April – June, 2005: Getting everything finished.
Tuesday, April 5, 2005
Pouring concrete for steps.
April 7, 2005
The yard is graded for landscaping.
Friday, April 8, 2005
Getting ready for painting.
A look around the exterior.
Monday, April 11, 2005
Painting underway and getting ready for walkways outside.
Tuesday, April 12, 2005
Headway on multiple fronts.
Circle at Pfefferkorn started 
Paint drying 
Steps and stonework done 
Wednesday, April 13, 2005
Driveway preparations and screens for porch.
Progress on Pfefferkorn circle and paving Fox Stream Way 
Screens being installed 
Shopping continued for all sorts of things, including outdoor furniture for the back porch. We considered a lot of alternatives like the one below but fortunately the good folks at Costco had a nice set that came available more or less when we needed it. I must have paid someone to deliver and get it set up when the time came, although I think we stored it in the garage for at least a few days.
Monday, April 18, 2005
Granite countertops and cooktop installed. I had personally selected the granite slab several months earlier from Washington Marble in Ijamsville, Maryland.
Sunday, April 24, 2005
Time for a good look around. Main floor.
Dining room 
Wine bar 
Kitchen 
Family room 
Living room 
Foyer 
Master bedroom 
Master bath 
Upstairs.
My study 
Cedar closet 
Allie’s room 
UGR 
Tiny tot room 
Storage room above garage 
Basement.
More main floor.
Wednesday, April 27, 2005
Walkways and other outside work. Driveway is paved.
Friday, April 29, 2005
We have lights! And a bathroom! All the lighting and electrical supplies were chosen from Dominion Electric Supply in Laurel. I’d made many trips there as well to make all sorts of choices for every light fixture, wall switch and outlet.
I believe I also worked with Dominion to select our ceiling fans, though they were mostly from the Casablanca catalog. I was very picky about the fans.
Living Room 
Back Porch 
Family Room 
Master Bedroom
Tuesday, May 3, 2005
Work on walkways continued.
Wednesday, May 11, 2005
Exterior regraded for landscaping.
Tuesday, May 17, 2005
Postbox!
Interior color painting underway upstairs.
Hallway 
UGR 
Guest bedroom 
Allie’s study 
Allie’s bedroom
Saturday, May 21, 2005
The house passes the inspection of Barb and Allie.
Monday, May 23, 2005
Yard seeded, flowerbeds ready for plantings.
Thursday, May 26, 2005
Plants! Based on the plantings we had at Davidge and Paddington, we had an idea of what we wanted to start with. We wanted azaleas (one of my Mom’s favorites) across the front, rhododendrons on the side (like Fallingwater), a Japanese maple on the corner by the dining room like Paddington, a couple of hydrangeas like we had at Davidge, and a weeping cherry visible from the kitchen like we had at Paddington.
We specified these choices to the landscaper but never actually went anywhere to select actual plants. When they installed things, the Japanese Maple was not weeping the way we wanted and the hydrangeas were the wrong kind (not puffballs). Changing them would cost a bundle more. We lived with them but ended up moving the hydrangeas later and replacing them with the puffballs we wanted.
Paint!
Water treatment system! We had never been on well water before and were pretty much at the mercy of the builder’s recommendations for a water softening system and reverse osmosis system for drinking water.
We’ve had annual servicing of this system from National Water Service. Every year the guy comes, tinkers around with a few things, changes filters and tells us we have real good water. Then again, for a number of years I don’t think the water softener and salt filtration tank really worked. We’ve ended up replacing a number of faucets and drains in various bathrooms, sinks and showers over the years. In 2020, the National Water guy diagnosed a problem with the system and replaced an obscure valve. I’m still not convinced it’s working right.
June 5, 2005
The interior paint is done. Time for a look around the main floor.
Over a number of months I spent a great deal of time selecting specific furnishings for the house. We bought a new master bedroom set, wall units and bookcases for the living room, family room and my study, a new reclining leather sofa set for the family room, new dining room table and chairs, bar stools for the kitchen, and more. Most of these were selected from various stores around Columbia which necessitated much running around, scouting options and bringing final choices back for Barb’s approval. We also developed a plan for where every picture we had would be hung. I drew little layouts of each room with ideas on where to place furniture and decorations. I’m not sure why I can’t find them now, but consider yourself lucky.
June 9, 2005
We’re done! Ready to move in!! And we have grass!
June 12, 2005
Moving in!!!
August 3, 2005
We had only one small casualty in the move, a bent leg in one of our tables. This table had traveled with the Fisher family since Italy, so was of sentimental value to Barb even though we hardly used it. We filed an insurance claim on August 3 and the moving company paid to fix it. We continued to hardly use the table for many years to come.
Addendum: Wednesday, February 8, 2006
Removing the trees along Pfefferkorn. I never did like the scraggly trees that had grown along our front facing Pfefferkorn Road, but the landscapers and our new neighbor Janice recommended waiting until spring to cut them down and do new plantings. Janice deemed February a good time to remove the trees so that’s what we scheduled.
At Janice’s suggestion, I worked with the folks at nearby Sun Nurseries to design a new set of plantings for the front and for the back hill. That would become a whole separate project in 2006.
Afterword
Building the house at Pfefferkorn became a much more involved project than I bargained for, but it ended up being one of the most gratifying efforts of my life. As I write this, we’ve lived in the house more than 15 years — the longest we’ve lived anywhere, by far — and expect to stay a good while longer. It also became our refuge and castle for the Covid-19 period while we’ve been largely confined in its nooks and crannies. I’m glad for all of them.
The house reflects hundreds of individual choices and decisions by Barb, Allie and myself, most of which have remained unchanged since we made them. I like to attribute that to making good choices the first time rather than just being too lazy to change things, though I know it’s at least partly the latter. I’m proudest of things like Tiny Tot room (even though Allie didn’t use it quite as much as I’d hoped), the shelves under the stairs near the pantry which have proven useful every day for recycling and for Barb’s purse and things, the paint colors and accent walls, the big family room and kitchen area (minus the archway in the original plan), the main floor bedroom and its coffered ceiling that I still enjoy staring at for some reason, the ceiling fans that have mostly worked well, the screened deck that is a regular treat for me and the cats, the grill just beyond the screen, the wide open basement for storage and cat stuff, and much more. There are few things I would change and only a few disappointments that I don’t want to dwell on here.
The house accommodates our messy, cluttered lifestyle and gave us lots of room to store the mountain of stuff we have accumulated over the years. The fact that it feels more or less full keeps us from accumulating more crap. Now the test is to start getting rid of things, an ongoing challenge.
When we decided in 2004 to build this house, I knew it might not be a great economic decision. Indeed, the house has hardly appreciated over the 15 years since. The choice to take out a substantial mortgage and invest the difference has worked out pretty well, on balance, but still may not have been the optimal financial decision from the standpoint of maximizing our net worth. It would have been more financially sound to stay at Paddington with no mortgage, no doubt. But I am overwhelmingly glad we made the choices we did. I’m convinced that I’ve enjoyed the years in this house far more than I would have at Paddington or a similar place. I think Barb and Allie would say the same thing. Well, Allie, anyway.
It will be hard to leave this house. It is literally custom-made for our lives and we have shaped our lives to fit within it as well. I didn’t expect it to become an extension of our lives and personalities together but that’s what it has become. Between us, Barb and I have lived in dozens of houses and locations over the years. We trained our whole lives to move from house to house like hermit crabs but this one has truly become our home.
I guess I had never fully appreciated how exciting this whole project must have been for you so it’s nice to see the images of its evolution. The work was finally done when I was leaving Brazil, and I remember being in San Miguel de Allende that summer, looking for property for myself, when you had just moved there. I spent a lot of time looking there for a housewarming gift and since I love Mexican paper zinnias I wanted to get them, looked long and hard for them in all the market places there. . .but I think I ended up not being able to find them, and bringing Mexican paper calla lilies instead. Is that right? Anyway, I only came when it was all finished and you were newly moved in. It’s quite an undertaking and I’m so glad it has been such a successful one. A question: what is Allie’s Tiny Tot room?