We spent $900,000 to build a glass house. It’s a dream to live at one with the outdoors, and Airbnb guests love it.

I pulled into the driveway and knocked on the door because I needed to know the story of the house. I’m just that kind of guy.

We met the owner, who was really cool, and he ended up coming with us to Cape Kidnappers. He encouraged us to build our own house in San Diego and promised to fly out and help.

We learned a lot during the San Diego project, which went from 2017 to 2019, and our New Zealand friend did fly out to help with framing. It really taught me everything I needed to know about building. I got thrown in the deep end.

It was exhausting though, and we didn’t talk about another house for a few years. But after a while, we were like, “Hey, let’s go for it again.”

We spent two years trying to build in Park City, Utah, but the winters create such short windows to build. As we were losing hope, we took an impromptu trip with my family to Lake Gaston in North Carolina, about two hours south of where I grew up in Raleigh.

The design for the glass house had been on my mind

I first found a possible lot to build the house on Zillow. It was just the worst lot I’ve ever walked. There were these massive, ravenous trees everywhere. But there was a lot next to it — even though it was also covered in trees, I could just tell it was going to be a beautiful lot. I knocked on the neighbor’s door, who told me the owner was down the street. I shook his hand and made him an offer.

His agent forced me to get an agent, though. So I literally got an agent for one day just to handle all the paperwork. I bought the lot for $238,000 in August 2022.

It can be tough to build a house without a lot of experience

I have an engineering mind, so all of it is common sense to me. That’s just how my mind works. Sometimes I go to YouTube when I’m really stuck. Like when I was installing the air handler — the main engine for cooling and heating your home — I needed to make it flow downward instead of upward.

I don’t just search for “how to” videos. I found videos of experts online and patched together different tricks I saw them doing. I use YouTube like a textbook.

Altogether, we spent around $900,000 building the home. It has 1,200 square feet of glass.

We had twins in the middle of glass-house construction

The dock was finished in early June of 2024. We planted a maple tree on it.

For the tree on the dock, I was like “Why not?” I like things that are unique.

We wanted to find a way to tie the dock to the house — we wanted it to feel like the same architectural design. I had some ideas about a massive roof system, but we ran out of money for that. So I said let’s put a big fat tree here.

The maple is a statement piece on the water to guide people to the house. In a handful of years, that tree will be 30 to 40 feet tall. We’ve named it the Great Maple Tree of Lake Gaston — there are no other trees on the lake.

When we posted it on Instagram, the pictures kept getting labeled as AI.

Next summer, we anticipate during peak season we can charge up to $1,000 a night.

We’ve had 14 bookings so far — most of them are families. One family caught fish off the dock with their kids.

One of the guests said their kid put the house in a back-to-school essay as their favorite summer memory.

That’s what we want for our kids, too.