VALDOSTA — A Valdosta custom home builder and designer is getting national and international attention for his work in the widely circulated Southern Living magazine and Southern Living House Plans magazine.

Todd Wilson of Wilson Design and Construction is the featured house designer in the Fall issue of Southern Living House Plans, on shelves now until November. He’s also featured in the September issue of Southern Living magazine, which will be on shelves for a few more weeks.

Wilson contacted Southern Living in spring 2006 and sent them photos of some of his work. He’s been custom building homes in South Georgia for the past 11 years after earning his bachelor’s degree in Business from the University of Georgia and his master’s degree from Georgia Tech’s School of Architecture.

Wilson designs homes to meet customers wants and needs, but he considers his specialty to be the construction end of the process. Still, he found that he had a knack and enjoyed the detailed process of creating a custom designed home on paper after he finished his master’s at Tech.

Like other builders, Wilson loves to read Southern Living and Southern Living House Plans, just as a pro golfer would read Golf magazine or a newspaper journalist might read Editor and Publisher.

So he decided to let the magazine’s editors see some of his work.

“I sent them some photos of my stuff a year ago, and they immediately loved my house and wanted to feature it as one of their designs,” Wilson said.

“His” house is the home Wilson and his wife and four children share on Cold Springs Lane.

It didn’t happen overnight. Wilson stayed in contact with the magazine’s staff who eventually sent a team down to see Wilson’s work in person. They spent three days with Wilson in June 2006, visiting all of his projects. They called him back a month later saying they wanted to feature the Cold Springs Lane home in the July 2006 issue.

“There was a lot of excitement, as you can imagine,” Wilson said.

Delays in the process pushed back the deadline, enabling Wilson to visit the magazines’ editorial offices in Birmingham, Ala., where he was able to present more home designs, including his “Kinderlou” design.

“The Kinderlou design was a rough draft when they first saw it,” Wilson said. “They liked it so they said to bring them back something more developed. It was too big, at first, so they wanted me to take out some square footage. But that’s the fun challenge of the design process. They finally accepted the Kinderlou plan in January of this year.”

Finally, in June 2007, staff photographers arrived to take pictures of the Cold Springs Lane home and editorial issues were set in stone–now available where the magazines are sold.

“I got Builder Profile of the Month and Plan of the Month, two pages of plans and two pages of editorial spread, and that’s seen nationwide,” Wilson said. “And when you consider that Southern Living is on the Internet and has an international audience, well that’s pretty neat. You can’t open the web site without seeing me this month. It’s quite a blessing.”

The publicity in such a popular publication already has drawn attention to Wilson’s custom work from as far away as Pennsylvania, where a woman who saw the article tracked Wilson down by phone to find out more about his homes and designs.

“It’s nice that some lady in Pennsylvania thinks enough of the plan to track me down and contact me. That’s pretty neat.”

More work with Southern Living and the House Plans magazines are in the works.

Wilson is submitting more plans for potential use by the magazines. And he was named by the House Plans magazine as an elite member of the Southern Living Custom Builder program. He joins a select group of home designers/builders nationwide, and he’s the only member from South Georgia and North Florida.

“I’m not a ‘Southern Living’ builder… there’s not a franchise arrangement, but I can use their logo in marketing and use them as a reference,” Wilson explained. “I’ve always loved Southern Living magazine and never thought I’d ever be featured in it. But you never know what can happen. It’s exciting.”

For more information on Wilson’s business, visit his web site at www.wilsondesignconstruction.com.