gnortonhouse

Well finally the Coquina rock is put down. There was a total of 9 truck loads. I'm not sure how many cubic yards of rock were in each truckload. But a lot. The beginning of the drive. A nice picture of the curvy driveway. And the driveway opens up to where the house will be. This was done on Friday the 11th of May. The rest of the clearing was suppose to happen this past Thursday and Friday but Florida has been hammered with relentless rains due to a low sitting just off the west coast. So no work has been done. But I am glad this was done before the rain. Its probably very settled by now!

Well its time to put the driveway in. I met with Tim, Keith, and the person that we thought was going to clear the property and build the driveway back in March. Well, when we received the bid lets say we were all in shock. So Tim started looking for alternatives. And he was successful! He found this company that could just mulch every tree and bush on the property and do it quickly. We thought we were set. Then no contact, nothing. Now we couldn't delay because we had already placed the order for the floor joists. We placed them in advance because of the required lead time. There's a building boom in Florida such that the east coast suppliers are doing jobs for the west coat builders because the west coast suppliers can't meet the demand! Which means my little job doesn't mean a lot to them. So we are trying to get things going the best we can. So Tim found another company to root rake (remove any plant/tree parts from the driveway) the driveway and to pull up the tree...

Ever since I purchased the property all I had was the plot of land with an identification number. And finally I was issued an address. 13185 S Indian River Drive Jensen Beach, FL. 34957 First time since 2000 that my address will be for my house. I'm so excited. Its really going to happen! And guess what else, the construction sign went up!   Very cool! I guess people will know who I am now. :-)

Here are some 3D renderings of the house. Pretty cool. I can't wait to actually see this in person!  Birds eye view. North East View South East View North West View South West View  Interior View (from the kitchen area) View from Loft The following are renderings for the kitchen. What's missing is the hood over the stove. I realized that even though I don't cook now, I will when I get to the house since I won't be across the street from a grocery store! The stove looks like electric but it will actually be gas. This is kitchen only and not any of the house.

After the tortoises were removed the black silt fence had to be installed in order to isolate the construction area. That is to prevent the tortoises from entering the building area. Here are a few pictures. I had a video but I think the file was too large and it just wouldn't work. I'll keep trying. Tim and his crew did a great job of getting the fence up quickly. Apparently every build site has to have the construction area bound by the black silt fence. And this is inspected before you are issued the permit to clear and to build. Keith told me that he's doing a commercial job down south and even though its in the city and surrounded by a chain link fence, on the interior of the chain link fence they had to install the black silt fence. Building code. Sigh. Beginning of driveway Continuation of driveway  Still more driveway  The driveway is a little over 270 feet long. The red flag marks the North Eastern edge of the porch.  Lookin...

So its now October of 2017. I have contacted Keith and asked him for a bid on building the house. His response was totally different than builder number three. I emailed the bid set of plans to builder number three and never received an answer. Keith on the other hand apologized when it was taking him longer than expected to get numbers from his subs. He was in nearly daily contact with me. I was getting a good vibe from him. Now remember I'm in NOLA and he's in Florida. I've never seen him. But we're working well together long distance. I was really pleased. He would tell me what information was needed in order to move forward. We needed a site plan so that we could deal with the tortoises and so he could submit for the building permit. So now was the time to get moving on this part of the project. I had been in contact with Drew Gatewood since August of 2017 concerning the tortoise issue. We stayed in contact but he couldn't do anything until I had a builder in p...

In 2016 I decided it was time to start looking for either a builder or perhaps a company that provides a modular or pre-built home. I knew the type of home I wanted and below is an example. Its a pole house. The poles are buried about five to six feet, massive girders are attached to them the floor trusses are attached to the girders. The poles actually go through the house. Then the roof girders are attached to the top of the poles and the roof trusses are attached to the girders. There are no load bearing walls. To me this was a perfect type of house to have built here. And its so unique. And there is a wrap around porch. So as I was investigating these pole houses, there used to be a company that sold kits. That is, they supplied the poles, fasteners, everything you needed to have the house dried in. Ok I'm thinking this is great, just what I'm looking for. Now all I need is to find a builder to take on the project. Well this particular company went out of busines...