It’s not every day in Bluffton, South Carolina that we are plunged into record-setting cold. Winter Storm Elliot showed up uninvited to the 2022 holidays at a time that left many in the lowcountry unprepared. For those of you that were celebrating at home, but away from your 2nd home investment property, or traveling and simply away during the holidays, did you have anyone who could check on your house during the unexpected deep freeze? When you own investment property, particularly located some distance from your primary residence, it’s crucial to have someone reliable and trustworthy to man ..read more

Our existence seems to be a series of silos, each representing a chapter of activities. In our 12 years in Charleston, SC, my silo was property development and construction, with the two going hand in hand. Around 40 historic renovations with a “Whitelaw Award for Preservation” from the Historic Charleston Foundation along the way. Fifteen new builds around town and Folly Beach, and 50 individual workforce homes on the peninsula at Union Heights. More recently, we moved our family to Palmetto Bluff, SC, where we also have built four custom homes and have a handful of renovations underway. Tim ..read more

We just completed the final photography of our modern-style Barn build project. This salient marks the completion of a project; the pressure is off and the flywheel of work is slowing. Now is the time for reflection on just what it takes to bring a project such as this to fruition, and a chance for us to share with others the caliber of what our team can achieve. Exterior View of The Barn at May River There is a realization some may say, that “hope and reality are not great bedfellows.” Our eyes see the construction completed and the debris removed. Events such as final paint completed, floor ..read more

We started building our Barn project in September of 2021, pouring rain with our Bobcat stuck in the mud more than once. Some say that life flows in circles. We will wind down this construction project in Palmetto Bluff, see it launched into our vacation rental portfolio, and move our teams on to completing the final two that we have underway. So a quick review of the project and how it went. First, the theme was that we would design and build a “Barn” to complement the theme of “a lowcountry farmhouse” started with our initial construction project completed at 454 Old Landing Road, contiguou ..read more

Palmetto Bluff is a beautiful place but also a remote location for a second home. Since it is both considered to be one of the premiere private resort communities in the Southeast, and is set among some of the most breathtaking landscape along the May River in Bluffton, SC it’s an easy choice as a second home destination. After building our own full-time residence, and with three additional investment properties currently underway here, we honestly can’t imagine living anywhere else. But, for those who own a second home here, who looks after it when you’re away? When you decide to travel and ..read more

We have many new build construction projects coming out of the ground in Palmetto Bluff, the private, upscale resort community located roughly 90 miles south of Charleston in Bluffton, SC. In this region of the coastal South Carolina lowcountry, nearly every home has white shiplap siding, though a few bold colors recently appeared as builders and owners alike tire of the “sameness” of it all. When making design decisions for our own building projects, our company motto, “dare to be different,” is not often far from our minds. With a desire to be “bold” for one project in particular, a modern ..read more

Anyone who has driven the roads and lanes of Palmetto Bluff, the private resort community located in Bluffton SC, will be conscious of the volume of building underway. We have various projects coming out of the ground here ourselves and know this to be a predictable process. First, trees come down; the wood goes to the paper mill, infrastructure created, roads, grading, lakes (borrow pits) and utilities. Then the lots are platted and sold down. They are staked, plans are drawn up and permitted, we clear land, organic top-cover removed, padded, and construction begins. In between these two sta ..read more

A custom home is not cookie cutter. The design and build process reflects the vision of the architect, the builder, and most importantly, you, the owner. As custom homebuilders in Palmetto Bluff SC and, in this case acting as the builder of our own project on a riverfront lot in the Moreland Village neighborhood, we decided to have some fun and create a home that would cash flow as a vacation rental and stand apart from the southern, low-country style homes typified in this area. The design of our adjacent home, The May River House, reflects a Lowcountry farmhouse. In general, farmhouses typi ..read more

Sometimes luck shines her peculiar gaze upon us. Such was a chance conversation we had with one of our contractors last week.  They were working in Beaufort renovating an 1832 historic home on the river. The owner had required the removal of old rough-sawn pine paneling so the walls could be better insulated and the interior replaced with sheetrock.  We advised against the sheetrock, but they went ahead anyway. This pine cladding was unusual stuff.  It was pristine wide-planked heart pine, apart from the nail holes and a coating of milk paint. Resinous, heavy, old, slow-growth ..read more

Our footings passed inspection, rebar constructed, concrete poured and ready for the block walls.  So just what jobs can go forward at this stage beyond the obvious? Firstly let’s look into a bit of housekeeping. We have a few. In case any reader missed the fact, it does rain here in Biblical proportions. Last week we received some 8 inches of rain over two days. Heavy enough one night to wake the household.  In clearing and padding the site, before installing the foundation, we wrecked the existing drainage.  The permitted drawings call for sheet flow drainage away from t ..read more