Gaines Project - Design/Build 2003

Project description

The Gaines project was an interesting site to build on, probably the most difficult to date. The house was a plan that I designed for another project and then I made minor revisions for the Gaines family. Mr. Gaines wanted to do some work on the house himself so we left the basement level unfinished and he finished it over the course of his many visits to the mountains with his family. It also saved him some money, doing the work himself.

What made this project difficult?

The difficulties might seem somewhat obvious, the site. The problems were two fold the extreme slope of the grade and the amount of rock, both permanent and rock that had rolled down the hill from blasting the road in above the house site. The rocks that rolled down the hill needed to be jack hammered away so that we could set the house footers on stable ground. It was a long hard job.

Because of the steep slope the back deck posting and support required an engineer's detail. I think we could have built a bridge across the lake with the type of support system we built for that deck.