The COVID-19 pandemic has affected everyone differently and Rufty Homes is no different. Jon Rufty sat down with Triangle Business Journal recently to discuss the ebb and flow of the demand for custom homes throughout 2020, and how the company has managed to grow during such a challenging time. Read the full article by Caleb Harshberger here.

Rufty Homes, Tailored to You

Your family at Rufty Homes is wishing you and your family a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! Take a look at our holiday email newsletter to see some of the things we're so grateful for this year along with how we're looking forward to 2021.

See the email newsletter. >>

We had to pleasure of building an addition on a local family's beloved home after growing out of its existing size and floorplan. The Canady family enlisted the help of our team and their longtime interior designer, Aimee Montgomery, to expand their home in areas that would allow them to continue enjoying their space for years to come.

Read the full article written by Anne Marie Ashley with photography by Sara Coffin on the Triangle Home Design & Decor website here or download the article PDF here.

Triangle Home Design and Decor Dec 2020

One of the most rewarding parts of building custom homes is that every new build or remodel is so unique to the homeowners. There’s no “one size fits all” option when it comes to a Rufty home. 

We love when our clients come to us with creative ideas for incorporating their personalities, hobbies, and more into their home. If you’re looking for ways to inspire your own creativity in your next home project, here are a few fun projects we’ve worked on for our clients.

1. Hitting the Links... Inside

golf simulator

What’s better than spending time on the golf course? Perfecting your swing from the comfort of your own home. One of our clients talked to us about wanting to be able to work on his swing regardless of the weather or time of day. 

So, we built a golf simulator to allow him to work on his craft, even when it’s not possible to hit the course. Other clients have also requested golf simulators to use as a fun indoor activity when entertaining guests. 

How to use this as inspiration for your home

Before you build or remodel, think about some of the hobbies you enjoy the most. Is there a way to incorporate them into a space in your home? 

Whether you build out an art studio as a place to work on your paintings, or you build a golf simulator of your own, having a dedicated space for your hobbies is a great way to make your home more enjoyable.

2. Like Music to Your Ears

One of our clients, a musician, wanted a special place to showcase and enjoy their passion. We built a music room, complete with display cases for their beautiful guitars and a comfy space perfect for impromptu jam sessions with friends and family. 

For another client, we built a full recording studio, so they could produce music while at home, instead of having to go to their offsite studio. 

How to use this as inspiration for your home

For these clients, music is more than a hobby; it’s a passion they’ve turned into a career. When thinking about your next project, incorporate a space for your work, beyond just a home office space. 

If you’re a writer, for example, plan out a cozy room that eliminates distractions and helps you focus. Or, if you’re a therapist, you might build an office you can use for in-home appointments. 

3. Sharing the Court

When working with clients on a new project, we love when the whole family gets involved! In one case, our clients talked to us about how much their daughters love playing tennis. 

To help them have a special part of the home to hone their skills, we built an indoor/outdoor tennis court. This gave them a dedicated place to practice, regardless of weather. 

How to use this as inspiration for your home

Get your kids involved! Even the smallest members of your family will want to have some say in your newly built or renovated home. Get their feedback on some of the features they’d most like to have and develop a plan to bring some of them to life. 

If their ideas are a little too grand, you can even just let them help pick out paint colors or light fixtures for their rooms.

4. A Special Place for Furry Friends

Custom Dog Room

For many of us, pets are considered to be a part of the family. That’s why so many of our clients have us build out a dedicated space for their pets. We’ve created dog rooms, with a plush bed and a window so they can enjoy the view, as well as cat rooms for our feline friends. 

We’ve also included dog washing stations, feeding drawers, and special pet access doors, to ensure that the needs of our clients’ pets aren’t overlooked. 

How to use this as inspiration for your home

Most of the time, when we work on pet spaces, we try to capture unused space and put it to good use. Are there any blank areas you can transform into a place your pet will love?

This is also a good opportunity to hide away some of the less appealing parts of owning a pet, like creating a hideaway place for a litter box, to keep it out of view from guests.

5. Bringing the Outside In

There’s something about tending to plants that can help us feel calm and remind us to slow down a bit. So, a few of our clients have wanted to incorporate nature into their home design. 

One of our favorite ways to do this is with a living wall. While the end result is jaw-dropping, it’s set up to be low maintenance, so it only looks like something that takes a lot of time and dedication to cultivate. 

How to use this as inspiration for your home

Incorporating greenery in your home is a great way to balance out and offset more neutral spaces like a blank wall. If you don’t have the space for a full living wall, you can still use pops of greenery around your home. 

What season are you designing for? We'd love to help with some fall home decor ideas for your home.

Or, if you love to cook, consider planting a small herb garden in your kitchen. It will bring an element of nature to the space and give your dinners a fresh dose of flavor.

Find Ways to Make Your Home Your Own

Does this leave you feeling inspired to make changes to your existing home? Or, are you ready to build your dream home from the ground up, with all of your unique features incorporated from the start?

The Rufty Homes team is here to bring your ideas to reality. Contact us today to learn more about how we can help.

Here at Rufty Homes, we know it’s not possible to bring our clients’ dreams to life without a lot of teamwork. This recent remodel is the perfect example of how when we come together, we do our best work.

Sometimes, you just know when something is meant to be. Our clients had their eye on this home since it was first built, over 20 years ago. When it came on the market, it only took them 10 minutes after walking through it to put in an offer. 

The homeowners said, “We absolutely loved the setting of the home and its golf course view, and we knew this was the perfect opportunity to plan the changes that would make it ours.” Over the course of four years, they worked with local architect, Abbie Lee Roehm, of Paces & Roehm to carefully design ways to tailor the home to their lifestyle. They said, “In those years, Abbie Lee learned about us and the way we live, making tweaks to our renovation plans to help ensure the house would be exactly what we wanted.”

During that time, the homeowners would meet with Abbie Lee just about every week to talk through the vision for the home. Abbie Lee said, “One of the most important parts of the planning process was figuring out how to bring in more light and how to expand the view of the golf course into their home.”

With plans drawn, Abbie Lee and the homeowners reached out to four contractors to bid on the project. After reviewing the bids and interviewing contractors, the homeowners and architect agreed that Rufty was best prepared to bring the home’s plan to life. “Working with Rufty was an architect’s dream. They paid attention to every detail I drew and they really cared about the vision the homeowners and I came up with together,” said Abbie Lee.

From the beginning of the planning process, it was obvious that Rufty Homes had the most detailed approach, the most professional team, and the best subcontractors in the Raleigh area. 

Throughout the project, subcontractors related to the homeowners that their experiences working on Rufty Homes were special. The mutual respect between contractor and subcontractors spoke volumes to the homeowners; the dream home building team grew from several people to many. Project Manager, Harry Grube’s experience in every phase of construction enables him to communicate extremely well with each and every subcontractor to get things right. 

“We connected with the Rufty team right away, and really appreciated that they listened to what we wanted and then figured out a way to make it happen, even if it seemed impossible at first,” the homeowners remembered. Parker Shanahan looked at the plans and suggested building toward the garage from inside the house to create the indoor/outdoor bar area. His creative thinking and Abbie Lee’s drawing of his plan brought the outdoor living area to life and connected it seamlessly with the indoor living space.

Once Harry was assigned Project Manager, he worked with the homeowners, Abbie Lee, and Jill, to bring everyone’s ideas to reality. “The whole collaboration process between everyone could not have been better. They all worked together to make every room in our house even better than we expected, incorporating special little details along the way,” the homeowners said.

Many of the details that make this home unique are reflections of the homeowners’ history of working and living around the world. The bar in their wine lounge was modeled after a hotel bar in Paris they loved, recreated down to the smallest detail from just a photo, including onyx countertops from Verona, Italy, where they often traveled and a French Oak parquet floor. The stunning La Cornue range in the kitchen reminds them of their time living in France as well as times spent in the summer kitchen on their grandparents’ Pennsylvania farm. The walnut countertops in the kitchen come from Grothouse Lumber, a Pennsylvania company.

Designer Jill Wilson, elaborates, “Their extensive travels have influenced their sense of style. They wanted to bring some of the international design elements they love into their home and the subcontractors did a great job of making it happen.” 

It was also important to the homeowners to maximize the ways in which they could enjoy the view of the golf course from their home. The home originally had one porch area, but through the renovation, they created seven different outdoor spaces, including a cigar terrace. This gives the homeowners plenty of places to spend time just soaking in the great outdoors, counting the herons and admiring the bald eagles.

They said, “It’s hard to pinpoint our favorite part of the home, but we spend as much time as we can outside, enjoying the view that first made us fall in love with this house. We’re so thankful to the Rufty Homes team, as well as the hard work of our project manager, architect, designer, and all the subcontractors. There was never a question they couldn’t answer or a problem they couldn’t solve. As a result, they’ve brought the vision we had for this home to reality and we couldn’t be happier.” 

See the full photo gallery for this project, including before and after photos, here

subcontractors for this project

This year, we're especially grateful to call the Triangle area home. In 2020, Raleigh consistently ranked as one of the best cities in the country to live, work, and play. Check out the accolades below to see why there's never been a better time to put down roots in Raleigh.

Raleigh Ranked Top City

Raise a family here.

If you’ve turned to Niche to find an area to live in that appeals to your family, you’re not alone. Niche’s rigorous ranking system takes statistics on the cost and quality of living and compares them with millions of reviews. With its green spaces, children’s museums, and great schools, it’s no wonder Raleigh clinched a spot on Niche’s list of the best places to raise a family. And for millennial new parents, CommercialCafe ranked Raleigh and Durham as a top place for millennials to live.

Niche Ranks Raleigh Among Best Places To Raise A Family

CommercialCafe ranks Durham and Raleigh among Top Places For Millennials To Relocate 

Relax and retire here.

Retirees searching for world-class medical care and a comfortable climate will feel right at home in Raleigh. This isn’t even Raleigh’s first year on Forbe’s list of the best places to retire. With an above-average rank on the Milken Institute’s list of best cities for successful aging, retirees can’t go wrong.

Forbes ranks Raleigh among the Best Places To Retire

Start a business and work here.

The Triangle takes top marks as a city for business. According to SmartAsset, Raleigh and Cary are among the most recession-resistant cities around. Durham and Raleigh’s thriving tech scene has put the Triangle on WalletHub’s list of the U.S.’s top tech towns. And entrepeneurs, take note- Lantern ranks Durham and Raleigh as one of the best places in the U.S. to start a business.

SmartAsset ranks Raleigh and Cary among the Most Recession-Resistant Cities

Lantern ranks Durham and Raleigh among Best Places To Start A Business

WalletHub ranks Raleigh among the Top Tech Towns

Make a home here.

We’re proud to see our home ranked by WalletHub and Numbeo as one of the best all-around areas to live in the country.  It's our pleasure to help clients build custom dream homes in a  place recognized for its unparalleled quality of living. We'd love to make you our next client- and our neighbor!- in the wonderful City of Oaks.

WalletHub ranks Raleigh among the Best State Capitals To Live 

Numbeo ranks Raleigh among Places With The Best Quality Of Life

© 2024 Rufty Homes Inc. All rights reserved
© 2024 Rufty Homes Inc. All rights reserved
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