With the exception of the staining, the exterior wood is done!

The mix of log, board and batten, and cedar shake turned out great. There’s cedar on the front, above the porch…

..and there’s cedar under the porch roof.

What you can’t see until you look closely is the crazy amount of wood trim that goes around every inch of the house. Paul and his crew did a bang up job, and it looks great all around.

The inside looks the same, except the tongue and groove is 99% done instead of 90%. We also picked the floors finally, and are going to use 12″ wide pine planks. It will be milled locally at the same place that milled all of the log siding. Most of the cabins we’ve seen in the area use a similar or identical floor, and we’ve liked the look of it every time we’ve seen it. It is softer than the oak floors that the builder suggested, but we think it is more consistent with the house. Since it is soft, in a few years it will have even more character! We also think it’s the ultimate version of #shoplocal; local trees milled locally, it doesn’t get any better than that! This is not floor on a boat from the far east.

…Until you’ve sold the house you’re currently building!

If you’re keeping up, you’ll know that we’re (somewhat) actively looking for what the next project will be. If you’re feeling lost, you can read about What’s Next and The Compound. What this really consists of going hiking every Saturday on random pieces of land followed by lunch in Blue Ridge (or Chik Fil A even though that is against #shoplocal). Usually, we find nice trees, an interesting view, and lots of thorns.

This week, with our special guest hiker, Alyssa Sista, we started out looking at some land that we saw before. I showed her where a house could go, some cool rocks, and then she ditched me while I went traipsing through the rocks and briar bushes. The girls were ready to go, but I insisted that we continue on and see if we could find anything else, so we decided to check out a 10 acre tract that’s been on the market for a while but that we’ve never looked at. After trekking/crawling/bouldering up a hill, over rocks, past some bears (I didn’t see them, but I know they were there), around the rattlesnake pit (they were sleeping underground), we came to the top of the waterfall we’d been following.

The stream went downhill for about 1000′ back to the road. It was steeper and wider towards the top, but was pretty impressive the whole way down.

Rocky and Alyssa wanted to pitch a tent and move in.

The exterior is almost complete! Paul and his crew were working hard today to get the last sections done.

There’s a small area of cedar shakes under the porch, which is the first color on the outside. This should look even better once everything is stained.

Inside, the new window adds tons of light to the living room.

The first floor bedroom is all wood now, which continues through the attached bathroom.

Even the laundry closet is wood!

To break up the horizontal wood, the vertical pattern goes all the way up the inside wall of the living room.

The vertical wood is also on the side of the steps, so that everything along that side of the room lines up.

The closet turned office is a cozy wooden nook now. For the 10th time, I’ll say that this was the best change that we’ve made during the whole build!

The main bedroom upstairs looks great. It’s the last room that’s not completely enclosed, as they’re using the ladder scaffold to reach the living room ceiling.

The new deck has a good view. Looking down the hill to the river isn’t bad.

Looking up isn’t so bad, either!

The exterior wood is about 75% done, so it’s starting to finally look like a real house. There will be cedar shakes on the gables with board and batten to mix up from 12″ chink siding that’s everywhere else. 

The “everywhere else” includes all the way up the left side from the basement to the roof, and also the entire back of the house.

Inside, there’s a ton of progress as well. The wood itself is almost all done. It will be quite a task to trim it out, but a big part of the work is done. Every interior surface, including floors, walls, and ceilings is wood. Even the bathrooms and closets. The downstairs half bath doesn’t feel overly large anymore now that it’s closed in:

The kitchen is all set as well. The picture doesn’t do it justice, but the ceilings are nice and high even in here:

Upstairs, the closet turned nook got it’s window finally, and I think this might be the best change we’ve made so far. The upstairs hallway is nice and bright now, and it will end up being a great place to work or read. It’s way better than having another closet.

While the downstairs bedroom is completely done, the upstairs room was in progress today. The ceilings are done, though, and look awesome. The same wood is is on the ceiling here and in the great room. The downstairs bedroom is 12″ log siding on the walls and beadboard on the ceiling.

the other room that’s done is the “barn door” bedroom.

The living room progress is visible from this room also. You can see the 12″ log siding on the back wall and 8″ wood on the ceiling. The vertical wood will run all the way up the left wall. This is the same as what’s in the hallway, so there’s consistency along the inside walls.

The other half of the living room is even further along. All that’s left over here is the stone fireplace!

Tim was making cuts in the living room based on the measurements called down by his two sons. Then, he’d pitch the boards up and they’d put them in place. They were working on the two upstairs bedroom closets this afternoon, which looked like the most tedious part of this stage. I think the progress is a lot quicker and easier when they’re just throwing down lengths of 12″ siding!

There were some big visual changes this week as the interior finishing got underway. The first sign of action is the piles of materials around the house.

Cedar shakes for the exterior.

Piles of T&G for the inside.

Trucks of 1×12!

The kitchen, coat closet, hall, and about 2/3 of the the living room are completed already.

Another big change is apparent as soon you walk in the front door. There’s a hole in the back of the house! Shortly, that hole will be filled with another set of french doors. French doors to nowhere, you ask? No, french doors to the new deck! 

The new deck wraps around from the back of the house to the porch, so now you can walk around the outside of the house form the front door to the new back door. It was a nearly universal question from everyone that visited the house: “why isn’t there a deck off of the porch?” Our rationale was that we could have a better view from inside of the house, and from the porch, if there was not a deck. With the deck built, you can not see the river from the porch because the deck is directly in the line of sight. I’m fully expecting someone to say, “I can’t see the river from the porch”, but hopefully the ability to walk out the back of the house onto the deck will offset that.

We also trekked down to the river, which was a bit perilous. We have not walked down recently, and the fresh leaves turned the hill into a slip and slide. We had quite a crew on hand today, including many of Rocky’s favorite people. He was a little bit jealous of the big sticks everyone picked up to walk down the hill with!

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Rocky, Brittany, Mom & Dad Katz, Alyssa, and Josh plotting where to put a firepit and beach chairs.

With the roof complete, and all of the wood on its way up, we’re approaching a large purchase of interior and exterior stain.

We’ll have one color for the exterior log and a trim color. The gutters are going to be black. We picked up samples of the leading contenders to see how they look on the wood.

The grey on top of these pictures is a piece of the roof. It varies from light grey to dark grey depending on the light and if’s wet or dry. The main outside stain would be chestnut, which is dark brown. It looks darker in this picture than it does in the catalog, and the catalog looks darker than the sample they had. We’re expecting it will be a lighter when we try it out.

The trim will be darker, although once again, not quite as dark as this picture. It will fall somewhere between the chestnut above and the black gutters. There’s not a lot of trim, but in combination with the gutters, should be a good offset to all of the lighter wood.

We also made the decision to eliminate the remaining sheetrock from the plan. Originally, there was going to be sheetrock in the two main bedrooms, the upstairs hallway, and the bathrooms. After looking at what else is being built in this price range, I convinced myself that it was worth the extra money to go with an all-wood interior.

I personally like this better than having a tiny amount of sheetrock, though we’ll have to use some different stains and wood patterns to make sure that it’s not overwhelming. The idea of having 3 sheetrock walls in 2 of the bedrooms didn’t seem right to me, so I think I’ll be a lot happier with the end product.

Roof and insulation are done. We picked colors for the outside wood stain and trim, which I’ll show later.

I forgot to take pictures of the inside. It looks the same, but is much quieter with the insulation.

The roof looks great! All of the exterior work will be happening this week, including the new deck.

The view from the deck is pretty nice in the morning:

The view from inside the house is even better. They took out 2 trees, which opened up the view a little bit more.

We’re getting a bit of a deluge this weekend, so progress outside of the house is paused. The upside of all of the water is that the river is twice as wide as it normally is, so it’s more visible. It’s also good to see the driveway holding up nicely.

The porch roof and a good portion of the house roof are on. The roof appears to be mood changing, as it looks like a different color depending on the angle. I’m assuming that the rain had some impact, causing the roof to be more reflective than normal, and it’s reflecting those ugly grey things that are up in the sky dropping water on us. I think those come from Pittsburgh. Here we call them “clouds”, even though up there its just called “sky”. In the sun, up close, or dry, the roof appears much darker.

I actually was glad it was raining because that meant I could definitively answer the question you’re all wondering: “Isn’t the metal roof really loud?”. Answer: No.

Don’t ask me to explain that, but I stood on the porch in the pouring rain and the roof didn’t make any noise. I was hoping for some sort of quiet ‘ting ting’, but nope, nothing. The metal that was sitting on the trailer was making noise, though. I could give you a made up answer about roof pitch and the angle of the raindrop, but I’ll let you ponder that one on your own.

Inside, we’ve entered the age of Ben Franklin. The snakes start nice and neat…

Then they head all over the house.   

The kitchen is all set with overhead lights, plugs for the range, microwave, dishwasher, and refrigerator. There’s also a number of plugs for the counter for the coffee maker, crepe maker, toaster, waffle maker, keurig, and whatever else someone could think to put there. If you looked closely or zoomed in really far, you could see the notes on the wall of where everything is going.

No, you’re not going blind. There was really no way you were going to be able to read anything in that picture. It’s there though!

There’s also wiring for smoke detectors.

Of course, the closet-turned-office needed a plug too. I’m glad the electrician thought of this, because I didn’t!

Outside, there’s 2 lights on the porch (one over head, and one next to the doors), and another next to the front door. There’s also a couple of outside outlets, one on the side porch and one on the front porch.

We stopped “downtown” again. It was a little quieter than normal due to the rain and leaf season coming to an end. We finally made it into the L&L Beanery. It’s in an old bank building and was really similar to Iron Bank in Columbus. The one thing that Iron Bank definitely did better was leveraging the giant vault in the middle of the store, which they turned into a conference room with comfy chairs that anyone can use. L&L had some pictures and other miscellaneous stuff for sale in there, but I think it was a missed opportunity. For the record, there is not a Starbucks in Blue Ridge.

The train was parked downtown today, which was unusual. it’s usually away when we’re there, so either it was running late or we were running early. We’ve never ridden the train, although apparently it’s a scenic ride..

In our previous post we mentioned that one of the ideas we’re tossing around is to build a “compound of small (not tiny) houses”. What we’re envisioning is a cluster of 3-6 cabins between 400 and 1000 square feet. Each one would would have a full bathroom, bedroom, and kitchen(ette). They’d be connected by paths, some shared outdoor gathering places, maybe an outdoor fire pit, endless pool, and a pavilion.

We’d build these on a big piece of land so that they’d have total seclusion, and would have some kind of natural element to look at or play with- a great mountain view or a big loud stream possibly.

They’d be rented out individually, or could be rented all together by a bigger group.

With the rest of the land, we’d eventually get some trails put in and link up to anything that’s already existing (so bonus for any land that’s near or adjoining any of the existing trails systems).

In addition to being compact, these cabins would be largely off-the-grid, leveraging solar power and captured water. At least one of the cabins would be accessible, and the other paths and shared areas would be built with this in mind as well.

We looked all around for a place like this for our small (10 people) wedding a few years ago and couldn’t find anything that fit the bill. There was nothing small, modern, and rustic that could accommodate us.

Now what are you envisioning in your head?

We found these cabins, designed by Osburn Clarke of British Columbia. There’s 4 cabins with an identical footprint but slightly different layouts. They’re 100% off the grid. Lighting is provided by solar, water by the rain, and heat by the wood stoves.

They’re not designed for winter living. Instead, the doors and windows can be covered up by the rolling doors. You can see these doors and the tracks in the couple of pictures below.

The same people designed this house with a footprint of only 500 square feet.

There’s also a slew of cool projects designed by Balance Associates. The house linked is bigger than the cabins would be, but at 1600 square feet, it’s not unreasonable. The inside is more modern than what we like, but it’s not too far off.

As we enter the final stages of this house, we’re starting to look at options for the next project. We’re fully prepared for this one not to sell immediately, but we also want to have sifted through some possibilities so that we’re ready to go if it does sell right away.

Going back to the beginning, our original search for a “mountain house” began very small:

That’s 14 Finch Lane, a 1 bedroom, 1 bathroom cabin in Cherry Log Mountain. It was small, simple, and rustic. It also had a noisy little stream in front of it. It’s major downside was that it was on a small lot, and located right off of the main road into Cherry Log Mountain, so there would be noticeable drive by traffic. The other downside was that anyone we talked to said “what if you have friends visiting?” This house didn’t have room for any guests.

The final house that we were this () close to buying was a new construction cabin with 2 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms. This one ticked off all of the boxes except for being secluded. The sellers (Sissons) were willing to sell us the adjoining lot at a decent and fair price, but as you know, that’s not the path we chose. It is still for sale. http://nathanfitts.com/homes-for-sale-details/L-540-CHERRY-LAKE-CHERRY-LOG-GA-30522/236754/260/

The point of this is to highlight that we built way more house than we personally need or want. Even the cherry lake house is bigger than the house we live in now! However, we do like to think that if we were to actually live in, or spend a lot of time in, a house up there, our friends would want to visit us. Maybe we’re delusional.

We’ve come up with a few things that could be the next project, and the list continues to grow. My main criteria are that it has to be at least marginally fun and profitable. We are all ears to ideas or thoughts from anyone, so let us know what you think! Here’s the top of our list right now, not in order:

• Rent out the existing house
  • This will only happen if the house does not sell by late spring/early summer. We do not want to rent this house out, but it would not be a bad problem to have. It would be a positive cash flow every month, but it would also mean that we have both a ton of cash and a mortgage tied up in a rental property, so it’s not the ideal scenario. It would also limit our ability to start another adventure. However, I think Brittany would have a great time furnishing and decorating it to get it ready for rentals. On the downside, we would need to put in a hot tub, which we have vowed to avoid.
• Sell the house and do nothing.
  • If we sell the house and have not found the right next project, we won’t start something new. Yes, “do nothing” actually means “Dave brainstorming, researching, iterating, and building financial models for 100 ideas”, but from an investment standpoint, this would be a break until we hit on an idea we like. This is not a probable scenario.
• Build on lot 12, 14, or another in River Escape
  • This seems like the easiest option. However, I’m not sure we want to build another $300,000 house. I struggle with building something that we (or our friends) wouldn’t or couldn’t buy. Everything else we’ve done personally has been to simplify things (including our phases of “yard simplification” and then “life simplification”), and a 2600 square foot vacation house doesn’t line up with that. The selling process for the existing house will affect this decision. If it sells quickly and for the asking price, it will be a lot harder to pass up the lot next door to do it all again.
• Small (not tiny) house compound
  • Yes, I love this idea. In fact, I love it so much that it’s going to get it’s own post. If this isn’t the next project, it will be a project at some point. I hope you can handle the suspense I just created.
• Bears Den Mountain
  • This will also get it’s own post after we visit the land again this weekend. This is a small tract of land that has already been divided into 5 lots. We considered it before, and it is still on the table. There are a few similar pieces of land that would allow us to do the same thing. We’d be committing to building at least a couple of houses. Ideally, we’d manage to keep things smaller than what we’re doing currently.
• Build OUR house
  • If we were certain of where we wanted to live, we could build a house to actually live in. Unfortunately, we don’t know where that is. We’re lucky in that we have the abilities to make a go of it just about anywhere, but how do you pick out of “everywhere”? The only way I see the next house being one we live in is if we decide to move to Cherry Log/Blue Ridge, but maybe we’ll have a revelation.