It's an unexpected admission from a master of design. "There is so much to choose," says Gerhard Linse, explaining away the wide tabs of green tape stuck on drawers and cabinets throughout his mostly finished home on a countryish street shaded by big trees, only steps away from the noise of Ottawa's Merivale Road.

"I am having the hardest time choosing the right knobs, the right colour for the backsplash in the kitchen and the lighting." Which helps explains the green tape on bathroom cabinets, the samples of coloured glass tile leaning up against the kitchen wall, and the absence of lights over the glass dining room table and the suspended wooden staircase.

Then again, Linse has to parcel out his time carefully, devoting energy to eight major renovations and four new homes currently on his drafting table or being built in different parts of the nation's capital.

This is on top of the four hefty glass trophies he won for three distinctive homes at the recent Housing Design Awards. "I had no idea I would win all of these," says Linse, who was a big winner under the dome at the National Gallery of Canada.

This charming man, who likes to dress in black and considers it mandatory to have two glasses of good red wine every day, has been designing and renovating homes for almost three decades.

He is a familiar face at the splashy event, which is celebrating its 27th anniversary.

Linse's first victory came at the inaugural awards in 1984, a time when he was a hot, young Turk in the city, and submitted six shingle-and-brick townhomes in the city's east end. "All of the big players were competing," he remembers.

That same year, Linse also won the prestigious Governor General's Awards for Design Excellence for the townhomes, a project that taught him some stark lessons in economics.

He designed, marketed, sold and then oversaw construction of the townhomes, making only a modest profit. "Afterwards, Cindy Sezlik, (a successful real-estate agent) came knocking at my door. Told me I had priced them too low.

"She was right," he says with a rueful laugh. "As it turned out, one of the buyers backed out. I sold it again, for a higher price, and I ended up making a $70,000 profit."

Those townhomes were his start, coming after a return from Toronto and back to the same street where he grew up. Linse and his wife, Mary Lynch, bought a big oversized lot and a smallish and dark bungalow for $111,000.

His mother, Edith, 91, and sister, Caroline, still live the rambling street where there are no sidewalks, the maple and pine trees are mature and houses sit on large lots, relying on well and septic systems.

"I decompress when I turn onto (the street)," says the now 62-year-old owner of Gerhard Linse Design & Building Consultants, who first left the street and city when he was 18, heading to Ryerson in Toronto for a diploma in architectural studies. After graduating, the newly minted designer travelled the world, settling in Munich for a time.

Building is in the family genes, with the family patriarch, Fritz, building a series of small projects.

Linse's younger brother, Klaus, is an electrician with a healthy business.

"This home is not always on the top of my list," says Linse, during a visit shortly before the awards. "The design has been rattling about in my head for 10 years. It got serious when we decided to tear down our old bungalow three years ago, then there's been about 18 months of work."

There's still work to be done, from knobs to tiles and installation of chunky glass panels on the floating staircase, in a home that sports a traditional exterior of stone and black shingles and a modern interior of soaring spaces and a series of sassy colours — lipstick-red in a bathroom, a soft lime green in the master bedroom and a teal blue in the laundry room.

Linse wanted his house to fit easily into the mature neighbourhood, so he opted for a take-off on homes they admired in Rhode Island. It was his sister, Christine who chose the deep purple for the front door, even though he wanted red. He got red on the door leading into the side of the garage, tucked away on the rear of the large lot that is shaded by large maples and evergreens.

The trees inspired Linse to put a ribbon of windows around the main living and dining rooms, adding skylights and banks of windows in the master bedroom.

"Light is very important," says Linse, who designed a home where he and Mary can live on the main floor and there is a separate access to the basement where he plans to relocate his business. There is also a second level with a sunny workout room, which may also become office space for Mary, who is an international trade consultant.

"This is a universal design, the rooms are flexible. It's also a top energy performer," says Linse.

The house pulls together design ideas he has perfected for clients through the years, including copper trim along the roof line. It has been built by his loyal trades, from Karhu Fine Cabinetry and Millwork to Oak Ridge Construction.

Eventually, Linse would like to design a series of modern vertical homes in the city core.

Right now, the designer who tries to walk every day, shut off his cellphone on Friday afternoon and savour a good red with dinner, is happy in the present.

Sheila Brady is the Citizen's Homes Editor.

sbradythecitizen. canwest.com