Raising Houses!

What gets more attention in a neighborhood than anything else?
Somebody building a house.
Over in the mountains, when a new neighbor started building, we were constantly touring the building site, trying to figure out their floor plan.
One loop road in our neighborhood has three new homes going up. I call this one the blue house. It's nice enough, not huge, raised a little to keep it out of hurricane flooding. But I've never understood why someone would put the garage, the ugliest part of the house, front and center. Hmm.

I call this one the pretty house. They razed the existing home and built this one a tad higher. But it's a pretty shape and fits nicely into the landscape. They left existing trees and gave a gentle curve to the drive.

And this, I call the monstrosity. It's a muddy mess. Hopefully when they finish and put in some shrubbery and (maybe?) a few trees, it will help. I bet the elevation of this home is at least twelve feet above the home that was there previously.

Of course, I'm not bold enough to go tromping around inside these homes uninvited! But I bike by them several times a week to keep tabs on the progress.
Here are some other homes. These sailboats are "on the hard," i.e., out of the water. Some are being painted or repaired. However, some boat owners put their boats on the hard for years, and live in them during that time. Can you imagine? They have these handy stairwells they can push up against the boat, stepping up and down. One local fellow's been living in his boat at a local boatyard for going on three years, up on stilts.

These boats hail from California, New England, overseas, Texas, even some spots in the upper Midwest. Here you see Swept Away and Snow Goose. I'd be nervous living on a boat up on those spindly legs, but Adam says they're much more secure there during a hurricane, than in the water.