This months edition of the magazine Green Building and Design features 2 of Jones Pierce’s most sustainable projects. The first feature is a commercial project, The Monastic Heritage Center. The second feature is a residential project, The Creek House at Lanier Enclave. Both projects were done by one of our principles, Cooper Pierce. Click on the images to read the article. Thanks for the feature, Green Building & Design! Check out the blog posts below to read more about

Construction is complete on 1139 Lanier Blvd! This is the second house at Lanier Enclave, also referred to as “Middle House.” Lanier Enclave is a development in Virginia Highlands containing 3 prairie-themed custom homes. All three homes are built by Abraham Properties. This home is currently for sale through Palmer House Properties. Check out these images of the Middle House: This home sits right in between the other two Lanier homes. The front yard includes a carport and an

Dunwoody Ranch Facelift A Dunwoody Ranch gets a front yard facelift when a new entry and courtyard takes cues from Japanese Zen gardens, while maintaining handicapped accessibility. From the approach, the transformation begins at the new exposed aggregate driveway. The driveway gets interrupted by radiating bands of sandstone finished concrete, whose axis are centered on one embedded flagstone paver. From there, the new frosted glass garage door and timber pergola add anoth

We believe in homes with names, outdoor showers, and docks with flags so your friends have a landmark to find your house. We believe in knowing the homes entrance from your car is a portal to lake life, and that the entrance from the lake is the real front door. We believe that lake homes are different than city homes and can provide the peace of reprieve. We believe in packing up at 4 o’clock and leaving by 5 o’clock to not waste a lake day. We believe in taking 20 pounds o

Concerns When Aging Although mobility seems to draw the most attention in media articles, there are several issues that concern people as they age. Independence is one that is usually tied to personal mobility and transportation, but it also has to do with health care. Can a person remain living on their own? Another concern is regarding money and finances. Will there be enough retirement savings to cover the cost of living while maintaining an established lifestyle? These co

Fall brings with it 3 things: 1) Football 2) Great Seasonal Beer 3) Amazing Weather (in that order) Without a doubt, Fall is my favorite season of the year. The crisp air seems as clean as it could possibly get after the thick humidity of summer, and there’s nothing better than spending time with friends and family watching your favorite college football team and enjoying the outdoors. It’s the time of year when you want to eat ever meal outside in an attempt to take adva

Assessing Our Living Situations Whether it is the economic fall out of former homeowners expanding the rental market, or retired Baby Boomers shedding the burden of maintaining houses, or the increasing rental population of Millennials, rental space is in demand. Given the current situation of the post-real estate bubble burst, now would be a good time to assess our living conditions. We need to ask ourselves, what should the next generation of living environments be like? Le

Understanding your design before you purchase the construction. I had a scary moment at the end of a project last year when the client told me “I didn’t know my back yard would look like this”. While I was glad we got it right for her, the shiver down my spine was reacting to thoughts about what happened if we got it wrong. Make it Easy with a 3D Model As the shiver subsided we decided to evaluate our process. In our 10 principles for custom home design we were using tactic

The Monastery of the Holy Spirit will host a free Monastery Grand Open House Event on Saturday, Oct. 1, from 10:00am to 5:00pm, to celebrate the new Monastic Heritage Center. We welcome all visitors and invite them to experience everything the Monastery has to offer. All are invited to Explore our newly opened Monastic Heritage Center, featuring: Interactive Museum Abbey Gift Shop Bonsai Garden Café Bonsai Store and Bonsai Pottery Sales Memorial Plaza and Prayer Walk. This

The Baby Boomers are retiring. Therefore, the residential industry, as well as other industries, is shifting focus to that of the aging population and how to house them to maintain an obtained lifestyle. Articles are appearing almost daily about healthcare and the diminishing length of stays in hospitals, how sunny interiors help with recovery and patient moods, and the rising costs which threaten retirement nest eggs. Other articles are focused on Universal Design which is p

The big picture goal for this Roswell backyard project was to add a pool with a built in “Endless pool” to allow a very busy corporate client to train at home for an Iron Man, instead of having gym memberships all over the city. We saw this as an opportunity to use the new pool and the landscape design to fit the house to the site instead of following a typical home builder approach of fitting a site to the house. We achieved this by using the pool structure combined with bo

When people discuss older, historical homes, many describe their affection for the “character” that older homes possess. What is that character? We believe it is the compilation of details within the home. These details may be the amount of wood trim around windows and doors and baseboards greater than six inches. It may also be wood paneling, coffered ceilings, or elaborate fireplace mantels. Some people like Sarah Susanka, may point to the details of built in features such

The Split Level Home Unleashed by production builders in the 60’s and 70’s, split level homes are the most difficult type of house to transform into the way our customers want to live today. At the same time, these homes are also in the current sweet spot for in-town renovations because of their location on the growth rings of cities. Typically, split level homes are good candidates for an architectural intervention. They are close to town, and they have a reasonable cost bas

Here are the latest interior construction progress photos from our project, Lanier Enclave Middle House. The project is scheduled to be completed by the end of September. The home is being built by Abraham Properties and is for sale here. The exterior of Lanier Middle House is complete, shifting all focus to the interior. Take note of the window design detail! On the interior, all trim-work and built-in shelving is complete. This construction crew is doing a great job paying

What do you do when the survey indicates your house is built over the setback? Are your expansion plans shot down in flames? Alex, I’ll take Zoning Ordinances for $500. “These allow for expansion of structures in non-conforming situations by reducing zoning restrictions for extenuating circumstances.” “What are variances?” You are correct! Your dream home in a historical neighborhood (i.e. Inman Park) would be perfect if you could add an extra room. Do you understand the re

Industries provide more information to assess their products than potential home buyers have at their disposal. It is crazy if you think that most people’s largest investment is their house. It’s not just the mortgage system that needs help, but the appraisals that mortgages are based on that need fixing. If we had a better system of assessing the value of a house and the property it sits on independent of one another, the real estate bubbles we witnessed would not be so infl

Construction has completed at at Monastic Heritage Center! This was a great project with awesome clients. It’s tough to see it end, but it’s always nice to see the final photographs. Take a minute to browse through our final images of the Monastic Heritage Center project at the Monastery of the Holy Spirit in Conyers, Georgia. Hope you enjoy! All photographs are copyright 2011 by Lee Grider Photography. The challenge for this project was to transform an old barn compound into

Thanks to one of our preferred contractors over at Distinctive Remodeling Solutions who specialize in home renovations for writing about the important of our 10 Principles. Read the article here. Back to the JP Blog Back to JonesPierce.com

Recently, a couple clients in Duluth, Georgia came to Jones Pierce looking to renovate their basement and transform their backyard into an “at home retreat”. The project also includes replacing a dated deck with a new low maintenance granite stone porch. We partnered with CORE Landscape Architects on this job, which is located in the St. Marlow Country Club community. The power of 3D modelling helped our clients visualize the changes to their basement, and understand the insi

Our recently completed custom home in Dothan, Alabama was published in the latest edition of the local magazine Wiregrass Living. Wiregrass chose to feature this project because of it’s focus on sustainability. The most prominent “green” feature in this project is the array of solar panels in the rear yard of the Dothan home. Click the images below to read the article: Back to JonesPierce.com #Dothan #residentialarchitecture #published #JonesPierceStudios #sustainability