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Don Metz maintains a small, selective practice in Lyme, NH, concentrating on challenging residential projects

Don Metz's new book
"Confessions of a Country Architect"
is now available

Don Metz's Confessions describes the life of a residential country architect with wry humor and pathos. This book will delight all those who have built a house, forearm those summoning up the courage to do so, and calm those who realize their talents might be better confined to an armchair with a view. Readers will be seduced by the author's adventures as he confronts the awkward, intractable, and hilariously messy job of building dreams.

Confessions of a Country Architect
Table of Contents

Selected chapters are available in full below and available as PDFs.

Horton - A rural sawmill operator's ingenuity informs an Ivy-League architect's notions of what is important.

More is Less, Less is Not - The promises of Modernism fall flat in the late '60's

Stone - A summer job in a granite quarry provides another kind of education.

First Building - The author learns first-hand what it means to build one's own house.

Pigs - Does moving to the country mean you have to raise pigs? (Yup)

Out the Window - How we think about architecture depends upon a complicated web of social interactions.

Everything for Which it Stands - The best of intentions don't necessarily make for the best contractor.

Building to Survive - The author examines his hard-wired instincts to build.

A Day in the Office - What goes on in a busy architectural office? A creative paradise? Think again.

Errors and Omissions - A structural catastrophe leads to a unique solution, courtesy of a 2-ton wrecking ball.

Green Architecture - Of the many approaches to sustainable buildings, some are little more than feel-good panaceas.

Troppo Molto - One of those times when architecture seems dull compared with the convergence of a huge dog, a remote mansion and an unhappy woman.

Skit - A young carpenter's untimely death and subsequent funeral challenges the author's sense of belonging.

The Forest for The Trees - A bad day on a mountaintop with a would-be client who thinks of Mother Nature as the Enemy.

Mississippi Maynard - Working on a Habitat for Humanity house in the Delta moves the author closer to a higher Power.

Danger Everwhere - Cultured city folks build in the country -- and don't quite understand where they are.

All Kinds of Houses - A survey of how America's housing styles have evolved, what they mean to us, and why.

Chucking the Puppy - The values of a high-powered lawyer, a talented craftsman and a skeptical architect collide on a snowy afternoon in Vermont.

Busy - Building a complicated house takes a huge amount of the client's time and concentration. In this case, both were in short supply.

Lions and Tigresses - The relationship between an architect and a client can become quite personal. Sometimes, too personal.

Telling Stories - The architecture of a family is made of more than bricks and mortar.

Epilogue - An architect-friend is paralyzed - and triumphs.