I hate to be dumber than a Duck

Robbie said:

This earns my vote for most epic build thread not in the build thread section.

PS, frenchy figured out how to post pics, so now we're all screwed!

I figure since it’s not automotive related it really shouldn’t be in the build section. 

STUNNING!

frenchyd said:

Looking into the billiard room from the bridge over the Kitchen

I need to let this sink in. You have a bridge. Over your kitchen!?!

GORGEOUS, 

Finish Timing sounds right.

In reply to Ovid_and_Flem :

Numbers. 

I bought my first house on the lake for $27,800 I had to borrow $50 from the realtor for earnest money .GI bill nothing down.  Sold it for more than 3 times purchase price ($99,000) 9 years later. 

Bought this place as a tear down  for$107,000   But ran afoul of the city planning director who had been the other bidder on the property. He told me in no uncertain terms I would never get a building permit. 

A decade later I ran for Mayor, I lost but that scared the council into granting me a permit.  So far I have a little over 31,000 man hours  in this place. Since a new home typically takes 2500-3000 man hours to build from scratch  it’s easy to see why this place won’t be replicated.  Mind you I had free use of any piece of construction equipment. From new cranes to forklifts and any Ariel equipment I wanted. 

The house is 5500 sq ft.  Three stories plus about 900 sq ft loft space. 

I started on the actual house in 2000 but I had been buying Timbers and boards since 1998. In the end I wound up buying over 50,000 board feet of hardwood and the total I paid for it was just over $25,000.  Typical lumberyard bill for that much hardwood would be well in excess of $500,000  Nope,  I didn’t  get anything mixed up. Black walnut which sells for around $10.00 a bd ft  cost me 17 cents a bd ft. White Oak is around $8.00 a bd ft  cost me 40 cents. Yes, there is that much markup in wood!  

A lot of wood like Hackberry, Elm, Tamarack, etc I bought at pallet wood prices. Around 10 cents. Plus I could select whatever logs I wanted, In  fact the main Timbers I went to the farm and selected the trees myself.  They were sustainably harvested. That is only the mature trees were cut down and they took great care that they fell without damaging other, younger trees. 

A lot of my Timbers are old growth. Some were growing before America existed.  

I scrounged up a lot of other spectacular deals for this house. I bought a pallet of copper to make flashing etc. out of from a scrap metal dealer. It had been taking up spaces for a couple of decades and he was thrilled to get $200. I saved the scraps and pieces I trimmed and at the height of the copper market sold  156 pounds of  scrap for more than I paid for the whole pallet.  

There are a lot of stained glass windows in the house. Most came from a buyer in England but apparently he lost his shirt because I paid less for stained glass than  I could buy plain glass for.  I’ll take some pictures tonight.  The most I paid for two big windows was $70. A lot of windows were only $20-30 each. 

In reply to frenchyd :

The office from the great room 

In reply to frenchyd : Grand kids gotta have fun. 6-7-8 kids climbing on, jumping on, Jumping off!  

That’s something else. Nice place. 

Epic build thread - your house is gorgeous!

In reply to frenchyd :office#1

In reply to frenchyd :Office#2 

joey48442 said:

I need to let this sink in. You have a bridge. Over your kitchen!?!

Of course he does.  How else would he get to the billiard room?

Frenchy.  The house is gorgeous!  Thanks for posting the pictures.  I'm looking forward to seeing the shop when you get that cleaned up as well.

In reply to APEowner :

Yes you walk through the tower and then onto the bridge. Oh didn’t I mention I have a tower?  Yes it starts on the third floor and goes up. I built it so I could turn it into a light house but haven’t found a good deal on a rotating beacon. 

You see the tower sorta leads to every place else.  You can go into the office or the Portico room from the tower or climb the ladder and go up to the circular walkway leading to the loft.  

And of course the bridge. 

The cool part of the tower is when it’s finished you can see the stained glass windows from below in the great room.  Oh, and the light house.  The light house tower is about 40 feet above the first floor.  

I’m really glad you learned to post photos and that some of the people who were dicks have realized you’re eccentric and enthusiastic. Your labor of love is terrific. 

OHSCrifle said:

I’m really glad you learned to post photos and that some of the people who were dicks have realized you’re eccentric and enthusiastic. Your labor of love is terrific. 

I’ll next try to post pictures of some of my cars. Trouble is they mostly precede smart phones with camera’s. 

There are floating around on the web someplace pictures of the Black Jack special.  But the real appreciation for the effort and results are best seen in the Packard Museum where it wound up at.