(Written by gothedistance & ncmountainmama)

Since my last update, we have talked to two more potential builders and one more (and our last) timberframe company.

First, the timberframe company: On May 2 we drove about 3 hours from Raleigh to Christiansburg, VA to visit with Sandy Bennett at Blue Ridge Timberwrights. We decided to talk with Sandy because I liked what he had to say in an article he wrote in one of the Timberframe magazines. In addition, one of the builders we are talking with had been the general contractor on a house in Ashe County for which Blue Ridge Timberwrights had done the timberframe and SIPs.

Drew S. our designer had sent our plans to Sandy in advance. We talked to Sandy at his office for about 3 hours about the details of the plans. Sandy questioned some of the details of the timberframe braces, but generally liked the design.

Sandy then took us to see a house under construction that he had done the timberframe and SIP work on. Now, keep in mind this was in the mountains and the road up there was definitely one of those long, windy mountain roads. The timberframe work looked great to us. We left the plans with Sandy and asked him to give us a bid on the timberframe and SIP work.

Now that we have visited and talked with four different timberframe companies, we have seen enough to know that it would not be useful to talk with or visit any more companies. Really, once you have seen one woodshop they all look basically the same and once you have seen one installed frame, they all look basically the same to me. Although the best part about visiting the companies and their workshops is that you get to really examine the wood. The smell in the shop and the houses is really a great wood smell. It is also very exciting to see a frame and be able to visualize what ours will look like. It still is difficult to decide what type of wood we really want, they all look great. We are trying to decide between the white pine and the Douglas fir.

The final decision on the contractor and timberframe company boils down to price and personality. We will see…

Now to the builders:

Builder #3 is a local Ashe County builder, who we met in August 2007. He is a friend of friends of ours who built a house in Ashe County 5 years ago. He didn’t build their house, but they have seen his work and were impressed. In August he took us to see two conventional houses that he had built, however he hasn’t built a timberframe house before. He is hands-on builder without his own crew and builds one house at a time. We sent him a copy of our plans and are waiting for a bid.

Builder #4 is one of the major Ashe County builders. He generally has 3-4 houses under construction at any one time and supervises his subcontractors rather than doing any hands-on work. He has built several timberframe houses with SIPs. He also has a copy of our plans and we are waiting for a bid. However, we have heard that he is “very expensive”.

The funny thing about Builder #4 is that I met him at our property and we discussed the building plans for over an hour. He seemed to know a great deal about the other lots still for sale that adjoin our property. When I asked him how he knew so much about the area, he simply said because “you bought this property from me”. Turns out that he was one of the partners that owned our property, but we hadn’t met him because he wasn’t at the closing. Talking about feeling like an idiot!

Two weekends ago I took my first solo trip up to Ashe County. Don’t worry, I wasn’t completely alone, a couple of my friends and I decided to go up for the weekend and rent a cabin. I found a cute little cabin for us not far from town and my parents’ property. We had a great time despite the weather turning very cold and rainy/foggy for the majority of the weekend. Here’s a view from our cabin on Friday afternoon, when the weather was nice:

and then on Saturday the view from a similar location when the weather was not so nice:

One of my “assignments” while I was there was to also go by the property and check things out, mainly check and see if our waterbar was still intact. You may remember from one of my previous posts that my dad and I constructed the waterbar on our last trip, here are a few pictures of that process: (click on picture to enlarge thumbnails) That’s GoTheDistance hiding behind the tree (I think he was looking for rocks or something)

Well, since we weren’t sure of what exactly we were doing, I’m happy to report that the waterbar seems to be intact and working 2 weeks later! The low side of the bar appeared bone dry and the upper part appeared to still be somewhat wet so hopefully it will do its job. Of course the only way for us to really tell would be to sit there during a downpour and watch the water flow, but who wants to do that? Below is the recent picture I took of the completed waterbar:

While we were visiting the property we took the opportunity to take a little walk around and check things out. There are 2 deer stands that some hunters have left in our trees, one looks pretty rusty and not something I would try to sit in for fear of falling out of the tree, but it looked like one of them had been used this past season. It would seem to be a great spot for deer based on the amount of droppings we found as we walked through the woods!

I know my dad has posted a picture of us looking for property but I also thought you might want to see some other photos of the property besides the one on the banner so here are a few I took last summer, when the grass in the meadow was quite high (in some places taller than me! but don’t worry I’m not that tall)

Click on picture to enlarge thumbnails

This is looking up towards the house site from the bottom of the meadow

Looking into the woods along the bottom of the meadow (general location of the future road to the house)

Looking over towards the next lot at the bottom of the meadow (That’s GoTheDistance in the red)

One of the leftover Christmas trees on the property!

Since we were in Greenville SC visiting a friend on April 5-6, 2008, we took the opportunity to drive about 80 miles west to visit Yonah Mountain Timber Frames in Toccoa Georgia.

The designer of our house, Drew Sumrell of Woodborne Designs, had worked with Yonah before and suggested that we consider having them bid on the timber frame parts of our house. In fact, at our request he had sent them our specifications several weeks ago.

We have also sent the same specifications to two other timber frame companies: Carolina Timberworks and Riverbend. We visited Carolina Timberworks in August, 2007 and Riverbend in December, 2007.

However, we had never talked with or met anyone from Yonah.  So on a very rainy Saturday morning we met with the two owners, Neal and Bobby at their shop in Toccoa. Thanks to both for meeting us on Saturday and with such short notice (I just called Neal 3 days before).

Since they already had copies of our plans, we mostly discussed what type of wood we wanted for the timber frame, what services they could provide, and of course what it might cost.

Neal explained that their bid would include the fabrication and installation on our property of all the timber frame components as well as the Structural Insulated Panels (SIPs) that will comprise the walls and roof. This would be a turn-key operation with them furnishing their own crew and crane.

Having one company fabricate and install the timbers as well as the SIPs is something that we like.

With regard to wood species, Drew has specified white pine or Douglas fir for the interior and cypress for the exterior, but we have not yet made any decisions. We have seen Douglas fir installed and like the look and the fact that it is mostly dry. Neal and Bobby gave us a tour of their shop and showed us the white pine and cypress that they had just completed for a job. We like both. If anyone has suggestions or comments about wood species, please share them.

Finally as to cost, Neal was able to give us a preliminary estimate. The numbers are about 30% of the total cost we have projected for the house. Does this sound right?

Finally, Neal and Bobby invited us to inspect a house under construction in North Carolina that they did the timber frame work on. This house has a very similar timber frame component to our design, and in fact was also designed by Drew. We will be doing that later this month.

Thanks again to Neal and Bobby for their hospitality and knowledge. We are sure that they could do a fine job and would be easy to work with. When we get all the bids we will have a hard decision to make.

When I asked my daughter (i.e SoccerGirl) to start this blog, she wrote about our last family trip to the property in March 2008 to meet some builders. Now I (i.e. GoTheDistance) need to back up a bit to November 2006 – February 2007 and tell you about finding our Field of Dreams.

Over the 20+ years that we have lived in North Carolina we have always visited Ashe County when we wanted to get away to the “mountains”. Ashe County (not to be confused with Asheville which is about 80 miles and 2 hours to the south) is in the northwest corner of the state bordering Tennessee to the west and Virginia to the North. Ashe County is an easy 3-hour drive from Raleigh, quite beautiful, and relatively undeveloped.

So when we decided to look for some “property”, Ashe County was our first choice. We were familiar with the county, but not with the real estate market. So we decided to work with a local realtor.

Not knowing any realtors, I went to the Ashe County Chamber of Commerce Web site and looked on the Real Estate section. I found one company that specialized in Buyer Representation. That company was Mountainscape Realty. I called and talked to the owner Joe Chamberlain. He was pleasant and helpful over the phone so my wife and I arranged to meet him in Ashe County.

We hired Joe to help in property search, and he did a great job for us. In fact, we are now neighbors because we ended up buying property adjoining land that he purchased for his family home when he relocated to Ashe County.

Joe first asked us what we were looking for, subdivision lot, existing cabin, or land. We said we were not sure yet. He then asked the important question. How much do you want to spend? We knew the answer to that one.

So we started to look at subdivision lots within our price range. We probably looked at 10-15 lots in existing or developing subdivisions. Most of the lots in our price range were 1-2 acres, some in the relatively few gated communities in Ashe County. At home in Raleigh we already live in a subdivision of 2 acre wooded lots, so why go to the mountains to have the same thing? Also the concept of “gated community” seemed so anti-social. So we moved on to existing cabins and houses.

We spent a day looking at cabins with Joe and the whole family. The consensus was let’s design something ourselves. So now we were looking for land (3-10 acres).

Over the course of three months, we looked at over 35 pieces of land all over Ashe County. I would look at the Ashe County Board of Realtors listings, pull some that looked interesting and Joe would give me full listings with the directions. When I asked he went with me, but most of the time I would go by myself on a day trip from Raleigh, or with my son, daughter and wife on other trips. We probably made 10 such trips. When we looked at undeveloped property, Joe would remind me when we needed a road, well and power and gave me very accurate information about what these would cost.

Every time that we looked at a piece of property, we would force ourselves to rank it with the other property we had seen. Some land we looked at was 5 acres, all vertical with one building location. Well it turned out that we all kept ranking the same piece of property as our favorite. It was 10 acres in the eastern part of the County which is rolling meadows and woods.

We made the offer and purchased the property. Our special thanks to our realtor and now neighbor, Joe Chamberlain for his help.

Here is a photo of SoccerGirl and GoThe Distance (Me) on one of our property searches.

So you might be wondering what exactly this “lodge” will look like (especially those family and friends already planning a visit!). We decided early on that we wanted a house that had a “mountain” feel (lots of wood and stone) and one that fit the location. The choices came down to a log home or timber frame. A log home just has too much wood. We loved the simple post and beam look of a timber frame house so that is the way we decided to go.

Want to know about timber frame houses? Check out the timber frame companies we have talked to so far: Goshen Timber Frame Company , Riverbend Timber Framing , and Carolina Timberworks

Once we decided on the timber frame look, we needed a design. There are several options for designing a house from scratch. You can find thousands of house plans on the internet; you can find a builder and use his plans, or you can hire an architect or a professional designer.

So we started looking at lots of timber frame design and plan books as well as timber frame magazines. We saw some features we liked, but not one plan that worked for us. Also because of the orientation of the house location on our property we wanted a design with the main entrance on the side of the house. Of course we also had some “musts haves” for the floor plan.

We decided that what was best for us was to find a professional designer that was familiar with timber frame construction. Eric Morley at Carolina Timberworks suggested that we talk with Drew Sumrell at Woodborne Design in Boone, NC.

After an initial meeting and visit to the site, we knew that Drew was the right person for this project. We hired him in October 2007. He has now finished the design work and we love it. He captured the look we wanted and designed a house that fits our needs and its environment.

So here are the exterior elevations. We will get into the floor plan in later posts.

The “right” elevation is oriented so that the view is down to the valley below the house site and toward the mountains in the distance as seen on the mast head picture.

Right Elevation - Click here to enlarge

 

 

Front Elevation - Click here to enlarge the front view.

 

 

 

3D View

 

 

 

Our property is 10 acres in northwestern North Carolina about a mile off the Blue Ridge Parkway. The property is about half wooded and half open sloping meadow. There are two spring-fed creeks that run through the property.

Right now we refer to the property as “the mountains”. As we drive back and forth from our home in Raleigh to “the mountains”, we have played around with a better name. What we have come up with is “The Lodge at Twin Creeks”. However, we don’t know exactly when there will be a “Lodge”, but we already have the “Twin Creeks”.

On the property we had the choice of building in the woods or in the meadow. While a “cabin in the woods” sounds great, we decided that we would prefer to build in the meadow. Actually at the top of the meadow, which is at 3000 feet. The picture on the masthead shows the location and the view. You can see some of the stakes marking the house location, and a shovel and post hole digger where I dug the test holes for the proposed septic field. (More on that in a later post)

Why did we reject the “woods” location? A couple of reasons. First, we wanted lots of light in the house and we wanted a better view from the house than just close-up views of trees. Second, to build in the woods would obviously require the removal of a lot of the trees just to get a suitable building site. This would be quite expensive. Plus while we don’t want our view from the house to be just trees, we enjoy walking through the wooded part of our property on the old logging roads. That’s one reason we like this site as opposed to the 10 acre site immediately adjoining our property, which is higher but only about 10% wooded.

While we have picked the location for our house, there is currently no “infrastructure” to support a house. Here is what we are working on this year (in about this order):

1. Get permit from county for septic system and well.

2. Build about 700 feet of gravel road to get from the county-maintained road to the building site.

3. Get well drilled

4. Run electric power and telephone service to the building site.

More on these in a later post.

 

After a nice night’s sleep (with earplugs for me to seal out any snoring that may have occurred) we enjoyed a great breakfast before heading back over to the property to meet builder #2. As we were driving up the road to the property we saw that he was already there and had driven his truck up the hill to the home site. Normally when we go to the property we follow a path along the bottom that meets up with some of the old logging roads in the woods. Not this time though… I guess my dad wanted to save time so we drove up. Let’s just say that this is not a smooth ride, there are many, many holes and large bumps that made it quite a ride to the top.

Builder #2 was also accompanied by his wife, something that seems pretty common so far in our experience. Again my dad talked with the builder and my mom and I both talked to his wife. After briefly looking over the layout of the house on the property and I believe some discussion of the road building they offered to go somewhere with us to look at photos of their building experience since they didn’t have any timber frame projects going on currently. Oh I should mention here that this builder had gotten a copy of our house plans from the architect, which was a good thing because we discovered on Friday that someone (to remain nameless, but it wasn’t me) left our copy of the house plans back at home.

We drove back down the property, this time taking a different route that was a little smoother than the way up and headed over to the closest place, a little cafe about 15 minutes away. There the builder set up his laptop and began showing us photos of a timber frame house they had built nearby. One of the first things my dad noticed is that he used SIPs or Structurally Insulated Panels in the construction. this house appeared to be much more basic than the one that we had seen on Friday and more similar I think to the plans for our house.

Again we asked the same questions of this builder with pretty much the same answers as Builder #1. 1. Do you have your own crew? (yes, except for certain things that require subcontractors) 2. Are you here most of the time? (yes, all the time basically) 3. How many houses do you generally build each year? (2-3, although his wife said he would prefer to do just 1) 4. How do you charge? (cost plus, which means their cost for materials plus 15%) 5. How long will it take to build a house (12-15 months is what they usually write the contracts for). Both of these builders said they do cost plus rather than a flat fee, but I’m not really sure which would be better, anyone out there reading this have any thoughts or experiences in this area? My dad also asked this builder about the Superior Walls, but he seemed to prefer traditional foundations. The plans and my dad’s preference is to use ICFs or Insulating Concrete Forms for the foundation.

Since we’ve begun this process of building this house my mom has begun thinking about the flooring and cabinets and overall color schemes for the house and builder #2’s wife said she would be able to help with that aspect, setting up appointments for her or going with her to pick out things, which was nice to hear and since they ave more knowledge of places in the area will probably be quite helpful.

After about 2 hours of talking and looking at photos we wrapped up the meeting. Of course I had to get some shopping in on this trip so I went next door to a little gift shop (and managed to find a few things) along with my mom and my dad headed back to the property to get his tools and lock the gate up across the entrance area.

Next on the agenda is a visit to the house that builder #2 showed us pictures of to see it in person.

We took a little trip up to the property this weekend for a couple of reasons. 1. I am on Spring Break and offered my services to my dad to help him do work on the property and 2. Now that there are official house plans we need to find someone to actually build the thing since none of us can do it.

We arrived at the property around noon and after a brief walk up to the house site set to work, well my dad started working and my mom & I went to the bed & breakfast we were staying at to check in and use the facilities since there is nothing but woods to use on the property. The plan for this trip was to construct a water bar across one of the old logging roads that was being eroded. I returned to the property and helped my dad while my mom went into town to check out cabinets and flooring at the local building supply store. We worked for a few hours before mom returned to tell us she had talked to one of the builders and he could meet us then at a house he was working on.

So we packed up the tools and headed over to Blowing Rock for the meeting. Mom had directions to the house but we also had the GPS to help us out. We reached the road the house was on, but both the GPS and us human navigators were confused about where to turn. This isn’t unusual for the mountains though as we have discovered road signs and addresses are not always readily viewable. We ended up making 2 U-turns before finally finding the driveway (oh and we did come across a family of about 4 deer along the way). The driveway was interesting, it was quite steep and very, very long. Of course since we also have to install a road on our property we were thankful that ours would be much shorter and therefore much cheaper (we hope!). We finally arrived at the house and found the builder and his wife picking up some trash that had been blown around by recent strong winds. We checked out the house, my dad immediately noticing that they were using the spray foam insulation in the garage, something he apparently likes. This house is also a timber frame house, although quite a bit more elaborate than the one we plan to build. We walked into the main room and I felt like we were in church, the architecture was that elaborate.

My dad mostly talked with the builder with my mom adding questions and comments, and me just observing and noting things that we had talked about in the car. My dad had done research already about questions to ask of the builder and managed to ask some of the most important ones in this meeting-this builder’s answers are in parentheses. 1. Do you have your own crew? (yes, except for certain things that require subcontractors) 2. Are you here most of the time? (yes, all the time basically) 3. How many houses do you generally build each year? (2-3) 4. How do you charge? (cost plus, which means their cost for materials plus 15%) 5. How long will it take to build a house (12-15 months is what they usually write the contracts for). My dad also talked about using Superior Walls for the foundation which I have never heard of, but I don’t spend as much time watching HGTV as he does. This builder seemed to like them although my dad is still unsure about using these versus your standard foundation. We also noted that this house used cultured stones on the outside, which look and feel (as I tested by picking one up) like the real thing but are cheaper and supposedly easier to work with. There is also a question of what kind of roof to use, metal or 3-D shingles, this house used metal, but it seems like it’s just personal preference and a cost issue as are many things in this whole process I think.

We left the meeting and headed back to where we were staying, stopping for dinner and purchase of lottery tickets along the way.

So I had this idea that my dad should write a blog about the process of building a house in the NC mountains and his idea when I told him this was for me to start writing it…so here I go, maybe he’ll post some too, or maybe I’ll just be in charge