Sheet A-000
Kingston, New York
41°55'38"N 73°59'51"W
Design + Build / Hudson Valley / Est. 2009
Rombout is a design-build studio in Kingston, New York. One team carries a house from the first walk on the land to the last coat of paint, which means the drawings and the price come out of the same room.
UlsterDutchessColumbiaGreene
01 / What we are
Most houses are designed by one company and built by another, and the seam between them is where budgets go to die. The drawings get finished before anybody who has to build them has priced them, and the whole thing arrives at the bid stage well over what the family had in mind.
We do both. Dana draws, Marcus builds, and they sit twenty feet apart. Every decision gets priced the week it is made. When something goes wrong on site there is nobody to hand it to, and that concentrates the mind considerably.
02 / Selected work
Every project on this site was drawn in our studio on Cornell Street and built by our own crew. There is no other kind.
Rhinebeck, NY / New custom home / 2025
A four-bedroom house on an exposed meadow ridge, built low and dark so the view does the talking.
Esopus, NY / New custom home / 2024
A long, quiet house on a river bluff for two people who wanted to see weather coming.
Millbrook, NY / Barn conversion
An 1890s dairy barn kept standing, kept honest, and made warm enough to live in year round.
Kingston, NY / Whole-home renovation
An 1870s farmhouse with four bad additions removed and one good one added.
All six projectsP-01 through P-06
03 / The argument
A line moved on site costs a month. So we draw longer than most people expect and we build faster than most people expect, and the two facts are the same fact.
By the time a shovel goes in the ground you have seen a physical model of your house, walked the plan at full scale in chalk on the slab, and signed a set of drawings that specifies the paint number on the inside of the pantry door. Surprises are the enemy. We spend the design phase hunting them.
04 / What we take on
Whole houses, whole renovations, the good small project, and drawings on their own if you already have a builder.
A house drawn for one family, one site, and one way of living. Nothing off a shelf.
A-102Old houses in the valley are worth saving. We save them without pretending it is 1870.
A-103A wing, a studio, a barn, a guest cabin. Smaller jobs, held to the same drawings.
A-104Design on its own, if you already have a builder you trust. We will hand over a full set.
05 / The set
One afternoon
3 to 6 weeks
3 to 5 months
6 to 14 weeks
12 to 20 months
Year one, then year five
We had drawings from two other firms. Rombout was the only one who told us what our site could not do before they told us what it could.
06 / Before you call
For new construction to our standard, plan on $560 to $780 per square foot of conditioned space in 2026, exclusive of land, site development and furnishings. Renovations are wider, roughly $340 to $650, because what we find behind the plaster changes the number. We will give you a range on the first site walk and we will not move it without telling you why.
Because the drawings and the price come from the same room. In the traditional arrangement the design is finished before anyone who has to build it has priced it, which is how projects arrive at the bid stage forty percent over. We price as we draw. It also means that when something is wrong on site, there is nobody to blame it on but us, and that concentrates the mind.
Ulster, Dutchess, Columbia and Greene counties, plus northern Orange. That is roughly a fifty-minute radius from the shop in Kingston. We hold that line because our superintendents need to be on site every day and our shop needs to deliver millwork on a Tuesday afternoon without an odyssey.
Sometimes, and we will tell you honestly whether this is one of those times. Phased occupancy adds four to eight weeks and roughly nine percent to the cost, and it is worth it for some families and miserable for others. We plan it properly with temporary walls, separate dust control and a sequenced schedule, or we do not offer it at all.
Next step
Every project here started with a walk on someone's site and an honest conversation about what it could carry. Yours can start the same way.
