After a decade of grading too many college English essays, Wendy returned to school in 1995 for a fine arts (interior design) degree, with a heavy emphasis on architecture. Now with over twenty years of experience in the studio and on job sites, Wendy can guide you through the process of designing your living spaces, from developing the layout to drawing the plans to helping to select finishes and fixtures. She especially enjoys the challenges that remodeling and adding on entail: creating new or re-worked spaces that both respect and enhance the best of what is already there, while making your home work better for your living style. She can help you think outside the box about the way you currently use your spaces, and come up with solutions that may never have occurred to you.
In design, Wendy emphasizes light, proportion, order, and function, preferring simplicity over ornamentation. “Furnishings and decorative accents can be a fun part of the process,” she says, “and they certainly sell magazines. But they can never make up for poor space design. A structure that has been designed architecturally well and executed with real craftsmanship speaks for itself; it doesn’t rely on furnishings in order to be beautiful.”
Wendy’s drawing work is independent of the building contract, so that you can use your drawings to get estimates and bids from whatever contractors you choose. Whether you intend to use Shank Building & Design as your contractor, already have another contractor on board, or plan to have several contractors bid your project, Wendy can furnish you with a set of plans that will help make sure that what gets built matches what you were expecting.