The Southport Project - The New Home Show

ABOUT THE VICTORIAN HOUSE

(click here to see photographs of the home).

The first house project for second season of The New Home Show is a Victorian home called "The Southport". It's a reproduction of a house built in 1904 in Southport, NC. It's designed by Mr. William E. Poole of Wilmington, NC. The plans for the house are available from Southern Living Magazine at 1-800-755-1122. Its plan number HM-9603-956.

The 3131 square foot Victorian plan features four bedrooms, a living room, large master suite with a fireplace and a separate octagon shaped sitting area. The front of the house has a two story covered porch and a gazebo. At the very top of the house is a walk up turret which is reached from the walk up attic.

The original home was featured in the movie, "Crimes of the Heart". If you watch the movie, you'll see our version is pretty exact on the exterior. The rooftop cupola, the turret, the gazebo, the stained glass windows, the porches and the delicate detail all accurately portray the Victorian period.

We chose the Southport Victorian Home plan because it was interesting and we had a number of viewer requests for a Victorian plan. However, as you can imagine it's more expensive to build this style of home because of all the intricate detail. You can expect a 40% increase in the price per square foot over a "standard house".

We have constructed this home in a most unusual fashion. We're using building components to build the Southport project. It's somewhat unusual to build an old house out of the latest, most advanced building projects.

We used the Superior Wall System to construct the crawlspace foundation. The wall system was manufactured in Pennsylvania and shipped to our job site in North Carolina for assembly. It took the Superior Wall crew just one day to complete the entire foundation. Our framers were actually on the job the very next day putting down the first floor decking. We're really impressed with the Superior Wall System and we will be using this same wall system on our second project this season.

When it came time to build the walls, we used structural insulated panels (SIPS) manufactured by Insulspan. This was the first time we had used SIPS and we are convinced it's going to be the way houses are going to be built in the future. Our framer, Tim Duvall was stunned at how easy the panels went together. We're impressed at how nice the home feels because of the super insulation properties of the panels. Our interior designer, Scott Carpenter is really thrilled to be able to hang a picture anywhere without having to locate a stud.

Again on this house each outside material has been carefully chosen to be a maintenance free or low maintenance material. We've used vinyl siding on the exterior of the Southport. We've used vinyl covered (load bearing) columns on the front porch. We've used Sherline vinyl decking from L B Plastics on the front and rear porches (instead of pressure treated lumber).

We were a little late getting the roof on the house. The original plans called for a tin roof. We were able to locate the roofing material for the tin roof. However, we were quoted $20,000--$40,000 to install the roof on the house. Since that kind of money just wasn't in the budget for the roof we looked for a suitable substitute. This is what you should do when you're building your own house.

We found just what we needed at Atlas Roofing Corporation. Atlas had just released a new product called, "Alpine". It's a very distinctive looking shingle with a scalloped, half-rounded pattern to it. It's a fiberglass shingle with a 25-year warranty. We chose the Woodland Green color to grace our Southport project. The wonderful thing about this shingle is that it doesn't cost any more than a standard architectural shingle although it looks like it should cost a lot more. Our roofing contractor, Mike Houston, charged the regular price to install the Alpine shingles since they go down easily.