Our Foundation
My name is Mike Buhr, I am the president and founder of Craftstone Architects, Inc. and I want to
personally thank you for taking time out of your day to find out a little bit about us.
For as long as I can remember, I have always wanted to be an Architect. I can remember sketching
home plans back when I was a young boy long before I even knew what an Architect was. When I
entered high school, I sat down with my school counselor and figured out what college I wanted to
go to for Architecture and then drafted a planning for what I needed to accomplish to get there and
in 1988, I graduated from the University of Illinois ChampaignâUrbana. For the next 12 years I
worked under the guidance of several award winning architects in the commercial, governmental,
school, and municipal sectors of architecture soaking in knowledge and developing my craft.
In 1998, my wife and I decided to build a new home for our growing family. We designed a home
that was unique for the area. It received numerous compliments and it led to me to design several
other homes for people in my spare time. I enjoyed this close relationship I developed with these
clients. The passion they had for the design process because it was their home was so much more
rewarding to me than I previously encountered in other sectors of architecture. I enjoyed it so
much that I continued to take on more and more clientele until I knew it was time to make
residential architecture my full time passion. In March of 2000, Craftstone Architects officially
opened its doors for business out of my home office in Plainfield, Illinois.
From the very beginning, Craftstone Architects was planned and designed to be a small firm so that
I could be involved with every project and maintain that close personal relationship with my
clientele. I developed some relationships with a few builders and homeowners in those early years
of business that I still maintain to this day. I attribute that to our personal touch, the great designs
of our homes and the accuracy and detail of our drawings. As the economy grew and fell, so did
my work load and staff. Unlike many firms, my firm survived the economic storm of 2008 and
continued to do business throughout this economic crisis. From 2010 to present time, Craftstone
Architects has seen steady growth in work and staff. In 2014, I decided to move my office out of
my home so that my wife, my 4 kids, a dog and a cat could have a little more privacy and not have
staff, clients, and builders walking in and out of my home. We moved to a small office on Route 59 in Plainfield, which served us well for 3 years. Then in
2017 we moved to our current location, which gave us a much larger space to help serve our growing staff and clientele.
2024
is once again showing signs of another great year and we attribute that to almost 80% of our work is from referrals or repeat clients and the name, Craftstone Architects, has become synonymous with great design and
quality drawings at a reasonable fee. As we enter our 24th year of business, we will continue our tradition of creating great designs and producing quality drawings, so come talk to us and see why hundreds of clients have
allowed us to "help make their dream homes a reality since 2000."
Thank you again for your time and I hope to hear from you soon!
Mike
