Ralph Fey AIA Architects, Doylestown PA

I had the pleasure of working with Ralph and his team of professionals as we addressed the many needs of Aldie Mansion as it approaches its 100th birthday. Ralph's passion for historic structures and expertise in adaptive reuse guided us every step of the way. They were able to identify the historic elements that needed to be saved while incorporating elegant designs that meet the needs of today. Ralph understands well the financial constraints of a nonprofit and worked with us to phase the projects for maximum impact while remaining within our budget. They were responsive and adapted readily as the scope increased, as it always does in a historic structure. We are looking forward to working with Ralph Fey and his team on the phases ahead.

We innately knew what we wanted for a house we purchased on a tremendous property in Solebury Township, PA overlooking the Delaware River and the New Jersy hills. But we had no idea how to get there. Our goal was to have a modernized home that retained the farmhouse charm and character of the existing home, and to accomplish it in a sustainable manner, going from a dark home to one filled with light. Ralph Fey came strongly recommended and he asked all the right questions, created the vision, and made it happen. His design incorporated everything we could have wanted, both interior and exterior. We knew we had the right person from the first moment and we are delighted that our home and Ralph’s design have both been recognized by the AIA with an Honor Award for Sustainable Farmhouse.

Working with Ralph Fey.
2020- Ralph comes out and is super cool and has great vision into the possibilities for our design and addition.
2021- We are handed off to a rotating team of designers, I couldn't tell you one of their names. One or two came to the house once or twice. But other than that it was my wife and chasing them down for info and updates.
2022- Work begins. The excavators and the framers roundly complain that the plans are not clear at all. This leads to some problems with various elevations. RCFA mostly worked it out (after a bit of cajoling), but Ralph's shop is now billing me $900 a full year later. This, evidently, for adjusting the plans when the original drawings were wrong and needed to be redone and clarified. For example, we now have a step in the middle of a long hallway because of builder confusion on measurements in the plans not matching.

All in all we're happy with the design. And I'm sure if we paid Ralph more instead of $12K they'd have held our hands better? As it was, there are totally weird layouts to light switch locations, outlet locations, etc. Stuff that we wish someone had said, "you should think about this". But never did.

Maybe it's because we came across as a budget conscious client trying to design and build an addition as affordably as possible. But we ended up spending $500K on the addition anyway.

So, if money's no object and you pay whatever is required to get Ralph himself to pay attention to your project, these guys would be great. But if you end up as one of their lower tier clients, you may be left feeling a tad second class (despite dropping a ton of money on your project in the end).