How Much Land Does a Man Need?

Spring 2017

There are some dreams in life that remain ever just out of reach. Some of our hopes for the future are permanently filed in the "some day" category, perhaps never to be realized. Building our dream home seemed like it could easily be one of those elusive goals. However, sometimes life surprises us. Sometimes those dreams come to fruition well before we ever dreamed they would.This is one of those stories...hopefully. Welcome to the quick, painless, void-of-all-surprises (fingers crossed) journey of This Rowe House.

Thanks to a growing desire to cut down the morning commute coupled with an absurdly exploding Asheville home market, we found ourselves in a position where building a home would be more economical than buying one. We had many dreams about where to build. We drove up the side of mountains to look at steep, wooded lots. We scoured the neighborhoods around work to find something close. But the dream of all house dreams seemed incredibly unlikely: living next to friends. In the several year process of thinking about and selling our home, we dreamed with a group of close friends about living as neighbors, raising kids side by side and walking through the triumphs and sorrows of life together. But we never dreamed the timing would work out.When we first tried to sell our house, none of our friends seemed ready to sell or move.

Fast-forward a handful of months. Our house goes on the market within a week of our friends' house, and the search for houses next to each other intensifies. Both our houses go under contract in the same week, and the pressure mounts for both families to find any home before our closing dates. A few weeks after we're under contract, a friend tells our friends about his neighbor who is moving. She lives on a double lot. The dramatics of the next few weeks are worth a separate post, but a long, agonizing story later, our friends are moved into this house and we own a patch of land with a carport, a shed, and a pergola on it. The dream had arrived.

The Metamorphosis

August/September 2017

Having already planned a six-week adventure for the summer and not knowing exactly when we would break ground, we had to get the lot ready for construction before leaving in early June (we actually didn't do most of the following work before leaving, but we ended up having more time than we thought we would before groundbreaking).

First, we had to get rid of the carport and shed. Wanting to save the few minutes it would take the bulldozer to dispose of them, we went the economical and environmental route and listed them on Craisglist. It was actually a bit of a pain sorting through all the responses, but after several weeks, a combination of a few people came and dissembled and hauled all of it away.

Next came the fencing. For reasons incomprehensible, the former owner of the lot turned her property into a high-security compound, complete with 6-ft privacy walls all around the perimeter. One task was to dissemble the 60 ft. of fencing that ran along the front and side of our lot. This would allow room for the work trucks to pull into our property and for our foundation to be dug out from the side. Wanting to save all the materials we could, we used a reciprocating sawsall to separate the panels, and then dug out each post. We will likely only be reusing a small portion of the fencing to enclose the backyard. Anyone need some fencing?

Note the crap-ton of fencing. Also note the five huge pine trees along the right side of the fence. We had those taken down too.

Tree 1/5 marked for death

Tree 2/5 marked for death. 

Once the fencing was gone, the pergola had to go. Wanting to save this too, we had to dissemble it and dig up the posts. These stinking posts were buried so deep. My good friend and soon-to-be neighbor helped me dig the 4-ft diameter, 2 ft. deep holes in dry, hard dirt around each post. We then lifted each side of the pergola out of the holes. I would later move these sides to the back of the lot myself by standing them up and rotating them 180 degrees downhill on alternating feet. 

Massive. 

With the big stuff complete, all I had left were the small items. I took a good amount of large flat stones that were used as a walkway down to the back fence line along with several armfuls of bricks. Finally, I did my best to transplant some small bushes and trees in order to reuse them once the house was built. I put about a dozen of the smaller ones in pots to take care of at our rental. The bigger ones I replanted in the corner of the lot, hoping they would make it to spring. Here is how they looked a few weeks after I transplanted them: 

Deadest

Dead

Deader

Apparently trees need to be watered more than just the day that you transplant them.

So, after many afternoons of digging, much of which ended up to be fruitless, the lot was cleared and ready for the real digging to commence.

The Call of the Wild

October 6, 2017

What is it about boys and dirt? 

Luckily for Ezra, we had to move a lot of dirt to make room for the basement. All this dirt got piled up into Dirt Mountain, and everyone knows that there are no shirts and no shoes allowed on Dirt Mountain. 

On top of the hole went a thick layer of gravel. 

Also, here is another picture of the lot before any work got started. The house on the left belongs to our friends who sold us the lot. You can see the carport and shed behind the fence where our house is being built. 

Wuthering Heights

October 9, 2017

You know you've reached the big time when you need a crane to construct your house. This was really cool. With a paper-based business going in the basement, we wanted better waterproofing basement walls than the standard cement block style. For that and other reasons, we went with a product called KWall. The walls are pre-made of concrete and metal ahead of time. They come to the site with foam insulation and holes to run electrical. It's a bit more expensive than the cement brick, but you save a bit on framing costs. The basement arrived in 11 (maybe 12, we can't remember) huge pieces strapped to the back of two platform trucks. A crane maneuvered itself into our temporary driveway and set up shop for a few hours of heavy lifting. Each piece had to be lifted over power lines and carefully placed in its precise spot. The whole process took only about four hours. Basement walls in four hours. Craziness. Luckily, it was a teacher workday for Seth, so he was able to take his lunch break and watch this get going with Julie and the kids, who brought Chipotle to celebrate.

Check out this pieced together video of the walls going in. It may look slow, but this is sped up 400%. Your welcome for the stellar soundtrack.

The finished product

Sense and Sensibility

Spring 2016-May 2017

Julie Rowe is nothing if not a planner. Well before we broke ground for this house, owned the land, or even sold our previous home, Julie had in mind what our new house might look like. After exhausting Buncombe County Public Library's supply of home design and building books (garnering a look of disdain from our favorite West Asheville Public Library librarian) and scouring the interwebs for fitting layouts, Julie found this: 

The narrow lot we ended up buying would pretty much eliminate any hope for a garage. 

Julie Rowe is nothing if not economical. After hours (and hours) of research, Julie put together a layout that would make the most use of space and materials. Creating a square house without a lot of hallways gave us larger rooms with less roofing and foundation (build up and not out). Furthermore, simple shapes are easier and cheaper to frame and roof. Also, building up uses less of your lot, leaving more room for a yard for hooligans to run amuck. 

Keep in mind that Julie completed this sketch before our architect drew anything. Booyah.

 Once Julie had the layout figured, we needed a bona fide architect to draw us some plans. We called on a good friend to draw us some plans. He did a great job: