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One Man's Project: Retired mechanical engineer builds his house - his way
Journal Photo by Jennifer Rotenizer
Don and Nancy Garren show off the living room of their home in Lambsburg, Va.
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Published: August 29, 2009
LAMBSBURG, Va. -- Don Garren likes a challenge.
He likes to tinker with old phonographs and make jewelry in his big workshop. He built that workshop. He also built the rest of the 7,750-square-foot house that he shares with his wife, Nancy.
He planed the hemlock boards that cover the outside and attached each of them with 16 stainless-steel screws. The only nails in the house were used to tack up the wood molding.
Garren pulled the stone for two massive fireplaces out of nearby Stewart's Creek. He installed dozens of windows, including the 32 south-facing windows that let sunlight pour into the house in the winter. He built the house's steel frame with steel decking and floor joists. He welded, ran wiring and installed plumbing.
All by himself.
Garren, 76, a retired mechanical engineer, had never built a house before. He researched it, studied it and planned it. Then he built the rustic, contemporary house in 2½ years. They moved in about 10 years ago. He approached the project like a full-time job, his wife said. The couple were living in Midway, a round-trip of 125 miles from Lambsburg.
"He came up here every single day, rain or shine," Nancy Garren said. He would leave home about 7 a.m. and knock off about 5 p.m.
He hired help only to pour concrete and install and finish dry wall.
Nancy Garren looked askance at her husband's project when he first started.
"She wasn't in favor of this at all," Garren said, "until it started taking shape."
The notion of the house was born when Garren was looking for some land to buy. He ran across a property with most of the foundation for a house already in place, along with piles of hemlock and steel. The owner had given up on building the house and moved somewhere else. Most people looked at it and thought, "This is a white elephant that will never sell."
"He bought it before the day was out," Nancy Garren said.
Garren paid $85,000 for the foundation, the materials on site and 22 acres of land. He figures that he has spent $350,000 on the house. The home he created looks out on a serene view of woods, mountains and a pond with a dock and a gazebo. It has a solar-heating system with a heat-pump backup and a gravity-flow water system that can provide water to the house in an emergency. Walls are a foot thick and insulated with cellulose.
In winter, the house gathers heat from the sun so efficiently that the Garrens have to control the light with vertical blinds. Before they got the blinds, the house would grow so warm -- even with temperatures outside in the teens -- that they had to open windows and doors to cool off. In summer, when the sun is higher in the sky, a deep overhang keeps the sun off the south-facing windows.
The Garrens have plenty of room for visits from their two children and two grandchildren. They have four bedrooms and 41/2 baths.
Nancy Garren asked for a big kitchen with lots of light, and she got it. One long wall is lined with windows, the sills of which she has filled with some of her collection of chicken figurines. Garren gave her plenty of storage in the solid-oak cabinets, plus a special pantry just for pots and pans.
The house connects them to nature. They can sit at their breakfast table and watch hummingbirds feed outside the window. An automated game camera snaps photos of the wildlife that approaches the house, including deer, skunks, turkeys, foxes and bears. Garren got the camera after spotting a mountain lion from his deck.
In the master bedroom, they can see mountains and their garden through French doors and big windows. The view is also visible from a corner whirlpool tub. Pieces bought in China, including a brightly-painted tea table that sits on the ledge of the tub, give the room an Asian flair.
The couple has filled the house with their many collections, including antique furniture.
The laundry room, Garren points out, has plenty of backups for the washing machine -- old washboards cover one wall.
He displays deer-bone scrapers, pottery shards and arrowheads that he dug out of the Donnaha site on the Yadkin River in the 1950s, and a collection of old phonographs.
Garren plays visitors a recording from 1893, "one of the first music reproductions sold," a scratchy rendition of the song "A Forge in the Forest" recorded by Thomas Edison's military band. "A lot of people who heard it were hearing recorded sound for the first time," Garren said.
Wooden shoes from an island in the Baltic Sea sit on a fireplace hearth, and copper and brass pieces collected from around the world fill display shelves.
The Garrens, who met at a race at Bowman Gray Stadium in Winston-Salem, have been married nearly 54 years. They went to Cuba on their honeymoon. After stints in Atlanta and New Jersey, they have settled in Virginia, probably for good.
Although their house wound up being a bargain, they wouldn't dream of taking less than a small fortune for it.
"It would have to be $3 million before I would even consider selling it," Garren said.
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