So I know it has been a really, really long time since I’ve written any updates (aside from the brief one below, which I also wrote today), but life has been busy and hectic and I haven’t had a chance to get back up to the property until now.  My parents have made many trips, however, it seems that they are again relying on my presence to write any updates.

We made the trip up over the Memorial Day Weekend, arriving on Saturday (to avoid all the traffic of a holiday Friday) and departing on Monday.  We decided to try out a new set of accommodations, Mountain View Lodge, based on their proximity to our property (only a few minutes away), since we still don’t have a house in our meadow-which will hopefully be changing in the near future.  More about that later though.

The main purpose of our trip was to plant our apple orchard.  A month or so ago my parents made a trip up to the property and visited the Ashe County Farmer’s Market in downtown West Jefferson.  They met a couple from Phoenix Mountain Farm selling apples and apple trees.  My mom decided we should plant some on the property since as you have seen from previous picture we have quite a lot of open meadow space.  Originally they were going to purchase 12 trees and a grapevine too, but after thinking about it decided on 8 trees and a grapevine.  Now when I first heard about these trees I was thinking they would be pretty good size and quite a chore to plant, but as you can see in the picture below they are quite small.  Of the 8 trees I have only heard of 2 species, Golden Delicious and Stamen Winesap, the rest are mysterious but hopefully tasty!

Our apple trees before planting

We arrived on Saturday to a nice, mostly sunny warm afternoon, great for planting.  While my dad used the push string trimmer to cut the grass in the orchard area, mom and I took the opportunity to relax under some shady pine trees, and take a little nap.  Soon he was done though and it was off to work.  We decided on the layout of the trees, then set about digging holes for each.  Now, this was the challenging part, because the soil here is mostly red clay, not the easiest to dig out by hand, so it really took a group effort by all 3 of us to dig each hole and get it ready.  The second challenge of course would be where to get water to put in the holes before planting and after.  There is no water service on the property, and while we do have 2 creeks they are fairly small and shallow.  Dad thought ahead though and brought a 6.5 gallon water jug filled at home, but obviously that wouldn’t be enough for all the trees.  So he took a few trips to the creek, but wasn’t able to get very much water.  We worked for awhile, then decided to go check in to our cabin, rest for a little bit, get some more water, and headed back to finish our work.  When we returned to the property it had gotten cloudy and a bit cooler, but we finished digging the holes, and planted all but 3 of the trees.

Dad cutting the grass to prepare for planting

We stopped for the night and returned to our cabin to clean up and then headed into town for dinner.  We decided to try Black Jack’s Pub & Grill, which was very good (they even have pickle chips!) and also gave us a chance to watch the 1st period of the Hurricanes/Penguins game.

Saturday night it started to rain, and continued to rain off and on until we left on Monday.  We got up on Sunday and headed back in to town to go to church at St Francis, the church where my dad actually won a riding lawn mower (thanks to mom for writing down his name) in a raffle a few weeks ago.  After church we headed to Lowe’s to get some soil and other supplies to protect the new trees from rabbits and deer.  We returned to our cabin for brunch and to change clothes and go back to work.  It didn’t really seem to be raining much so we headed back to the property to finish up.  Of course as soon as we got there it started raining more, but we had work to do so we pressed on.  We got the last trees planted, put top soil down to fill in the holes completely, and protected the trees (hopefully) from the deer and rabbits.

Digging the first hole

We used advice from the couple who sold us the apple trees to protect our trees.  To protect from the rabbits my dad cut black plastic tubing (the kind you see leading from downspouts) into about 18″ segments which we slipped over the trees.  To protect from deer we created “cages” out of wire fencing and anchored them to the ground.  We also used hung bars of Irish Spring soap from the cages to hopefully repel the deer.

Finally our work was done, we were wet and tired and ready to go back to the cabin.  We had thought about taking a hike at Mt. Jefferson, but since it kept raining off and on we decided to just hang around the cabin, reading and napping, although Dad decided to go out and explore on his own for awhile.  Sunday night we headed out for dinner again, this time we stayed closer and ventured to Mountain Aire Seafood and Steaks where we have eaten before.  We also needed some entertainment that night so we headed into West Jefferson to see a movie at the Parkway Theatre.  They show new movies, and you can’t beat the price, $5 gets you in the door and you have 2 movies to choose from.

Finally Monday morning came, rainy and gray again.  Dad went back to the property to pack up the tools we had brought and some that were left out.  Mom and I hung out around the cabin, and then we packed up and headed back home.

We hope all the rain gives our orchard a great start, hopefully the animals will leave them alone, and in just a few years we will have apples!  Oh, we didn’t get a chance to plant the grapevine yet, we need to research a little more to make sure we plant it correctly.

Some of the trees after planting

Two more of the trees & our neighbors

We do have some new neighbors at our property.  The closest ones aren’t the 2-legged variety, but rather 4 legged.  As you can see below, 3 horses have taken up residence on the lot adjacent to ours.  It’s nice to see them and also to have a fence line to mark the edge of the property.

Our Neigbors to the south

Also, across the street the cabin that was under construction last spring has been completed.  Now if we can get our cabin built…

Our neighbors across the street to the East

We took advantage of the 3 day weekend to head up to the mountains for a surprisingly manual labor free weekend in Ashe County! We decided to leave on Saturday morning to avoid all the traffic as we learned last year when we also headed to the mountains for Labor Day (I’m beginning to find a trend here…). Since we still have no place to actually stay on our property we again investigated local accommodations and found a wonderful place to stay called On the Windfall.

View from the stone patio of our cabin

We actually found out about this place through one of the builders we interviewed, he and his wife own the property and he built 2 of the cabins, including the one where we stayed, which was also designed by the same person who designed the house we hope to build on our property. We knew we had to take advantage of the opportunity to stay in a house designed by our designer and built by one of our potential builders.

As always we began our visit with a swing by the property. My dad was a bit concerned about the road since the remnants of Hurricane Fay made their way through the NC mountains the previous week and dumped about 4 inches of rain in the area over the course of 2 days. Happily the road was perfectly intact, as was our new & improved water bar, although we did notice areas where we needed to build an additional water bar, but that was saved for another trip. It was cool to also notice many deer tracks in the fresh red clay by the road along with a what may have been fox tracks (too bad I didn’t have a field guide with me to identify them). We then made our way to our cabin, stopping in Jefferson for a few groceries, then driving to the Western side of the county just outside the town of Lansing, about 40 minutes from our property.

Mom and I enjoying our labor free weekend!

We spent the rest of the afternoon hanging out around the house before heading back into town for church, then back to the cabin to make dinner. We also made plans to go tubing the next day since the weather was supposed to be very nice. I had researched a couple of places prior to the trip and in consulting the GPS both were about equally distant from our cabin. We decided on Riverside Canoes since they had no set times for trips and we didn’t want to have to leave too early to get there. It had been a long time since I’d been tubing, and mom and dad had never been before. The adventure began as soon as we left the cabin. It took us a little longer to get there than we thought since our GPS turned out to not be the most reliable source of directions, but we made it there eventually. They took us in a van down river from their location and we were left to float our way back. Getting in the water initially was a little daunting because it was somewhat cold, but once we got out into the sunshine it wasn’t bad. We all got in our tubes and were off up the New River (it flows North for those who don’t know) floating with the current. The trip was fun although since it is a pretty shallow river there were a few times we had to get up and walk and you had to watch out so that you didn’t hit your butt on the rocks!

We returned to the cabin and headed down to a cookout with our hosts for the weekend. They had built a smoker next to the pond on the property and we sat around the pond all afternoon. Many of their neighbors as well as a couple staying in the other cabin came too and we had a great time. We did have to contend with some surprise rain showers, but fortunately there was a tarp set up to provide shelter and we did get to see a rainbow. One of the couples that came to the cookout own some other rental cabins in Ashe County and also run an organic farm called Zydeco Moon, we may end up staying there on our next visit! We returned to the cabin full of lots of locally grown food and tired from our busy day.

The pond (if you look closely you can see the rainbow)

Monday morning arrived to be cloudy, foggy, and gray. We had planned to hike up to the top of the property where our cabin was located, but given the weather we decided there wasn’t much point since all we would be able to see was the fog. Reluctantly we packed up and headed for home. It seemed like we had just gotten there and all wished we didn’t have to go back to work on Tuesday. We definitely want to plan a return visit, hopefully sometime soon!

View of our cabin as we left Monday

View looking towards the bottom of property

So you may recall from my last post that we had met with a road builder and made arrangements to have the road put in. That was back in May and as of this past Saturday I am happy to report that the road has been put in and is now complete! We (Gothedistance, NCmountainmama & myself) took a day trip up to the property to check out the final work and meet with Robbie the road builder to pay him. In addition to putting in the road, my dad also had him fill in an area on one of the old logging roads that had been pretty eroded by water running down it, and he also deepened the area in front of the waterbar that we made a while back (and I wrote about in another post).

Looking up towards top of property (used to be all green)

It was a beautiful day to be in the mountains, with low humidity and temperatures only in the 80s, it was a much needed escape from the heat back in Raleigh. We took advantage of this by driving mom’s convertible up this time. Although we were unprepared for being in the sun for so long and all three of us have suffered some sunburn. Of course, there is shade on the property in the woods, but it is unfortunately quite infested with poison ivy, so the choice was made to suffer in the sun rather than risk the poison ivy for those of us who had worn capri pants since we weren’t anticipating doing any work on the property this time.

Mom using the convertible to get a better look across the meadow

One of the reasons we were in the sun for so long was because while we were there mom & dad met with builder #6 and spent more time than anticipated talking with him. He is a builder from Davidson, NC who has built some cabins in the Ashe County area and is considering moving his business up there. He was on the initial list of builders we received from the architect, but since he wasn’t really local my dad decided not to talk to him first. We have found though that the local builders have been slower to respond with bids, so we expanded where we are looking. In addition to showing him the proposed house site, my parents went through the house plans with him. One of the focuses of their conversation was the fireplace (or actually fireplaces, since they are planning indoor & outdoor ones, as well as a wood stove). The discussion centered around building a Rumford fireplace, which I had heard my dad mention before, but didn’t really know what it was. This particular builder loves these fireplaces and that is how my dad came across his name again and decided to contact him. After discussing the house plans and various changes to them, my dad and the builder took a walk through our woods to check out the possibility of using the creek as a water supply if it was spring fed, rather than relying on a well. This builder seemed very knowledgeable and down to earth, and we all agreed that we liked him, hopefully he will return a good bid!

Looking down from house site (can you see GoTheDistance in the distance?)

Following our visit with the builder we headed over to a nearby development that was hosting an open house to get some ideas of what’s out there in terms of price and features in both new and resale homes. It was interesting to see a different setting for mountain living, but we all agreed afterwards that we would much rather have our space and the quiet of our piece of land rather than live in a neighborhood.

We headed back to Raleigh after a long day outside, not before stopping at one of our usual places for a quick dinner though, Steak N’ Shake . If you don’t have one nearby, you’re missing out and if you see one you should try it!

So over Mother’s Day weekend we headed up to the mountains again (second weekend in a row for mom & dad). Since I was along for this trip there were two purposes in going. One was to meet with a road builder and the second was for my dad to put me to work! We drove up on Saturday morning arriving around noon, spent some time using the house plans to measure distances for the driveway/road (at least that’s what I think we were doing, my dad just told me to hold the tape measure and walk to certain distances). I also got the chance to check out the wooden bench my dad had painted and brought up a few weeks back so we could have someplace to sit while we’re up there.

Then the road builder arrived, so it was time to talk to him. This is the same road builder my dad had met with back in October and whose price was considerably lower than others he had talked to more recently. It had been decided that if his price was the same the road would get built sooner rather than later, especially since it seems like the price of everything just keeps going up these days! His price was the same so my parents told him to do it, so sometime in the next month or so we will have a road on the property leading to the future home sight. Hopefully we’ll be able to post some pictures of the work once it gets underway. One interesting thing that we learned in talking with the road builder is that gravel is cheaper in Ashe County than in neighboring Wilkes County. and that the quarry we would be getting gravel from was actually just a few minutes down the road! And here it is: (Click on images to enlarge)

Once the road builder left it was time to get down to business and work. It was a beautiful day to be outside, not too hot, sunny, but a little bit windy. With that in mind we were a little nervous about one of our tasks for the day, burning brush. But my dad, being the prepared kind of guy that he is came equipped with a fire extinguisher, jug of water and a sprayer to hose down any areas that might get out of control. Oh and he also made sure to get a burn permit ahead of time. So he dug and cleared a pit in the meadow and after several attempts to light the fire with matches, we were able to get a fire going. I was assigned the job of “burn boss” as I like to call it, basically I put brush on the fire and broke larger branches into smaller ones and made sure the fire didn’t get too big. My dad used his DR PowerWagon to haul brush from one of the logging roads down to the burn area.

Let me tell you that thing can hold a lot of brush, and it’s quite fun to ride in (but kids, don’t try that at home)

Meanwhile, my mom had gone up to the store to get some gas for another power tool we had brought with us, the DR Trimmer/Mower, which I got to use to mow some of the meadow. It was very easy to use, make sure to wear safety glasses though, and I would recommend wearing a face mask to avoid all the grass flying in your mouth and nose (it’s easy to keep your mouth closed, but not much you can do about the nose). After awhile of taking care of the fire, my mom returned and she took over that job

while I mowed and then helped my dad gather brush to burn. 

Since you can only watch a fire burn for so long, it was decided that my mom & I would go to the friends’ house with whom we were staying and leave my dad to finish out the burning, but of course pick him up later, don’t worry.  It felt great to get to the house, change clothes, and relax for the evening.  Of course we told my dad not to work too hard while we were gone, but as usual he didn’t listen and when my mom retrieved him he was quite exhausted.

After such a beautiful day on Saturday we awoke to a cold and rainy morning on Sunday.  After going to church in town and eating breakfast we headed off to meet Builder #2 again and tour a timber frame house he had built nearby.  It was nice to be able to see a timber frame house in person, and the homeowners were very gracious and answered many of the questions my parents had for them.

(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