When we were sailing, we knew we wouldn’t sail forever, so we bought a lot across the highway from the marina. It was a nice lot on a newly developed golf course, River Hills, in Little River, SC. With that thought in mind, I decided to go to school at night and get my builder’s license—just in case. We also developed a set of house plans based on the things that were important to us: a bathroom with a tub, a two-car garage, a hot tub, a back porch, lots of windows, and a fireplace. All the essentials that were missing from life on a sailboat.
We continued sailing for several years, but eventually Marianne—my wife—said she didn’t want to be gone all the time, especially now that we had six grandchildren. We thought about it long and hard and finally decided to build the house as a spec home. We truly weren’t sure we could afford both a house and a sailboat at the same time.
We arranged for a construction loan, and I lined up a crew to frame the house. But of course, you don’t start building at the roof—you need a foundation first. I laid out the location of the house with strings to mark its position on the lot. Then we dug the area for the footings. We hired a crew to do the concrete work, filled the area so we could pour on a slab, and then had to bring in an engineer to approve the back wall because it was so high. After the slab was finally poured and cured for a week, the crew came to frame the house. That took a while, but they did a good job. Once they finished, it cleared the way for us to do our part.
The inner portion of the fireplace had been installed, but not the stone. I had already installed the plywood backing but not the wire for the stone façade. Just before Christmas, a stonemason showed up at the front door looking for work. We agreed on a price, and he did a perfect job. You can see it in the pictures. The house had nine windows across the front, a screened porch, four windows on one side, thirteen across the back, and four on the other side. Another goal met.
I had never built stairs before, and I wanted them to be right—safe, sturdy, and with no squeaks when they were traversed. I finished building them and was trying to figure out how to lift them into place. In the meantime, we saw a man walking across our newly seeded yard. He came into the house and asked what we were working on. I told him I had just finished building the stairs but wasn’t sure how to get them installed. He said, “No problem.” He had worked with stairs for over 30 years. And just like that, the stairs were up and perfectly in place. We thanked him, and he left. We have never seen him since.
Were they angels? We’ll never know—but it surely felt that way.
