Beginning Construction on Our New Garden Home

It’s about time! 5 years ago we bought a piece of land only 10 minutes away from where we’ve lived since 2007. We intended to start building the house soon after that but so many things happened that building a home just continued to get postponed. Job changes, life changes, society changes (COVID 19), and quite a few things have pushed construction all they way until now. This week work began on our 7.26 acre parcel of raw land to get it ready to build our custom home.

I know, this a website about gardening not home building, but since this really does effect everything we do in the garden I thought I would share the process with you. This property will be our new “garden home” so to speak. We’ll have to landscape the house areas as well as create an entirely new garden. Many of the plants we have grown over the years will be able to be transplanted into new locations. It’s also an opportunity to try new things and maybe grow the garden a little bit better after all the experiences we’ve had.

And hey, if you are a home and garden company and would like to sponsor something for building the house, I’m all ears!

The First Steps to Building Our House: Waterline and Driveway

Installing a waterline is not normally the first step to build a house. Often it’s already installed at the street and a temporary line can be put in to provide water for construction. Our case is a little different because our driveway is over 1,000 ft long. That’s way too far to hook up a temporary hose. Instead we decided to go ahead and push a water line up the hill and install a frost free spigot for the vegetable garden, I mean for construction. Later it will be for the vegetable garden. For now we have located where the spigot needs to be so we’ll have convenient access when the garden starts going in next year.

The water line trench had to be dug to 18 inches deep. We were fortunately that very little rock was found until we got close to the building site. Several large builders were buried under the ground close to the top of the driveway area. Our builder elected to wait on renting the ram hoe to bust the rocks until he started on the foundation of the house since he suspected we will need it for both areas. It’s cheaper to rent the ram how 1 time than it is 2 times.

The Driveway

Next came the driveway installation. One of the requirements for getting a building permit is having a driveway permit with the county. We were hoping that we could forego this step since we already had a culvert installed and the county roads guy said if we cleaned it up and it was in good shape he would allow it. Well…that culvert was 12 inches vs the 18 inch types they use today and was completely clogged. In the end we put in an entirely new culvert that in fact was much longer and made a better driveway access area. It cost more money but the end result will be a better driveway.

Next the excavator began to clear the top couple of inches of the driveway to create a good bed for the gravel. Many years ago previous owner had put in a driveway with gravel but it gradually had been covered up by growing grass and vegetation. The compacted layer was still good though and should make for a nice solid drive up out hill.

Our Floor Plan – Ansley Park

We picked out a floor plan a few months ago that works for us. Originally I planned on designing it ourselves from scratch and eventually had floor plans made from it. The plan came out way to large and expensive for what we wanted. We went back to the drawing board and found a Southern Living Floor Plan called Ansley Park. We purchased a version that we could have edited and sent it to a draftsman for some adjustments.

The upstairs bedroom layout wasn’t how we wanted it so we changed it to create a better bathroom situation for our 5 kids. The entire front elevation was adapted to add two gables to the front of the home. We also floored the area above the great room to create a bonus space and left the great room with a 10ft ceiling. I’ve always found that vaulted ceiling areas are difficult to heat and cool. A 10ft ceiling will be much more manageable and efficient. We also made some adjustments to the laundry room and garage. We can go over those later!

We’re intending to do a brick exterior on this house. I like the Farmhouse siding trends in the new construction today but just feel like it’s beginning to be overdone. Brick is timeless and classic and we figured we can’t go wrong by picking brick for the majority of the home.

Next Steps in Construction

Our next step will be to get the official building permit. We have all of our ducks in a row now with the plat plan, septic permit, road permit, floor plan, and a water connection so this should be a simple matter of paying the fees.

After the permit is in hand our builder can start digging the foundation. I think we will run into a good deal of rock when they begin digging. The rock may slow things a little at least we’ll end up with some rocks for landscaping!

Our builder is someone I’ve known and worked with for several years. His company is called Prominence Building Corporation. I run his real estate sales and help procure lots for him to build on. If you are looking to build in Columbia, Spring Hill, or Thompson’s Station TN check out his work or follow along on Growing The Home Garden and see what we put together here!