THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, February 10, 1996 TAG: 9602080284
SECTION: REAL ESTATE WEEKLY PAGE: 32 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: About the Outer Banks
SOURCE: Chris Kidder
LENGTH: Long : 101 lines
I've decided that building a house is one of those love-hate things: It brings weeks of emotional highs and lows as the work - and my money - ebb and flow.
But I have enough inner turmoil; I prefer the rest of my life to be, well, dull. Until the house is finished, I'm having to settle for something more.
I love going out to the house on the busy days. When a dozen workers are crawling all over the house, their boom boxes blasting Gloria Estefan over the sawing and hammering, I can see and touch the progress.
But walking through the house when the workers aren't there is like walking through ruins. The house has no soul of its own yet.
I'm waiting for the day I walk into the house and find it has become a home. A collaborative creation. My ideas for comfortable living transformed by the hard work of many craftsmen from a set of two-dimensional drawings into my house.
From the outset of this project I wanted to be involved in every decision. Now I have to admit that the novelty in that level of involvement has worn thin. Having made decisions about everything from the roof shingles to the kitchen faucet, I find that I don't really care where the electrical outlets in the garage are as long as they're there.
Last week, my builder told me to mark the location of towel racks in my bathrooms. He wanted to put solid wood blocking into the walls before the dry wall was installed.
(Anyone who's ever had towel racks barely hang on the wall because screws have stripped the gypsum board will recognize that this is a wonderfully wise thing to do.)
But I wasn't prepared to stand in an empty room of two-by-fours and decide where towels should hang. So my builder gave the future racks his best shot. When I finally decide where to put the hardware, I'll hope there's solid wood behind it.
For those of you who've followed my columns about the house, you know that I struggled with the size and placement of my windows. Those proved to be the hardest decisions I had to make.
All the windows were installed weeks ago except for three special orders: two half-round windows for the great room and kitchen and a circle window for a hallway outside my office.
These three windows were being manufactured in Pennsylvania when January's blizzard hit. The distributed blamed delays on the weather. When the windows were finally finished, the region was hit with severe flooding. We were told my windows were lost.
I suppose they were misplaced in a warehouse shuffle as the manufacturer tried to get its inventory out of the way of rising water.
I prefer to think that they were carried off by flood waters down the Susquehanna River. And that when they ran gently aground, (intact, of course) they were found by folks who thought the windows were so swell that they immediately planned a home improvement to put them to good use.
The missing windows were installed the same day they arrived last week, allowing the siding crew to finish their work and the insulation installers to start theirs.
The windows, by the way, are not Andersen Windows, the windows used in more than 90 percent of all new homes built on the Outer Banks. It's not that there's anything wrong with Andersen Windows; there isn't. Even their competitors have good things to say about them.
Andersen, the nation's largest manufacturer of windows, has been in business for almost 100 years. They can't be beat for distribution, performance and warranties, says Bill Winstead, manager of Burton Window, the local distributor. ``Andersen Windows hold up better in this environment. The company always stands behind their product.''
Andersen has been an industry leader in energy efficiency and high performance. There's no question about that.
But I love an underdog. I went with a not-so-advertised (and not so expensive), all-vinyl top of the line, tilt-out, single hung window with low-e glass made by Andersen's closest competitor.
I had read good things about the performance of all-vinyl windows, a style that Andersen doesn't currently sell. All-vinyl windows should be impervious to salt and moisture; that gave them two gold stars in my book. Even Winstead admits that all-vinyl ``has taken off like a shot'' in terms of market acceptance.
They're good windows. I open and close at least one every time I visit the house. They work as smoothly on cold, rainy days as they do on warm, dry ones. I tilt the bottom panes out and marvel at the convenience. I like them a lot.
The three-foot, half-round window in the kitchen looks great from the inside. On the outside, it crowds the front-porch roof a bit too much. If I had gotten around to adding the front porch to my cardboard model of the house, I might have discovered this when I still had the opportunity to change it.
The circle window in the hall was an inspiration (the house designer's, not mine - I merely had the good sense to approve it) that perks up a plain front facade and pours afternoon light, filtered through tall pines, into my office.
The six-foot, half-round window that tops three long windows overlooking the forest in our backyard is a wonderful addition. I will love curling up in a chair with a good book next to this wall of glass. I've decided that already. MEMO: Send comments and questions to Chris Kidder at P.O. Box 10, Nags Head,
N.C. 27959. Or e-mail her at realkidd(AT)aol.com
by CNB