We have started a house

October of last year Susan and I decided to try something I never thought we could do; design and build a house. It’s not that we don’t have the experience, or the time, or even the desire to build a house. What we have always lacked is the self-control to keep from killing each other as we went though the process. As we approach the golden years however, we now think we have matured enough to give it a shot, and this blog will attempt to chronicle that build.

The PLAN

The idea was hatched last year as I worked on a custom home for Carilion, a subdivision Highland Homes, the company I work for, builds in. Susan has always loved Craftsman’s style architecture and communities designed around city type living and Carilion has both. After pitching it to Susan, and showing her a design I had been working on, she was hooked. The plan was actually the easy part but the lot was the hard part. Our first attempts to get a lot we liked in Carilion failed so we began looking in other areas. The more we looked the more we kept coming back to Carilion. It had everything we wanted; the community, the location, the life style we were looking for and it put us closer to our old neighborhood biking buddies as well. After much looking and back and forth we finally found a lot that would work with our design. The plan now was to purchase the lot and start building in about three years. That plan lasted about an hour after we closed the lot.

With the lot purchased and the plan finalized there was no way we could wait three years, so June 1st I meet the surveyor to layout the house and we were off. We now have a foundation and hope to begin framing in about a week. Highland Homes is building the house for me with Ryan Miller our able project manager. My job is to continually look over his shoulder and irritate the hell out of him. Fortunately he is very laid back and is use to working with bigger pains than me… but he hasn’t worked with Susan yet.

This is the lot.  Another corner lot which we both said we would never have again, but this one has a whole lot less yard to maintain.

The grader cutting it out.

Ryan, the project manager.  We are laying out the house for footings.

Ready for footings.