Making a House a Home
Making a house a home Renovation adds size, beauty and comfort to Hillsborough mill house Chapel Hill News July 8, 2012 By Sally Keeney, Correspondent This renovated mill house at 303 Knight Street, Hillsboroughj, NC is owned by Amy and Peyton Crump. The house was originally a one-story of 816 square feet. Will Johnson Building Company enlarged it to 1,376 square feet by adding a second story. Will's son, Ben Johnson, designed the home. Rob... Read More
Get Your Wainscoting Right
Wainscoting has moved from a once purposeful design feature of a house to now a purely aesthetic item. Historically, wainscoting was used to protect the lower portion of a wall from wear and tear caused by both people and the elements. Wainscoting is an excellent way to add a unique feeling to a room in your home as well as a nod to the past. Be careul to pick the correct style of wainscoting, and also make sure you do it right. Far too often... Read More
Color Your Window Sashes
The color of the frame, sash, and grilles of a window are oftentimes overlooked when designing or building a home. By default, most windows come with white frames and grilles. An easy way to add an extra bit of detail and depth to a home is to color both the frames and the grilles. Here is what I mean: Some real life examples: Imagine how different these bulding would look if their window frames were white? Sometimes... Read More
Porter’s Neck Gate Study
Porters Neck is located in Wilmington NC. I have always known that I enjoyed their gate design, but when trying to reference it, I could never quite remember what it looks like. I have found that the best way to remember a design or idea is to draw it out. This also helps with understanding it. Once you have taken the time to study an object and use that brainwork to transfer what you see onto paper, you will find that not only will you be able to... Read More
Don’t Forget The Garage Doors
Where is the romance? Garage doors were once celebrated parts of a home. Now they serve only as a way to keep our cluttered garages out of sight from the public. Use your garage doors as a way to add an extra bit of detail to your home. It’s odd that so many homeowers and designers go with cheap and ugly garage doors, when they are in fact a huge part of the facade of a building. You just don’t miss em’, so lets celebrate em’. ... Read More
Slap On Stone
Alright, let’s go back to architecture 101 for this post. Stone and brick are long used materials in homes and buildings of all shapes and sizes. These masonry materials not only look great, but provide a very low maintenance exterior cladding. Mixing stone and siding as materials for the exterior of a building is a great way to give it a bit of added character. A cardinal sin of this maneaver, however, is “slapping” the stone on the face of... Read More
Space For Design – Chapel Hill News Article
The Chapel Hill Newspaper published this article on us over the past weekend. Below is a short bit from it. To read the whole article go here. Space For Design Building company helps homeowners get the biggest bang for their buck Sally Keeney, Correspondent The kitchen is the heart of the home for most families. Rebecca Shirey Johnson, a member of the Will Johnson Building Company team, has found that to be true whether working with clients in... Read More
Our New Office
We are excited to announce our new office location in Southern Village, here in Chapel Hill. We have transformed a small, once boring space, into our new meeting and design center. Before Picture Come see us anytime! We are in Southern Village right next to Harrington Bank in the downstairs office. Read More
Green Building
What Green Means To Us When we build any home, whether it be a certified green built/energy star home or not, we impliment the same construction techniques and materials that result in a high performing building. A lot of these techniques are just good construction practices, rather than radical green building products. There is a definite advantage to using products and resources such as solar panels and geo-thermal heating, but we have found that... Read More
Standard Construction Practices
This list comprises some of our standards for building homes. • Remove topsoil before digging footings | Removes organic material found in the soil, from the crawlspace & building footprint. • 24” wide footings w/2 rows of continuous rebar reinforcement | This is a very strong foundation. A lot of builders use 18” wide footings which are ok, but hey, don’t you want the foundation of your house better than just ok? • I-JOIST Engineered... Read More
