Six people. Most of them have been with us for longer than a decade. The people you meet at the kitchen table are the people in your house every day.
Robert Mason started the firm in 1998with one rule: every project gets the principal’s name on it, and the principal is on every site. 28 years and 5 colleagues later, the rule still holds. Sarah joined in 2002 and made the practice work as a business. Marcus, Elena, David, and Annika joined over the years that followed. Together we cover the disciplines a heritage-craft practice needs: design, project management, framing, millwork, site supervision, and heritage coordination.
We have stayed small on purpose. We build maybe eight to ten projects a year, and we know all of them by name. If you call the studio, one of us answers.
Robert founded the firm in 1998 after fifteen years on residential crews across the Greater Golden Horseshoe. He works the design table with every client and visits every site at least weekly. He is a Red Seal carpenter and a member of the Ontario Heritage Trust.
Sarah joined Robert in 2002 and runs every project from the moment a contract is signed. She holds the schedule, the budget, and the trade relationships. Most of our clients spend more time on the phone with Sarah than with anyone else on our team, and most of them tell us afterward that this was the part they most underestimated.
Marcus has been with us since 2009. He runs the framing crew on every custom build and most of the additions. Trained under his father in the timber-frame tradition, he is the person we call when a job involves heritage joinery or any framing detail that has to last a hundred years.
Elena runs our millwork shop from a converted warehouse in north Hamilton. Cabinetry, built-ins, custom mouldings to original profiles for restoration work. She trained at the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada and has been with us since 2015.
David runs the day-to-day on every active site. He started with us in 2017 as an apprentice and earned his Red Seal in 2021. Clients see him most days during a build; he is the face of every project for everyone living in the house.
Annika joined us in 2020 from a Toronto heritage architecture practice. She liaises with conservation district officers, sources period materials, and shepherds restoration drawings through municipal review. If your house is older than 1950, you will spend a lot of time with Annika.
We keep an open studio in downtown Hamilton, Tuesday through Thursday by appointment. Come and see the millwork shop, walk through finished samples, and sit at the design table with us before you commit to anything.
Book a studio visit