HPG-1504M-1: The Hickory Ridge

We had been planning to build our dream home for years, and property on which to build it became available to us in 2010.

Our favorite features of the home are threefold: The colonial style; the large open greatroom/dining/kitchen in the middle; with bedrooms to the 4 corners (3 bedroom plus flex).

We contracted the exterior ourselves, using sub-contractors who we know. Once the "outer shell" of the home was finished, my wife and I took over. My father was a contractor, so I had been exposed to pretty much every area of construction.

We knew it would be slow process, as we would have to learn a lot, and only have an hour or two a day after work and on weekends to put toward it.

So far, I have framed in the upstairs bonus room (we used pre-fab trusses instead of stick built, so work was to be done), and finished the staircase and stairwell.

I have completed wiring the entire house for electricity, telephone, computer hookups, and satellite/cable, using one end of the front secondary bedroom's closet as control center.

We have laid the hearth and installed the woodburning stove and drywalled the living room and both front bedrooms.

That is where we are... 14 months after taking over from the contractors. We hope to be complete and moved in by Christmas 2012. We'll update you then.

We absolutely adore this plan, and did whatever it took to keep true to the artist's conception drawing that came with it.

Thanks House Plan Gallery for the beautiful (and well-detailed) home design. Its truly our dream home!

We were planning to add to our family, and our current 3 bedroom home was already extremely cramped.

We decided on plan HPG-1992-1 because we loved the different pitches in the roof and the open flow the plan offered, as well as the bonus room which makes a great bedroom and full bath for our teenage daughter.

The land was in the process of being cleared when we found out that we were expecting daughter #3. We broke ground on our new home July 28 2010 and with an awesome contractor we were able to move in the week after Thanksgiving.

We had just enough time to settle in to our new home, which we absolutely love, before we welcomed our youngest daughter into the family on February 11, 2011.

I have always heard if a marriage can survive building a house, it can surive anything... well my husband will tell you that we not only survived building a house, but building a house while pregnant; now that is a great accomplishment!

Thank you so much for providing a wonderful plan for our new home.

My wife and I were married in 1993. Our dream and goal in life was to build our own home. We purchased a 800 square foot home in 1993 and we lived there until 1997 when we sold it and purchased a 1300 square foot home, which was 3 bedrooms and 1.5 baths.

We started our family in that home, with our dream that one day we would build our dream home.

We quickly outgrew this home with the addition of two children, and in 2005, we purchased our lot to build our home, and in 2006, we started looking at house plans. We were looking for house plan that was not "cut up", had plenty of room with no wasted space, and look great.

Everyday when I would come home from work, my wife would show me some house plans (now, I have extensive constrution experience and I am the director of a building inspections department).

I would tell her "no"... "that roof is to cut up" or "that house is to cut up", or "its not practical, and it will cost alot more to build".

Then I come home one day in 2007 and she said she had found the right house plan. When she showed me this HPG-1635-1 house plan, we immediately fell in love with the way it looked, the overall design of it, the layout and so much more.

Also, when I started looking at the roof line and the corners, I could not believe how simple this house plan was to build! It just made so much sense and there was not one square foot of wasted space.

We had literally looked at a thousand house plans and they did not even come close to this home. We truly built our dream home.

We have a video of this home posted on your site that we did for you guys last year, and finished out the interior with very high-end materials including using 4.25 inch hard woods throughout, rock corner fire place, 7.5 inch four piece crown throughout the downstairs, travertine on the bath room floors, oil-rub bronze faucets, door knobs, shower doors, thresholds and hinges throughout, cherry cabinets with raised panels, and granite counter tops throughout.

During construction we made a few updates including making the dining room and kitchen two feet wider, adding two feet to the children,s end of the house to install a double lavatory, and adding two feet to the front garage wall to install a center pier for double garage doors. In addition, the plans called for a hip roof over the storage area in the master suite but I ended up using a gable roof there and made a kids play room. I also turned the laundry room into my closet and turned the garage utility room into a laundry room with the entrance in the dining room. Built the home on a crawlspace foundation, and used hardy plank instead of vinyl under the porch roof and gables.

We love everything about it, from our family room over the garage, to the kids play room, to the three full baths.

It took us 15 years and a lot of hard work before we could start building our home and we could not be more pleased...

The plans were flawless. Thanks for making our dream come true. We could not be happier!