This story began in 2000 while my husband and I were out searching for property to build our retirement home. We looked from Georgia to Tennessee and finally North Carolina. While in North Carolina someone asked us where we where relocating from? We explained that we were originally from the Northeast then moved to Florida. The person said “Oh, that’s makes you both Halfbacks”. We didn’t understand so we commented, huh? He said, you lived up north, went down south, and are coming half way back. We thought that was just great and knew that was exactly what we wanted to be.
Luckily we found just the right piece of property and officially became Halfbacks in May 2003. Now the daunting task began of deciding on the type of house, floor plan and builder. We had always dreamed of having a log home but didn’t know anything about what it would entail. We researched log home plans for several months and narrowed it down to three choices. To make a long story short, one company and especially one builder stood out head over heels above the rest.
We contacted Al Pierce with Asheville Log Homes and inquired about some Log Homes of America log packages. From the very first phone call we had a really good feeling about both companies. We were really impressed with the fact the he visited the property on his own to make sure that it was suitable to build a log home. We still checked out the other two companies but neither of them made us feel they wanted our business. We were only building a small home and they didn’t want to go to the trouble. Al never made us feel that way. As a matter of fact he made us feel like we were building our dream mansion (regardless of size). We would put up his attention to detail to any of those mega mansions we often saw in magazines.
Building commenced in September 2004 while we were still living in Florida. On top of starting to build, Ivy’s terminally ill mother came to live with us. While we were naturally concerned about not being able to be on site during the construction we had full confidence in our builder, to keep us informed. We were in constant contact either by phone or email. We received pictures all the time and that was really helpful. We had heard many horror stories from friends and strangers alike about not being able to reach their builder. However, Al always responded in a timely manner.
I don’t want to make it sound like we never had any issues, we did, but they were quickly addressed and resolved and never became real problems. We did have a little problem with good old mother nature. She decided to send four (4) hurricanes up to our area and for a while our foundation looked like a giant swimming pool. But once that passed the building proceeded along on schedule.
Construction was completed in the summer of 2005 and we were able to spend our first night in our new home. We were all excited but no more than Al who was probably was the most excited because he always wanted to finish in time for Ivy’s Mom to spend time in the house.
It has been three years since completion and we love the house more every day. We continue to get numerous comments about what a lovely home we have. We have even had several companies that do regular maintenance (pest control, landscaping, heat & air conditioning, etc.) for us comments that this is the best built home (log or otherwise) they have ever been in.
Thanks for reading our story. Sincerely, Ken & Ivy Olson