The long wait

It's been 3 months since I posted an update, because there's not been a lot to report.  Jane has been working on ever-more detailed plans, and I admit I had to ask her to slow down a bit so I could manage the financial drain in a more predictable way.  We have agreed to a project plan that will culminate in applying for building permits in May.


Meanwhile, the sheaf of documents she sent me in late October included, among other details, a schedule of windows: 61 of them!!  They also included the dimensions of all the spaces, so I can begin to imagine how the rooms will look and I can actually see myself in them. 


I've been thinking about colors, which will be very different from my Glastonbury house. Yellows, reds and greens predominate in my present space, inspired by the colors in Provence and Tuscany, two of my favorite places in the world.  The new space suggests marsh colors: sage green, sand, touches of rusty red and blue-green water. I envision the exterior in dusty green, white trim, subtle dark red accents, much like the double matting and filets to which I gravitate when framing a piece of art -- which is what this house is, after all.


Coquina shell cladding on the chimney? I hope my budget can take it.


Jane's meeting with the review board again in early January so they can approve the exterior lighting fixtures, driveway treatment and revised garage door design.  I believe that's the final time she'll have to meet with them.


In late January we'll meet with two or three contractors to bid on the project and hopefully select one shortly thereafter.  We agreed that getting the builder onboard early will help us manage the budget and make him a true partner as we move forward with detailed design.


A wise longtime friend who lives in Tampa just read my blog and has given me a thumbs-up on my approach -- and loves the look of the house.  He shared sage advice about stairs, ceiling fans and heating systems in the south.  Thanks, Bob!

The design is taking shape

This will be a short post with some new exterior views. From the street:

And from the back:

From the outside in

What I love most about this process so far is knowing that this house will be custom-designed for me.  Throughout my adult life I have lived in "second-hand" homes, redesigning them within the constraints of my budget and the structural footprint.  To date my most ambitious project has been a kitchen-family room redo, but since no walls were punched out or additions constructed, it was a fairly easy process.  In this new home, every doorknob, cabinet, floor surface, window and fixture will be of my own choosing.


Jane has designed the main floor as virtually one big space that can accommodate entertaining and daily living.  The entry, from the porch that runs along the east side, leads to the kitchen.  To the right are a half bath and walk-in pantry positioned at the street side. The kitchen morphs into dining space, then living space beyond, with a screened porch on the south end.  Hopefully the porch will have a modest outdoor kitchen.


From the kitchen, several steps down lead to the terrace, anchored by a fireplace.


The courtyard area will not be a fussy yard; rather, I hope simply to use native plants that require minimal maintenance.


The entire second floor is the "owner's suite," with a studio room for my creative activities on the north end, with a library/study facing east. A short hall leads to the master bedroom, and centered between the studio space and the master are a big walk-in closet and the laundry room.

I love the deck cantilevered over the terrace, wrapping around the fireplace.  The plan above also shows the guest suite above the garage, with its balcony and marsh view.


My goal is to incorporate a lot of built-in cabinetry to minimize furnishings: so the walk-in closet will have drawers and shelves so I won't need a dresser.  In the living/dining area, built-ins will eliminate the need for a separate hutch or buffet and make the space flexible for entertaining.  All I'll need to do is make some friends who like to eat.....

The big reveal....

I've had some anxiety about meeting with Jane and Michael, the architects for my project. Will I fall in love with what they've done? Will I totally hate it? This is the moment of truth when I'll find out whether I picked the right partners to work with me.

My nephew and trusted advisor, Chris, and I met in Savannah and made our way to the Fredericks' studio in Beaufort, SC, to see the conceptual plans they've developed. They presented two plans: one they called the "safe" option, the other a bit more edgy. While the former is a lovely design, I'm totally captivated by the second.

The design is a southern vernacular I-house, very narrow across the front, but deep. The sketch above is the north side,, facing Stern St., and the entry is actually on the east side. The house is elevated about 5 feet. A covered walkway leads to the garage on the left, which has a guest suite above, connected to the main house by a bridge.

As you face the house, there is an area to the right designated as a pathway to a future park that will be at the right rear corner of my property. This means we have a zero setback on that side, giving us more positioning latitude on this small, wedge-shaped lot. When homes are built on the other side of that path, they will face Galley Lane, so worst case I will see the backside of one or two houses from the west, or backside, of mine, and I expect there will continue to be a screen of trees.

The east side takes my breath away. This will look onto the salt marsh beyond, and Jane believes that, with the height we'll achieve, the views will be wonderful. The tree and topo survey revealed that there is actually a finger of marsh that comes right up to the back of my lot -- a fact I didn't know because I'd never ventured all the way into the underbrush, certain it was full of snakes and other vicious wildlife.  It will be a lovely spot to sit on a bench and watch birds and the changing colors of the marsh grasses.

This rendering doesn't include the garage,  but the bridge will extend from the far right side.

Jane also provided drawings of the interiors, which I'll post later.  We discussed some revisions -- like putting the laundry room upstairs rather than down, and making the space over the garage the primary guest quarters, as opposed to the studio space she had envisioned.  We talked about building a fire pit into the patio and eliminating the fireplace opening, perhaps even moving the chimney to the backside of the house.  In the end, after reviewing additional drawings a few days later, I decided to keep the chimney as is and the outdoor fireplace as well.

En route home, I suddenly realized all the things I want/need to learn about: rat slabs, instantaneous hot water systems, geothermal heating and cooling, impact-resistant windows -- and that's just the beginning. There will be a mountain of details to discuss and decisions to be made during this process.  I can see how people could be overwhelmed, but it occurs to me that I have a distinct advantage from not having to share the decision-making with anyone else!

I also decided that, despite being a total beginner, I have absolutely picked the right architects.  They have created a concept that reflects my style and personality and that I'm confident will work with the way I live.

How I'm thinking about this house

Thanks to Sarah Susanka and her Not So Big concept, I started thinking about my house not in terms of rooms, but as spaces where I do activities. My activities fall into six categories:

• Cooking, eating, entertaining and planning same
• Reading and surrounding myself with books
• Sleeping, bathing, grooming and laundry
• Hosting overnight guests
• Doing household business (and my next career business)
• Creating (sewing, drawing, painting)

Within each category of activities there are certain requirements. For example, when I host overnight guests, I want them to have their own bathroom. Or, since entertaining is central to the way I live, I like to interact with guests as I cook, while keeping them out of the way.

I've done a brain-dump of everything I'd like to have in each of these spaces. Each of these activities doesn't require a unique or dedicated space: some spaces will accommodate more than one activity. For example, I think my reading space will probably also be the space where I conduct my household business (pay bills, etc.). And my creating space could also potentially be guest space, if planned intelligently.

Next Monday I'm meeting with Jane, the architect, to review her first pass at a design. Can't wait!

Selecting an architect

I've never built a house before, never worked with an architect, and never even bought property long-distance. The idea of finding and selecting an architect seemed a little daunting to me. So in the summer of 2008 I did what I usually do when I don't know about a subject: I got a book and started reading. This very helpful resource -- How to Work With An Architect, by Gerald Lee Morosco -- contains a lot of practical information on questions to ask, how architects determine their fee structure, etc., and it complemented some other books I'd been reading by the architect Sarah Susanka.

Susanka developed the concept of the Not So Big House with the philosophy of building better, not bigger, with an eye toward sustainability. I loved the whole concept, and it gave me a way to start organizing the way I was thinking about this house I was going to build. Her website www.notsobighouse.com also includes a home professionals directory of suppliers who subscribe to the not so big philosophy.

Since I didn't know anyone who had used an architect to build in my part of Georgia, getting a referral didn't seem practical. So I drew a radius of about 50 miles around St. Mary's and searched the web for residential architects on the AIA website. I combed through and eliminated those that featured mostly commercial structures on their own websites, further narrowing the search, but found that I ultimately had to increase the radius to about 100 miles. Another factor was the designs of the homes featured on the websites: they had to be esthetically appealing to me, and I was also looking for designers who featured smaller homes rather than the monster showplaces that were the rage.

Eventually I found three that seemed like good prospects, so, armed with my list of questions from the book, I contacted each one to set up a phone interview. One of the three didn't bother to return my call, so that was as good a reason as any to eliminate them. The second underwhelmed me and was difficult to talk to.

My conversation with the third, Jane Frederick, of Beaufort, S.C., was very fruitful. I had learned from Morosco that there are basically two ways architects charge: a percentage of the total cost of the house, or a fixed dollar amount per square foot. Jane explained that she uses the latter method, because "It shouldn't cost you more for me to design a bathroom with a $3000 toilet than with a $700 one." Made perfect sense to me. The fee structure is scaled, with the highest for finished interior spaces, somewhat less for outdoor living spaces, and a still lower charge for unfinished spaces like a garage.

One big concern I had was that this home would be under construction while I was living 1000 miles away. How would she help me be comfortable and feel in control of what was going on when I couldn't be there? Did she have any clients in similar circumstances? She explained that she would be my delegate, personally visiting the site, sending photos and videos, and in general doing her best to ensure that I was kept fully informed about what was going on. And she was able to give me several client references, whom I called. One of them had built three homes from a distance, one designed by a different architect and the last two by Jane and her husband. Her first, unsatisfactory, experience taught her a lot about how to manage a project from long distance next time around, and her experience with Jane was quite different -- so much so that she and her husband hired Jane to design yet another home far away. I was starting to feel very good about Jane.

Meanwhile, my friend Barbara from Savannah contacted me to suggest I meet her neighbor, who just happens to be an architect. Seemed like it was time for a trip south, so I scheduled meetings with Jane and the other architect, Dan. Dan has kind of a "boutique" practice, and a fascinating method of designing a home. The first steps include having the client draw a picture of his/her vision of a "higher power," however the person defines it. He uses exhaustive questionnaires to develop a good sense of the client's values and how they live, and even visits the client in their current home to get a feel for their environment. He conducts sun and wind studies on the property to determine the best places for windows and breezeways.

Dan's designs are as much about art as structure. That was a red flag for me, because I knew my design would have to conform to the architectural covenants of the Cumberland Harbour community. However, Dan was able to show me photos of homes he had designed smack in the middle of Savannah's historic district that, while unconventional, still complied with the city's strict requirements. We were able to visit a home he designed for a friend of Barbara's on Fripp Island, and it was a wonder. The owner talked about his involvement in the process and showed us the many unique touches resulting from Dan's creative approach.

Dan uses Skype for his clients that aren't local, and claims to have a number of them. I learned that his fees are based on the total cost of the project. Minus one big point for Dan, though his approach intrigued me and I felt that I would have a truly unique home if he designed it.

The next day I met Jane for the first time at my property, and immediately felt at ease with her. We talked long about what I wanted, and the next day I met her again at Palmetto Bluff, a planned community in SC, where she showed me two homes she and her husband had designed, one under construction and one finished and occupied. I could have moved into either one.

At the end of this weekend in September 2008 I still had a lot to think about, but I was leaning toward Jane. It would be more than another year till the economy started its slow turnaround, when I finally contacted her in early summer this year to tell her I was ready to get started.

Taking the plunge

Almost four years ago, in 2006, I bought a lovely little piece of property in St. Mary's, Georgia, in a newish gated community called Cumberland Harbour. It was a giant step for me, because I was finally acting on a dream I had had for a long time: to have a home near the water (ocean) where I could retire and say goodbye to the dreary, cold and snowy New England winters I've endured for over 30 years. But in my dream there was always someone else to share the planning, the expense and the risk. The giant step was deciding to do it on my own.

I had evaluated the options of buying a home vs. building one, and quickly decided that if I was going to do this I'd go all the way. I discovered that I didn't want to buy someone else's idea of a dream house; if this was going to be the place where I would spend the last big chunk of my life, designing and building was the way to go.

The first big gulp was taking on another mortgage to buy the land. Where was the money going to come from? My financial advisor was essential in giving me the confidence that I could actually do it. Although he's a good friend, he didn't have an emotional investment in the decision. His clear-eyed objectivity, based on an intimate knowledge of my financial situation -- and my dreams -- put him in the perfect position to assess my ability to take this on. Plan A was to buy the land, then leverage the assumed appreciation on the lot and proceeds from the sale of my Connecticut home to finance construction.

For two years I dutifully made my mortgage payments, and then I got really anxious to start building the house. Once again, my advisor was there to help me figure out whether I could actually move ahead without selling my CT house. My thinking was that, after a number of visits back to St. Marys, I still was excited about the community; but if I could actually spend time there, in my own home, before I pulled up stakes in CT, I would know for sure.

After doing a fair amount of research (which I'll share in a future post) I settled on two potential architects, and in September, 2008, I made a trip south, where I interviewed both of them in person and saw their actual work. Ahh, but we all remember September, 2008, right? The weekend of my visit was several days after Lehman Brothers collapsed -- generally acknowledged to be the start of the economic meltdown that still lingers today.

My immediate dreams came to a screeching halt. What lay ahead? Like so many others, over the succeeding months I watched my 401k and my investments go into the tank and property values plunge, even in the desirable coastal areas where every other Boomer wants to retire. And in October, the formerly well-respected developer of this attractive community declared bankruptcy amid allegations of financial shenanigans. So I hunkered down to wait...... and dream.....