When UPS employees Catherine and Jeff Scott decided to get married, they didn’t want to buy a home in a different part of town. Having lived separately in the Milton area, they wanted Catherine’s daughters, Savannah and Olivia, to remain in their current high school, and wanted to stay close to their church, St. Thomas Aquinas Catholic Church in Alpharetta.
The priority
The family’s wish list included a master bedroom on the first floor, a spacious kitchen, a media room and enough outdoor space for family activities. “I come from a close-knit Italian family, so a big kitchen was especially important to me,” Catherine said. “We wanted the media room to watch movies together.”
Catherine and Jeff also wanted to start fresh with a new home they could plan together as a family and make their own. “We wanted to build something from the ground up,” Jeff said. “We wanted to go through the entire process together.”
One of the first new neighborhoods the family looked at was Heritage at Crabapple by Ashton Woods, which has single-family homes from the $660,000s. Community amenities include a pool and cabana. Public schools are Crabapple Crossing Elementary, Northwestern Middle and Milton High School.
The home
The Scotts chose the Kensington floor plan with four bedrooms, three-and-a-half baths and about 3,700 square feet. Features include granite countertops, Timberlake cabinets, stainless steel Kitchen Aid appliances, walk-in closets, fireplaces and 10-foot ceilings on the main level. They worked with Ashton Woods’ designers to choose everything from the style of the elevation to paint colors.
“After they got a feel for what you liked, the design consultant would bring out certain color schemes and materials that fit your tastes,” Jeff said.
Construction began in mid-October 2014 and was completed in May 2015. The family had a number of reviews with the builder to examine the drywall, framing and other steps in the construction process. “They were great about keeping us engaged along the way,” Catherine said.
The family can walk to restaurants, such as Olde Blind Dog (named the 2015 Irish Pub of the Year by the Irish Pubs Global Federation). “There’s also a coffee house called Mugs on Milton that the neighborhoods kids, including our girls, enjoy going to,” Catherine said.
The tip
When buying new construction, look for ways to customize the house. The Scotts researched ideas for a stone patio and fireplace on sites such as Houzz.com and worked with American Outdoors, a landscape and hardscape design and installation firm based in Dawsonville, on the project. Since the family enjoys listening to music outside, Jeff bought a rock-shaped speaker that blends into the landscape and was installed by EZ Systems of Atlanta (the company also finished their media room).
“It’s actually connected by wires that run underneath the ground to an amplifier off the deck,” he said. “You’d never know it was a speaker unless someone told you.”
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