JAG Construction is proud to have the opportunity to build a new 2 bedroom house for Jennifer Pickering and Leigh Maher.  Their property sits on a quite hillside just above Lake Eden outside of Black Mountain, NC.  The home was designed by local artist Randy Shull as his first endeavour into new construction design.  The home will feature Semco windows and doors, a custom built front door by La Puerta, and a three panel solar hot water and heat system by Sundance Power Systems. Construction should last through the summer and be completed towards the end of this year.

3/30/09  First floor walls are framed up and it is time to start setting the roof over the main structure.  The scale of the house has really started to become aparent now.  The ceilings at the south side are 14′ tall, and the opening for the doors is 10′ 6″.  Quite a grand feeling.  Hopefully (weather permitting) we will get part of the house dried in this week.  Check out the gallery tab for updated photos.

4/10/09  We’ve been battling the weather for the last few weeks and framing through some pretty soggy days.  The main area of the house is now in the dry and the second floor is built.  Next week should see the second floor walls and roof built and in the dry.

5/27/09  Roofing has been completed.  We used an EPDM membrane over the flat roof.  This is the kind of roof typically seen on commercial structures.  It should keep everything nice and dry.  The mono-pitch portion of the house has a “master-rib” metal roof in galvalume.  This portion of the roof was installed by the JAG construction crew.  The main section of the house is getting cladded in pre-stained cypress siding from Carolina colortones.  The soffits and porch ceilings are a smooth finish with a natural sealer.   The vertical surface are all rough-sawn with a black stain.  the siding on the two story structure is a 12″ LP lap siding (“smartside”).  this portion of the house will be painted red.  All the utilites are getting wrapped up inside the house and we should have a framing inspection by next monday.  The insulation we are using for the roof and floor is “agribalance” by sealection.  Delkote, a subsidiary of Del-Tec homes, is installing the insulation for us.  You can learn more about their product here.  In an effort to save some money, the walls will be insulated with formaldehyde free R-19 fiberglass batts.  I’ve been finding that we build our homes so tight as a standard, that the added bonus of using foam insulation as an air-barrier in the walls becomes unnecessary.  With any luck, we should see drywall going up on the walls late next week.

6/20/09  The drywall is being wrapped up this weekend, and the JAG crew is getting rolling on the vertical siding.  We have completed the decking on the rear of the house.  The material is locust, harvested and milled locally.  Locust is an extremely hard wood known for its rot-resistance.  It is also native to our ecosystem.  We have laid it using a hidden fastner system from Simpson.