OPEN HOUSE
123 Riverbluff Circle
(Google Maps)
Tuesday, May 29, 4-6:30pm
Beer, juice and snacks

We are just finishing up on a great new home for a family in the Riverbluff Community. We would love for you to stop by to check it out before we pass it on to the new owners.

Parking is very limited! Please respect neighbors. If you can, walk, bike, carpool or park by the concrete wall at the entrance to Riverbluff. Otherwise, the cul de sac is fine. Young ones encouraged.

Did I mention free beer?

We just installed the plywood wall panels in the double height foyer of our latest Riverbluff home.  Routed into the panels is a subtle map of Charlottesville.

Our client, and soon to be new homeowner in 3 weeks time, came up with this great idea as a fun and tactile way to welcome people into the home.  We painted red dowels to represent various points of interest, including the location of the house and the local elementary school among others.  Since the main living space is on the 2nd floor, it’s great to give reason for visitors to pause in the voluminous, glass filled entry before heading up the stairs.

Well, we always tell people that we only build houses in the City of Charlottesville.  But, I guess there is always an exception to the rule.

We are under roof on our latest and beginning to work our way around installing the rigid insulation to the exterior, windows, doors and hardie panel siding.   I guess we justify venturing past city limits by the fact that that we are under five miles from downtown and Tom is already biking to work.

But, the real reason has to be hitting it off with our clients from the get go. They have a son about the same age as Eleanor and we’ve spent the last year leading up to the build having various budgeting and design meetings while having our kids run all over the place.

One thing our clients did from the get go is bring the energy consulting firm Think Little into the process.  Working with Think Little, we ran all sorts of energy models based on different types of windows, wall sections, and insulation such that our clients could make an informed decision on payback when having to select these various components as well as the size of their overall mortgage.  We also had them independently design our hvac system, which I hope to get to more in a later post.

This should keep us rolling through the summer before breaking ground on our next spec house this fall.

I’m excited to say that I will be participating in one of the Tom Tom Festival’s Innovation panels. Next Wednesday, April 25, 7pm, at the Gleason, is the “Sustainable Design” panel, which will “focus on local innovations in sustainable design and product development, revealing the successes and barriers to increasing sustainable practices in our community.” Please come out and support innovation in the Charlottesville community.

Panelists:

Oliver Kutner, CEO and Founder of Edison2
Joey Conover, CFO of Latitude 38, LEED Professional
Andrew Greene, Sustainability Planner at the University of Virginia
Teri Kent, Founder of Better World Betty and the Better Business Challenge

This Saturday we got to enjoy the exceptional weather of the last day of March at Devin and Justine’s wedding party at the beautiful Rosebrook Inn in Madison County. They had a nice ritual of combining water from Justine’s family’s farm in White Hall with water from Devin’s grandparents’ farm in North Carolina. Now they are one! In the words of Justine:

“First semester in college, I joined the Women’s Ultimate team. It was here that I met Devin. Over the course of the semester we became friends and that winter we spent many hours completing a puzzle together. I knew then that he was one of a kind and that I was the luckiest girl in the world to have him like me.”

We feel the same.

In fact, we are sort of torn about potentially building another house up there this fall.  On the one hand, I think residents would love to have one more house complete up there, but on the other hand, they could probably use a break from circ saws, wtju blasting out of the jobsite radio and clogged parking.

Here’s a few updated pictures of what we’ve been up to on our latest house at Riverbluff Circle. On the exterior, we installed all the cypress siding, which really warms up the exterior and helps the windows in the two story atrium to pop.

On the interior, we’ve been busy installing all the hardwood floors, the plywood mosaic accent walls and various trim. My pictures are a little crude and don’t do justice to the 2nd floor, which is this great light filled open plan with the living room and dining in one large open zone and the kitchen and sitting area in the other.

The two areas are divided by the stairwell and the large atrium area that looks down on the ground floor. Since the main common living area is up a flight, it’s great to have this much needed open connection to the main floor. We also clad the ceiling of the atrium in the same cypress as the exterior to both bring the outside in and to highlight the specialness of the front entry.

The house recently went under contract without getting a chance to formally list on the MLS, so we’ve got an eager and excited family that’s not allowing us to slack off too much.

Sandwiched right between the Golden Globes, the Grammys and the Oscars is another momentous and glamorous event:  The Charlottesville Planning Commission Awards.  This past Tuesday, taking home the award for the Best Sustainable Development of was none other than Latitude 38.  Or, so we think.

The Planning Commission was really kind in their introduction of Latitude 38 except that they singled out our house Passive House on Lankford Avenue. Only problem, we didn’t build that house.  Bill Jobes did.  Whether they meant to give us the award or we were confused with Bill Jobes, we take it as a compliment.

In all serioiusness, we are tickled by the recognition.  While we are still a pretty small building and development company, we stand committed to infill development in the city and hope to graduate to larger scale projects.  It’s nice to see that people are starting to see our houses around town.

For some reason, if you want to see the glitz of the red carpet, check out the video here.  (Just scroll ahead to the 22 minute mark)  I find it a little rude that the Orchestra cut in the middle of Joey’s acceptance speech.  I mean, she teared up and had a lot of people to thank, but whatya gonna do.

By the end of the first hole Devin alone was on the green. Tommy was so deep in the rough that only his tam o’shanter was visible through the rhododendrons. Jeff Senior’s drive had landed him ankle deep in a leech pit; while Jeff Junior hung from a pine bough with his errant disc just out of reach. And Felipe the dog-yoked to the beer cooler and blocking the fairway-refused, as usual, to do anything.

So established, this Montesorri school-picnic atmosphere lingered through the round and reached an apex on the final hole when a freak breeze carried two of our disks over the park’s reservoir, where they landed with a splash next to the ominously roaring dam intake. Jeff Senior, Tommy, Bryce and Devin responded nobly-by turning their backs on the lake to haggle over the scorecard. Meanwhile, Jeff Junior, Tom and Felipe found themselves inexplicably in the icy water and swirling towards imminent conversion to hydropower-all in a daft attempt to resuce $4.95 worth of frisbee.

Safely ashore and the final score was revealed, with Devin taking the round. Costume honors for the day went to Bryce and his Saint Andrews-meets-Salvation Army affair, assembled entirely from the women’s clearance bin. Despite Bryce’s outfit it was the perfect carnival procession: Under the sun, with friends, and sixteen beers deep before the noon whistle.

- Tom Hughes

Another adventure is in the books. It will probably be a week or so until Mr. Hughes spins today’s adventure into golden prose, so I figure I’d throw up a photo to build up the anticipation.