What's Nearby: Tryon

One of the local mountain towns near our property is Tryon, NC. To see how far away it is, how long it takes to get there, and exactly where it is in North Carolina, Click here. Tryon is where Maya will be taking weekly homeschool classes through the Foothills Educational Co-op.

Defining the Property

Click here for a full gallery of more photos of the property taken over this Summer. Click here for a link to the interactive Google Maps satellite overview of the property. Note: The address is not final, but only an approximation. The arrow on the map shows where the mailbox on Collinsville Road might be. We're also including a Google Maps aerial view with the property lines highlighted:

Update from N.U.

Just heard back from New Urbanist:

I had a chance to review the changes that you made to the plans. I can tell that you guys have put a lot of thought into the plans. I think that they look great. There is very little that I would change. The price for the plans would be as follows. $1,895 for the base plans, $25 for shipping and handling, and $350 dollars for the changes and the addition of the attached garage. So the total would be $2270.00. We would require half of the total prior to starting then the other half would be due upon shipment of the final construction drawings. We can be paid with a credit card (preferred) or check. The plans would include two sets of construction drawings including a basic electrical plan, foundation and floor plans, and elevations. I look forward to hearing from you. Thank you for your time and interest, and I hope that we have the opportunity to work together. Let me know if you have any questions or comments. Thanks again Thomas

Sounds good! We just need to verify the size of the garage, ceiling height and a few other minor things.

New Urbanist Homes

We made contact with an architectural firm called New Urbanist Homes and have submitted our request for modifications to one of their 2662 sq ft home plans. Chances are that they can make the changes faster and cheaper than another architect or builder. Local covenants prohibit us from building anything smaller than 2500 heated square feet (this is primarily to prevent people from living in trailers and such).

First Look

Here's some photos of the property where we now plan to build. It's fenced rolling pasture up front (toward Collinsville Road), bordered by trees on 3 sides. There's a spring-fed creek and bottomland, but also a lot of open meadow.

Custom Floorplan Too Expensive

While ideal, the concept of having a custom floorplan/design drafted up for us is just going to cost too much. The idea was that we could take an existing plan and have an architect modify it for us. Apparently there are some legal issues and the architect we wanted to use would have to redraw the plans from scratch at the cost of about $8,000-$11,000. We'd rather put that money towards actual construction, even if the plan is an "off the shelf" layout.