Visiting the Dirt

We were happy to think, oh some day we will build on this land, we are in nooo rush. Every trip to STJ we took our little rental Jeep on the annual pilgrimage to see “the land”. We would drive out, pick up a beer at the Love City Mini Mart, and park the car and toast to “the land” and just gaze out at that gorgeous view. After about half an hour of communing with the site we would say our good byes until next year.

This went on for the next 3 years. Then our family started asking when they would actually see a structure on this piece of paradise. We had no answer but thought maybe we would contact an architect to see what the possibilities were – not that we were going to build anything any time soon. We started to brainstorm about the things we would want in a STJ villa – delusions of grandeur come to mind!

January 2008 came around, time for the annual family vacay. One day we found ourselves wandering around Mongoose Junction when we stopped in to pay a visit to the Barefoot Architect, Michael Milne. We just happened to have a topo with us and a little map of our site. As we talked about STJ and life in general Michael started to doodle a few sketches on some drafting paper and an hour later we had some doodles that just might be the ground work for an actual house. Time to fly back home, thank goodness for the internet! Some emails flew back and forth, a contract was signed and blueprints evolved.

It took almost a year but we had some pretty impressive plans. “So are you ready to build?” Uh, we don’t know, I guess we can apply for CZM and building permits, after all this is STJ and that stuff won’t materialize for quite some time….Uh oh, we get a call a month later, we have permits! How did that happen! So now we have to either build something or let the permits expire. Hmmm. Wait, the guys on Wall Street have other plans and crashing down comes the economy – hard. Yikes I was furious that this debacle could jeopardize our project, now that we were kinda getting used to the idea. I must digress, sometime during the drawing of the plans stage I stumbled upon a couple of building blogs – maybe not such a good idea to read these, but of course I couldn’t resist – let’s see what this building on STJ is all about. Throw in a book written on the subject and we almost headed for the hills! We took baby steps and slowly navigated our path. We stayed focused and then came the thought that now that the economy has taken a beating, and yeah we did too, maybe, just maybe this might be a good time to build, after all prices on materials like steel and concrete (aka STJ gold) have dropped and building on the island had come to a screaming halt compared to the 2007 madness.

We voiced our concerns to our architect about the stories we have heard about building on STJ, he chuckled and said that some people do finish the process still married and not completely broke. He assured us he worked with reputable builders and most of these guys would love to start a project right about now. Ok, we’ll bite. We flew down and for 2 very full days had interviews with 5 builders who would bid on our project. We drove around and looked at some of their completed villas and some still in progress. We were impressed but still skeptical, I am sure this is how they all start out, call it the honeymoon phase if you will. One thing I will say, each and every one of our prospective builders would have built one heck of a house – that I am sure of. How to decide, they were all great guys.

Some things are just meant to be, and things happen for a reason – I believe. So when we selected Alex Brooks of Creative Builders I knew we were about to embark on our greatest adventure. Alex had that sparkle in his eye and a passion about his work. As he looked at our blueprints you could almost hear the gears whirring in his mind. He had big plans for us.

You may have heard the saying about vacationing on STJ – “bring half the clothes and twice the money”; well building on STJ does compound this saying by exponential factors. Yes everything you hear is mostly true but if you stay grounded and focused it is possible to emerge on the other side. A good friend we met through the building process gave us some very good advice – don’t sweat the small stuff and try to have some fun along the way. After all you are on STJ, don’t forget that. If you need a little time to clear your head and re-focus your efforts there is always a nice little beach with the bluest water and the whitest sand that can point the bow of your boat back in the right direction.

So here we go, you have heard the beginning of our story, now you will read and see how we managed to get there. I must admit to you fine readers that I didn’t have the guts to publish this live as it was happening so this is a “post building” blog. I guess deep down I wasn’t really sure whether we would really pull it off!