Durkins Build a House

The lot is a 3.66 acre, rectangular parcel with 200′ of frontage on the Ellijay river. The top of the lot runs along a ridge, which eventually drops off down to the river. The house will be built at the edge of this slope, providing visibility to the river while remaining high enough on the ridge for a longer view to the mountains.

The lot is in a subdivision of 19 lots which are all 3.5 to 6+acres in Cherry Log. Cherry Log is between Ellijay and Blue Ridge, so it’s close to the lake (Lake Blue Ridge), the Benton Mackeye Trail, and the “downtowns” of both Ellijay and Blue Ridge (really a single main street, but lots of restaurants and shopping). It’s 60 miles from where we live currently and is consistently a 1:25 drive. For perspective, it is 97 miles north of the Atlanta Airport, which google puts at a 1:33 drive (all highway, our drive is not).

The entrance to the subdivision is 1.7 miles off of the “4-laner” (GA 515) on a decent gravel road. After passing a couple of farms, you come up to the gate:

There’s a farmhouse just inside the gate to the left, and everything to the right is community space that runs up to the river. They built an interesting, but not really functional, community building, which you’ll pass as you head up the road to our lot (straight in the picture). There’s a couple of lots on the road to the right as well. These are flat and right along the river. Everything else is up the hill.

You’ll take the road about a half mile up the hill on a nice gravel road.

At the top of the hill, the driveway is on the left. The driveway is a gradual slope down towards the house site, with a valley off to the right.

This is looking up to the road about half way down to the house:

This is the valley to the right of the driveway:

 

This is the view from the bottom of the house site, so what you’ll see coming out of the basement.The view to the river will be opened up as trees come out to make room for the house. Right now, you can just barely see it through the trees.

There’s a path from the house down the river already, although it’s a bit steep.

It’s worth the trip, though, as there’s 200′ of level river front to enjoy this:

We picked this lot for a few reasons. We narrowed it down to riverfront lots first, which gave us a handful of options. One of them was down near the entrance, and we wanted to be on top of the hill, so we ruled that one out. We walked each of the lots to see their river front, where the house would go, what the view would be, and how difficult it would be to build. The house site for this lot sits on the east side of the ridge, and we noticed that there’s a really nice sunset over the mountain to the east. It also provides a clear view down to the river. We also like the lot next to this, but picked this one for what we think will be a better east-facing view. I also liked the valley along the driveway, as it’s a nice view on its own.