You know what's going to make this house, don't you?





Windows by PlyGem



Installation begins



Front porch



Here is a panoramic shot from the work room toward the breakfast room on the left and the living room on the right.







The breakfast room close up.



...it's the windows.  That's what Philip said, and he's absolutely right.  These gorgeous windows with dark sashes are what make this house so striking!  Ever since they've been in, people driving by have noticed the house and said, "Oh!  Yours is the one with the windows!"  Yep.  We love them.  We cut back on other things so we could have them and stay in budget, and they're worth it!  Several companies make them;  ours are from PlyGem. 

We got shingles! (not the skin condition)

Shingles!

In the last few days most of the interior and rooflines have been finished, and tar paper, flashing and shingles have been applied to much of the roof (except the ridgeline and exterior openings).  It's really starting to look like a house now!

The garage is almost done and tied in!

This view shows the south side of the house with the garage structure complete.  The garage roof pitch is half that of the main house to take things easy on the eyes.  Looks like it was designed that way, right?  Not so much.

Close-up of the shingle color/pattern.

The shingle tint/color is officially called "Weathered Wood" and it has brown and blu-ish shale tints in it.  This picture doesn't do it justice, but it looks really sharp!

The garage!  Love it!

Last, but not least, John's favorite room: the garage.  You can start to see the size of things here.  We're gonna need an extension ladder just to change bulbs in the light fixtures!

A moment to reflect on scale

Some reference for scale: Christian is 4' 3" tall!

Not much progress today, so a good day to put things into perspective.  This photo is of the main window looking SE out of the breakfast room, and should give you some idea of scale on the main floor.  The exterior windows are 8 feet tall (6 feet with a 2-foot transom) and the ceilings are 11 feet high.  So the house, though it looks a normal size, is kind of like a picture enlarged at 120% - it's just bigger.  Take the next picture for instance...

Wee man in the big boys' room...

Here's Christian (again for scale purposes) standing in the corner of the garage.  The ceilings are 12 feet high in the garage (the crossbeam for the trusses is not yet installed) so there will be tons of room for storage up high if needed.  The base dimensions of the garage are 36 feet by 23 feet, so there should be plenty of car space and workshop area for Dad!

Framing Progress

Starting to frame the Garage...

The framing crew have been busy as they are largely done with the main house and are now starting to frame up the garage.  The garage slab was poured on Pearl Harbor Day and has set enough that they can bolt the walls down and frame away!  The garage roof will have to be tied in to the house which is why the corner of the roof doesn't look finished...

The front facade

A peek-a-boo view of the front of the house in the late morning sun.  The main windows of the breakfast room point almost directly at the rising sun and the front porch will enjoy sun in the morning and shade in the afternoon.

Is this...right?

 

Hmmm.  So we came to the construction site the other day and found this little connundrum.  Um, Philip?  What's this?  Of course, there was a perfectly reasonable explanation. The framers framed the wall before they put up the rafters, and are going to remove the part that sticks out now that they know where the slope of the roofline falls.  It was all part of the master plan (and all according to the plans!) it just looked funny when we saw it.  Thank goodness for a builder who is available to answer all of our many, many questions and is on the job so he knows exactly what we're talking about!

 

Now for some more images of the rafters going up...

 

Ahhhh, the beautiful symmetry.

 

Going UP

 

John has a picture that he takes from the back of the garage toward the front of the house.  He takes it often to watch how the home is progressing.  I'll post a series of those in the next few days.  This will be my recurring shot, as it will be a place where I'll spend a lot of time.  This is standing in the kitchen looking toward the dining and living rooms, taken on Dec. 10.

 

And here you can see the second story being framed.  The kids can hardly stand the wait until they can go up and check out their rooms!

 

Playing With Concrete

Got a call yesterday that the concrete truck would be on site first thing in the morning.  We had wanted to leave our mark in the garage floor, so the kids came out to watch the process.  They were out if school half the day, but in the end they have a little more sense of ownership and involvement than they did yesterday.

Christian in awe of the concrete truck.

Getting messy.

The backbreaking labor of smoothing it out.

The nearly finished product.

Meanwhile, Hannah & Christian were troopers.

Into the concrete we added shells and sand from Hawaii as well as wishing rocks from West Beach on Whidbey Island.  The kids left hand prints and we all wrote our initials and the date.

 

Changes afoot.

There have been significant changes over the weekend... can anyone spot them?

We have a ceiling, or rather they've begun to install the sub floor for the second floor.  A few days' pause awaiting inspection and they'll be off again. 

It's a house!!!

We don't mean to have neglected the blog, it's just that things have been fast and furious around here, between the Thanksgiving holidays and actually meeting with Philip, visiting the house, picking out things like shingles and tiles, and general Life.  But here is a rundown of what has happened over the last few weeks: 

The arrival of lumber at the worksite meant that framing was soon to commence.  And it didn't take any time at all before these few token boards turned into this

We had fun guessing where rooms began and ended based on where reinforcements were in the floor.  The next day it had turned into this

 

And then we had rooms!  

 

 

 



Over the course of a week we watched the first floor take shape.  Through it all we kept up a steady communication with Philip in order to ensure that any discrepancies we saw were resolved to prevent change orders later, and to stay one step ahead in terms of the next decisions we needed to make.  This week we picked out shingle colors and interior doors.  Windows, which will be a major feature of the house, have already been ordered and will be installed soon. 

These pictures show progress on the front and rear porches.  Yep.  We're not messing around!

In the meantime, Hannah keeps a close eye on the inspection schedule, and Christian left messages for the builders. 

It said, "Dear Workmen who are building our house.  Thank you, from the son who owns this house."

The Grove Foundation

Legos for grownups!

Mario's crew have been busy setting the cinderblocks for the crawlspace foundation - this view is from what will be the garage looking across the house towards the kitchen and breakfast nook.

We've got concrete, people!

More progress...today we found concrete in the footers and piles of block waiting. 

Termites and rebar in holes, oh my!

More work being done on the footers over the weekend.  They're putting rebar in and have treated the site for termites - a required practice here in South Carolina.  This view is from the back corner of the now attached garage looking toward the front of the house. 

Prepping for the Foundation

The outline of the floor plan takes shape...



Mario and his crew were busy this week digging the plan outline of the foundation.  This picture is from the back corner of the house looking East diagonally across the floor plan.  The closest part is what will eventually be the Master Bathroom.



Groundbreaking!

It's here!  It's here! The day is finally here where we have begun to build our house in Three Runs!  It feels like it's been a long time coming, but in actual fact it's been about a year since we purchased our lot and started looking at floor plans. 

Looking Southeast from the Garage location towards the front of the house.

The Location: We were fortunate enough to find a lot in Three Runs Plantation that we loved - it's in one of the premier equestrian communities here in Aiken, in a great location within the development, and best of all, had gone to foreclosure and was owned by a local bank! So after a month or so of offers and counter-offers, we got a great deal on 5 cleared acres that were ready to build on!

The view from the homesite looking Northeast

The Floor Plan Search:  We combed through tons of books and websites, looking at plans.  After lots of imagining and scheming (guess who did which?) we landed on a few key criteria that we knew we wanted in our home:  an open floor plan, especially with the kitchen open to the living spaces, a downstairs master, a downstairs guest room (that's for you 'rents who we hope will come visit!) a media room and some flex space.  We were also looking at some things that would provide a courtyard feel at the back of the house that would shield the eventual pool from the riding trails at the back of the property.  In the end we landed on the Tucker Bayou floor plan by Looney Ricks Kiss that was featured by Southern Living as the 2007 Idea House (this link takes you to the Southern Living Home Plans site where you can see floor plans).  We made several modifications to the basic floor plan, the largest of which was attaching the detached garage, but our version is largely true to the original LRK design.

The Builder: We are graced with several fine, fine builders here in Aiken.  We didn't interview them all, but wound up talking seriously with three different builders before we contracted with Merry Custom Homes LLC, owned and operated by Mr. Philip Merry, for the construction.  Samantha met Philip when he showed a client of hers one of the homes that he had built.  After introducing him to John, we both loved the way he talked about building.  Philip shares our interest in the myriad of details that make the difference between a house and a home, and we are very excited about the path forward on this build.

Merry Custom Homes, LLC



 

The Process Part of picking the builder was, of course, budget.  We went to builders with our floor plan and asked whether they thought they could build this house within our budget.  It was a refreshing answer to hear Philip say , "Yes, I can.  And I think it would look really neat if it had...." His build was not confinced to bare bones, but allowed for wonderful, thoughtful details.  He gave us a cost to build the house and an a-la-carte option list of things that were on our wish list and how much each might cost.  That way we could decide whether the outdoor fireplace or the coffered (Hitchcock) ceiling in the dining room was more important.  He gave us the list of allowances that he had budgeted for, and we went to Aiken Lighting, Hughes Plumbing, Crawford Cabinets and other places, too, comparison shopping and seeing just how far that lighting budget really went, and could somebody really spend THAT much on cabinets?  This process took a while, but in the end we have been able to go into the build process knowing exactly what we could get for our budget, rather than hoping that we weren't going to go over budget TOO far.  Through it all Philip has been a fountain of information and super patient with us.