Is this for someone who hasn't started yet, or can I use it mid-build?

The earlier you are in the process, the more this framework can do for you. But if decisions are still being made, if you're not yet fully signed off on everything, you can still move through it and get clearer on what's ahead. If your build is completely locked and finalized, this probably isn't the right moment. If there's still room to decide, there's still room for this.

How long does it take?

The four modules take approximately an hour to move through in terms of video content. The exercises that accompany each one vary. Plan for one to two hours per module, and potentially longer if you're working through a full Pinterest reorganization. This is not a course you rush. It's a framework you return to at every major decision point in your project.

Four video modules, each accompanied by a worksheet. Self-guided, self-paced. You access it immediately and move through it on your own timeline.

I've already made some decisions I can't reverse. Is it too late?

It's not too late. This framework won't undo what's already been decided. But decisions keep compounding, and getting clear now changes the quality of every decision still ahead of you. The earlier the better. But later is still better than never.

Do I need to be working with a specific builder or designer?

No. This framework works regardless of who you're building with. It's designed to help you arrive at a decided position you can bring to any builder, any designer, any architect, so that you're leading those conversations from a place that's already been decided.

The women who get the most out of their build, and out of every meeting with their designer, architect, and builder, arrive already decided. They're not using those conversations to sort out what they want. They're directing them.

THE MINIMALIST

You will make hundreds of decisions about this home before you know what any of them cost.

Plan everything it has to do before your architect draws a line.

A live cohort for women building $1M+ custom homes. You work through the planning phase in the right order and leave with your functional program, the document every professional on your project works from.

You will make hundreds of decisions about this home before you know what any of them cost.

Plan everything it has to do before your architect draws a line.

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Founding cohort · January 2027 · 15 women

You will spend more on this home than on anything else in your life. The risk isn't the budget.

It's getting it right on paper and wrong for how you actually live.

THE MISSING PHASE

Your build will have a professional for every stage of design and construction.

What it's missing is the phase before any of them are hired.

Every professional you work with will gather your preferences. Your architect will ask what you want. Your designer will ask what you love. They will take what you tell them and execute it well.

The problem is that your preferences formed before you had the information to form them well.

You fell in love with the grand staircase before anyone told you it takes twice the square footage of an efficient one. Where it lands decides whether you walk toward the kitchen in the morning or away from it.

You told your architect you wanted a large island before anyone explained that your appliances decide your kitchen layout.

The sink location, the flow, the clearances. All of it traces back to decisions that needed to be made before the first floor plan, not during it.

You asked for a door between your closet and your laundry room because it made sense. It cost you hanging space, or the second washer and dryer you'll want in five years. That trade-off existed whether or not anyone named it.

The homes that don't work weren't built badly. They were planned without the right questions. The family works around them every day and nobody talks about it, because what do you say? The house is beautiful.

The Thoughtful Luxury Method™ is the phase where you form your preferences with full information. You complete it before anyone draws, and every professional who comes after you builds on it.

WHAT YOU LEAVE WITH

Your functional program.

This is the document that defines your project before the design team starts solving it: how you want to live, the spaces you need with approximate sizes and adjacencies, how the house sits on the site, what the complete project includes, and what matters most when two good things compete.

Your architect gets a brief. Your builder gets a scope. Your designer gets priorities. You get a basis for a budget that reflects the whole project, not just the house.

From then on, you check every plan you're shown against it. You stop reacting to what you're handed and start measuring it against what you decided.

How we work through it

The method follows five planning questions in the order they need answering, then carries you into design.

What does your life require?

The tasks every room has to handle, down to where the boots come off, where the dog food lives, and how old your children will be for the ten years after you move in.

What must the site allow?

What you're legally and physically allowed to build before anyone designs it. Orientation is a lot decision. So is the grade change a specialty space needs.

What must the home accommodate?

The requirements that look like design decisions and need to be settled first. The kitchen gets defined before the first plan meeting. The staircase becomes a placement decision, not an aesthetic one

What does the complete project include?

Scope first, budget second. Landscaping, the pool, furniture, lighting and AV all arrive whether anyone planned for them or not. This is how women come in on budget on the house and hundreds of thousands over on the project.

What will it cost to build, furnish, operate and maintain?

Why trades quote in a way that confuses every homeowner, and what it will take to run this house for the next twenty years.

Holding it through design.

How to check a drawing against your program, which decisions are still open, and how to run a meeting with your architect or builder so you get the home you defined.

HOW THE COHORT RUNS

Live sessions with me on Zoom, with every replay saved in your client portal.

Q&A throughout, so questions about your own build get answered in the room

A private community for the 15 women in the cohort

The full functional program template, plus redacted real programs from homes I've built, to compare against once you've drafted your own

Lifetime access to the curriculum

The Founding Cohort

The January cohort begins Tuesday, January 12th and is limited to 15 women.

The waitlist gets 48 hours of early access starting Tuesday, December 8 at 9am ET, at $1,997. After that, any remaining spots open to everyone at $2,497.

The first five women to register also get my personal review of their completed functional program before they take it into their first professional meeting.

Joining the waitlist is free and commits you to nothing. It makes sure you hear first.

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This is for you if:

You're planning a custom forever home and haven't hired your architect yet, or you have and the drawings are still moving.

You're building at a level where one late change costs more than completing the Thoughtful Luxury Method.

You already sense that your list of wants isn't a plan, and you'd like to find out what's missing before it costs you.

You're building the home you plan to live in, not the one you plan to sell.

This isn't for you if:

Construction has started and the major decisions are locked. The cohort works on what's still open.

You want to learn how a house is physically built. This covers everything that has to be decided before that.

WHY ME

I'm Jilaire Soucy Wagner, co-founder of Maison Design + Build. For 26 years I was both the designer and the builder.

I've led the design and construction of more than $120M in award-winning custom homes and guided more than 100 families through their builds, and Maison earned the Avid Diamond Award for highest customer satisfaction in Canada's custom home category three years running, in 2022, 2023 and 2024.

I've also built seven homes of my own. I know what it is to be the client who has to live with every decision.

Over 90% of our clients still live in the homes we built for them, some of them fifteen years later. They've added wallpaper, repainted rooms, and installed the built-ins we planned the electrical around when they couldn't fit them in the original budget.

The floor plan fit how they actually lived from the day they moved in, and it kept fitting.

Realtors complain they never get to see inside a Maison home. They rarely come on the market.

That's not luck. These are families who planned to stay, and the homes held up because the planning came first. That planning is this method.

Questions

The method follows five planning questions in the order they need answering, then carries you into design.

When does it start, and when do I pay?

The cohort begins Tuesday, January 12, 2027. Enrollment opens Tuesday, December 8 at 9am ET, waitlist first. Nothing is charged until you enroll.

I've already bought my lot. Is the site section still useful?

Yes. You'll find out exactly what your lot allows before design starts, which is when that knowledge is worth the most.

I'm already working with an architect. Is it too late?

If your drawings are still moving, it isn't. Holding It Through Design was written for exactly this, and your program gives every remaining meeting something to measure against.

What does joining the waitlist commit me to?

Nothing. You'll get first access and the $1,997 price when enrollment opens on December 8.

“

"If I would've had someone like yourself help me to pause and think about 10 years later with four adult kids, I would have made some fairly significant different design choices, which I no longer can do."

Janet Wagner, Jilaire's sister-in-law

“

"I'd come to you to help me design a home that truly fits the way my family lives, from the layout and flow to how we use every indoor and outdoor space."

Jordana Jacobson, former client

THE DECIDED HOME™

Investment: $397

Immediate access. Move at your own pace. The framework that informs every major decision in your build, from the first conversation to the final sign-off.

MEET THE FOUNDER & CEO

ABOUT JILAIRE

Your Paragraph text goes Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, Our clients move into their homes and tell us it's better than they imagined. That they wouldn't change a thing. That's not luck and it's not taste. That's what happens when every decision has something true to answer to from the beginning.

Over 100 homes.

More than $120M built.

I didn't realize other people weren't starting here.

The One Decision™ is how I give that to you.

INSERT POWERFUL QUESTION HERE

A story only you can TELL THE WORLD

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