Kirstie at Shelter Building Design for a last minute DA just before Christmas. Her service, advice and attention to detail was/is excellent. Kirstie was able to come up with some innovative solutions to some tricky architectural problems that others were not able or willing to solve. We are very happy with the results and the friendly no nonsense service provided. We would thoroughly recommend Shelter Building Design to anyone looking to build a new home or doing renovations.

Kirstie was fabulous! We had an idea in mind for our extension with some uncertainty and a lack of knowledge and so engaged Shelter to draw up plans to submit to council. We wanted an extension than fit in with the look and feel of our old house, but dressed it up a bit, and provided the extra space we needed with the funds we had available. We also needed to address heating and cooling concerns. Kirstie was able to make experienced recommendations and suggestions that have worked much better than what we had in mind, and provide advice in relation to energy efficiency regarding heating/cooling etc. When we decided after the innitial drawings that what we’d asked for wasn’t quite right Kirstie quickly made the necessary changes without issue. Communication and response times are obviously important to Kirstie...she always responds in a timely manner. We are delighted with the final outcome and everything was perfect in terms of getting council approval. The design/plans were completed quickly, and Kirstie provided all corresponding paperwork completed for us to sign before submitting to council on our behalf. The price for her time/services was less than we expected and her estimate of council costs was spot on! I would definately engage Kirstie for any future work we do.