juniorbean

iTrader: (5)

^ LOL... once things are settled we'll have a CLT area BBQ, and we'll leave the gate open for ya ...

Aman

Ho. Lee. Shit.

chill_dog

The outside is even better than the inside. Great views and lots of privacy. Sucks you guys travel so much...I'd want to spend more time there than elsewhere.

civicdrivr

iTrader: (9)

Wow.

juniorbean

iTrader: (5)

Thanks guys!

My traveling has died down. I was doing a lot for training and such, but now that I'm settled, I'll be home most of the time. May have to do a few day trips here and there to Greenville (SC) or Greensboro, but that should be it. My wife is still traveling. In fact, she's been gone this week, but she is so excited to come home and just decompress. Soon as she gets home she's grabbing her book and sitting on the deck till I get home. Hey, whatever works!

Most of the inside work is done for now. Well, the major stuff anyway. Paint will be done by next week, and contractor has a few small touch-ups to do, and that's it. After that, round 2 of projects begins

hornyleprechaun

Looks awesome.. nice house!

CCColtsicehockey

What do you have in line for round 2?

juniorbean

iTrader: (5)

Right now round two looks like:

1) Redoing exterior - HardiPlank entire house, repairing a couple of eaves which have some rot, and painting the HardiPlank and all trim;

2) Exterior lights will also be replaced after HardiPlank is completed;

3) Replacing dining room french doors which have some rot;

4) Gutters;

5) Entrance Gate and Columns

6) Finish replacing interior lights. We have most of the main ones done. I think all we have left is deciding on a new fixture in the eat in kitchen area, the sconces in there, and a foyer light. Oh, and bonus room. Fireplace, Dining Room, MBR, Halls, and Foyer Sconces are already purchased. Just need to put them up once painting is complete.

After that's all done we'll likely just simmer a bit and look at where we are. I'd like to have a garage by the end of 2012 at the latest, so we'll have to factor that into the planning. The pool also needs to be re-done, so we just need to prioritize the remaining items on our list and go from there. Plus we want to buy some things such as a UTV to help around the yard. Hope to have round 2 done by mid-May or so...


Thanks

CCColtsicehockey

Sounds like a good list for round 2. From the looks of it the driveway is crushed stone. Any plans to have the driveway paved before or after the gate goes in?

mitch14

^a paved driveway that is just under a tenth of a mile, with a turnaround and a seperate driveway to the future garage?.... that would cost a little bit

very nice house, love the outdoor space, almost exactly what i want as far as garage driveway, so perfect and secluded.
is it a somewhat narrow property? since you have such a long driveway but be only just over two and a half acres of total property

CCColtsicehockey

I didn't say it wouldn't be expensive. Without at least some section of paved driveway where would you wash a car? Also every time you wash it when you leave it will always be dirty/dusty again. Either way was just wondering.

juniorbean

iTrader: (5)

Yeah, it would be expensive to do and the ROI on it is pretty low... so we'll likely stay crushed stone for the foreseable future. It's actually a nice stone as it's not that dusty and does not kick up onto the cars... so it works well. We will be paving about 20 feet or so at the beginning just to keep the gravel from washing away at the street level. Likely do stamped concrete or something.


Not narrow at all. At the end of the driveway is the narrowest part... probably 50' wide or so. From there it gets wider as you head toward the house. It really opens up about 1/2 up then it just sprawls from there. 2.54 acres doesn't sound like that much till you're on it! But it's really the perfect lot. Kind of a large pie shape, except is opens about halfway up... so where it is narrow doesn't matter (end of driveway) and there's room where it counts.

CCColtsicehockey

Good deal good deal

Scottman111

Very nice JB!!! Really nice looking property


How's the electric wiring and panel? Professionally done or slop job?

juniorbean

iTrader: (5)

^ LOL... little bit of both. The electrical was upgraded within the last 5 years, however, some of the wiring is still a bit sloppy. Most of the coax cable is run outside of the house... so that's always fun. Have to be careful when pulling up bushes etc. b/c the cable may be running through it! Inside is in good shape though. One closet is a bit messy, but nothing 10 minutes and some zip ties can't fix

CCColtsicehockey

juniorbean

iTrader: (5)

Yeah, no attic or crawl... so it's tucked under the soffits, run at the foundation, etc. The joys of an older home

CCColtsicehockey

Any updates? I know pics won't be for a while but any verbal updates will be acceptable in the mean time.

KaMLuNg

iTrader: (5)

i with building a 1/10 mile track

CCColtsicehockey

I was thinking something a little more along the lines of this. Depending on the property size if you add lots of turns you should be able to pull this off

http://jalopnik.com/5788736/this-is-...atest-driveway

juniorbean

iTrader: (5)

^ LOL.. that is just fantastic!! Unfortunately the ravine is just off the edge of the driveway for about the first 40% or so... but we do have a really cool turn-around area which is a perfect tri-oval type of track for R/C cars. Don't think it hasn't been discussed

But verbal updates for now....


1) Just about done. All of the rot is fixed and all of the HardiPlank is up. They painted the house with 2 coats yesterday, today all of the trim and the doors get done. Once they finish that (likely tomorrow), the landing by the front door and the deck will be done. It has already been sanded and power-washed, and will be last to be painted. Once paint is done, gutters will go up.

2) Had to re-wire some of the lights. How about this for the joys of an older home... the two main lights by the front door were up, but only one worked. Changed the bulb... nothing. Come to find out when they removed everything for the work that the right light was a dummy light. Never wired. So they ran the wiring for that so we'll have two functional lights. They also had to re-do one of the can lights in our little entryway. They did both for free... so no biggie, but it's still a bit funny. But the new lights are in and will go up once paint is completed.

3) New doors are in. They look the same as the old doors, but nice and sealed. Once paint is done on the outside they will stain the inside to match the existing trim.

4) As mentioned above, gutters will be going on once paint is done. We had the same company do the exterior and the gutters, so once they finish up with the HardiPlank, the gutters go up...

5) Still working on this. Have the gate ready to go, but bidding out 3 masons to do the columns. Hope to have this started in the next couple of weeks. After everything is in we just need to finalize what type of automation we want.

6) All interior lights are done except for the foyer.

I'm actually going to create a new topic with a bunch of before and after shots so they don't get lost in here. Waiting for the outside to be done, then I'll start getting those pics up. I have taken most of them, just need to upload them

After all of the above is 100% completed we are going to settle a bit and do some landscaping. Going to do a stone and cement walkway to one of our doors, and start cleaning up the area a bit. That will be our summer project... some sweat equity projects .

We are also interviewing architects for the garage. We want to build two, a smaller one attached to the house, then another on one of the other driveway sections with some type of porte-cochere or breezeway connecting the two. Hiring the architect allows us to design them so they flow with the house and property, but build them in phases. I hope to have the one attached to the house started by fall...

CCColtsicehockey

Cool sounds like things are coming along at a good pace then. and at the dummy light on the front porch for sure. Can't wait to see the awesome front entrance to the property when it is finished.

Interested to see what your plans for landscaping are cause you can make the worst house on the block look amazing with a fresh coat of paint and some well planned land scape. Luckily you have it easier since you have an amazing house to begin with.

You should build a 2 car on the house and a 3 car with an upstairs a little ways away. I hope to do something of the sorts when I buy a house.

Scottman111

A dummy light...wtf?

zeroday

Really nice place, awesome location. Congrats.

juniorbean

iTrader: (5)

Due to the grade of the area and layout over there, the one attached to the house will be an oversized 1-car (about 20' wide), however, it will be two cars deep. We will also be putting a garage door on each side so no one gets blocked in (driveway wraps around, so access from either side is not a problem). Above that garage will be a guest suite. We will use it for storage at first, then when we build the detached two car garage down the road (which will also be 2 deep, so essentially a 4 car), we will build out part of that above for storage, move everything over, then finish off the suite on the one attached to house. No rush to finish that out anyway since we have two bedrooms with their own full bath each upstairs anyway, so plenty of room for guests. So that's the plan as of now. Could change...

Landscaping will be a long, ongoing process. I want to get the eat-in kitchen side of the house done since I'm sick of looking at dirt and gravel, so that's where the walkway is going and where we will be focusing this summer. We will likely have the concrete/stone walkway from the driveway to the house, then some gravel paths which will wind through the area which will be setup as a garden/courtyard with flowers, fountains, etc. We will do all of that ourselves except for the concrete/stone walkway...



lol... yeah, pretty funny. That was pretty much our reaction when they took it down during prep and there was no wires. Made much more sense as to why I couldn't get it working . I mean I that they installed it for symmetry since having one light flanking the entrance would look odd... but I do not know why they didn't just run a wire. There was wires all over the place on that house, what's one more? Very odd. Of course since we re-did the exterior, we took the opportunity to hide just about all wiring that was visible and the electrical for that light was properly run.



Hey stranger. Thanks!!

Scottman111

Very strange...I wonder if they added it later, saw they could wire the first really easy, but the second would be a PITA to get a wire to, so they just put the dummy in


What type of wires were visible? I'm standing by my "hack-job" comment without even hearing your answer on this

juniorbean

iTrader: (5)

^ Mostly co-ax. There is no attic or crawl, so when cable service was added, it looks like they had all of the cables from the road buried to a control panel, and from there they ran them under the soffits. Problem is we have beams coming out and they tried to run them at the top (where the wall meets the soffit). Can't do that with the beams, so you just saw the wires looped under every beam. They did paint it though, so they blended

We took the opportunity to put the wires in conduit, notch out the original siding just below the beams, and run them in there. Then the Tyvek wrap and HardiPlank was installed. So looks nice and neat and everything's protected. No biggie and didn't add any cost to the pricing, but at least it's one less thing we need to worry about...

CCColtsicehockey

So any updates?

juniorbean

iTrader: (5)

We kind of slowed down a bit. While we live in the woods and have tons of trees, unfortunately I have yet to find one with money on it... so we just wanted to step back, re-evaluate and prioritize, so we can move forward.

As of now the walkway is done, the columns and gate are in, and we also did a stone mailbox. I may actually have pics of the mailbox on my phone. I need to check.

We met with two architects this weekend and think we found one we liked. We're likely going to push back construction to the spring just so we can save a bit more. I don't want to drain the savings account to build it... so just going to wait a bit longer to build up more of a cushion. Looks like with the slope of the land and flow with the house we will be building one garage. It will look like a 3 car from the front, but the middle bay will be bumped out and it will be a 4 car. Depending on space we may be able to put a side load garage on the 4th bay so you can drive around to that. We'll see if we have the clearance for that. Up top will be half storage, half guest suite with a deck and seperate entrance.

As things slow down in fall I'm working on getting some pics and doing a little before and after comparo on the changes we have made. I'll see what I have on the phone from the new projects...

juniorbean

iTrader: (5)

Nothing good on the phone. I'll need to snap some pics...

dom

LOL. let me know if you ever find one.

Good luck with everything JB, and yes pics.

CCColtsicehockey

Sounds like it will be an awesome garage. You should make one bay tall enough for a lift

Yeah what he said

KaMLuNg

iTrader: (5)

good luck with it JB... can't wait to see the updates...

imj0257

iTrader: (1)

Awesome pics, even though they are from March. Can't wait to see the updated ones.

juniorbean

iTrader: (5)

Thanks all


Oh it's in the plans. As is a drain so I can wash the vehicles all year round

And something tells me that if I find the money tree... I should keep it to myself

CCColtsicehockey

Nice Don't forget the plastic walls then so over spray doesn't matter. So once this is complete when will memberships become available

I look forward more to getting a house so I can design my dream garage over what the house actually will have

juniorbean

iTrader: (5)

^ LOL. All you need is some waterproof paint and you're good. Won't be that much overspray!

Oh and working on pics. Took a few last night between storms...

juniorbean

iTrader: (5)

OK, snapped a few yesterday when we had a break in the rain...

First pic is the mailbox. Much better then the one we had which was hanging on by one nail (literally, there was one nail slipped through a rust hole holding it to the post).

Second is the gate. Not 100% done yet. Lights need to go on the columns and motor needs to be installed. Just need to finish running the electrical. Pic with the rain on it came out pretty cool though... for cell phone pics.

Third is the walkway to the "front" of the house (which really isn't the front entrance). This shot is from the door.

Fourth is the walkway looking back at the house. You can also see the new hardiboard and batton strips with the new paint scheme, plus the new fixtures. Lights on this side of the house are the smaller ones, so they may be tough to see.

I tried to get pics of the walkway which goes towards the carport (right side of pic looking at the house) but the sun was at a weird angle and it kept washing the pic out. But you can get the idea as it looks the same as above. We're having our friend who owns a landscape company come grade and will probably just throw some seed down for now just to get rid of the dirt.

CCColtsicehockey

Looks really good. Really like the stone pillars. Motorized gate will be cool for sure.

chill_dog

Looks great!!