Our Standard
What comes standard.
Quality isn't a square-footage number — it's what the house is made of and how carefully it goes together. This page is the included specification on every Unicoi home. A good portion of it is what other builders list on the upgrade sheet.
Read it the way you'd read a contract, because it effectively is one: if it's listed here, it's in your house at the published price.
Everything in it, we already picked.
Every material in these houses has a name and we publish it. The white oak, the quartz, the tile, the paint, the lever on the door. Not because anybody buys a house by brand, but because a decided house feels different to stand in than a house someone is still assembling around you. Three schemes, worked out over fifty houses, each one applied to whichever plan you choose. You pick the plan and you pick the feel. The thousand small calls underneath are settled.
Structure & envelope
The parts you never see are the parts you pay for every month. We don’t cheap out where nobody looks.
- Every slab home rides on a poured stem wall wrapped in stone — the house sits up, the water stays out
- 2×6 exterior wall framing — a deeper, stronger, quieter wall than the 2×4 most builders stop at
- Spray-foam insulation in the roofline and exterior walls — the house is sealed tight where it counts
Windows & exterior doors
You feel windows every day you live in a house — in the light, in the quiet, in the power bill.
- Sierra Pacific H3 windows — real wood inside, extruded aluminum outside at twice the thickness of the roll-formed cladding most builders use, on a base that can’t rot. Made by a company that owns the forests the wood comes from
- Therma-Tru fiberglass entry door under a full-width transom — glass at eye height so you can see out, light from above, and the first thing a visitor touches isn’t builder-grade
Exterior materials
North Georgia weather is not gentle. The outside of the house is specified to shrug it off.
- James Hardie fiber-cement siding and exterior trim
- Standing-seam metal roof on every plan — never an upgrade line. The color is chosen with your look: bronze on the cabin, charcoal on the cottage, matte black on the farmhouse. A roof measured in decades rather than years — and one you will not re-roof mid-ownership
- Saw-cut natural stone on exterior accents, and every chimney wrapped in it top to bottom — real quarried stone, never cultured or faux panels
- Twenty-four-inch overhangs all the way around — deep eaves keep the weather off the walls and the water away from the foundation. Most builders hand you twelve
Porches
In Georgia a porch is a room. Ours are built like one — it’s why we report porch square footage separately, and proudly.
- Rough-sawn posts and rafters, sized like they mean it
- Tongue-and-groove wood ceilings on every porch, no exceptions — stained, or whitewashed for the farmhouse look
Interior finishes
Trim, doors, and floors are where a house shows its manners — the things visitors notice and can’t name.
- Wide-plank engineered white oak flooring — Hallmark Alta Vista, warm and matte, never gray
- Zero carpet. Anywhere. Wood and tile only
- An Isokern modular masonry firebox — cast volcanic pumice from Iceland, built up in pieces on site, not the sheet-metal box most builders drop into a chase. The pumice insulates and reflects, so the fire warms the room instead of the flue. Wood-burning or gas is your call, and the surround is the same either way: drystack Tennessee fieldstone in the cabin, tumbled Georgia brick in the cottage, rough-cut limestone in the farmhouse
- Eight-foot solid wood interior doors across the main level, hand-stained and hand-finished in all three looks — door heads hold the same line as the window heads. In the craftsman cottage, the public rooms trade the tall slab for a transom over the door — light through the top, same line. Pocket doors where a swing would steal the room — never a barn door
- Hand-finished tongue-and-groove pine overhead in the living and dining rooms, on every porch, and in the primary bedroom — a vault or a beamed tray. Stained in the cabin and cottage, whitewashed in the farmhouse
- Boards on the walls in every home — the cabin runs shiplap full height, the cottage wraps v-groove below the chair rail, the farmhouse stands it tall
- Schlage lever hardware on every door, finish-matched to your look
- Solid poplar trim, one module house-wide: flat 1×4 casings, a stool and apron under every window, 1×8 base. “Paint-grade” means poplar here, not MDF
Kitchen
The room that gets used three times a day gets specified like it.
- Cabinets built for the house, not pulled from a warehouse — all-wood construction, solid hardwood doors and face frames, soft-close throughout, no particleboard anywhere
- Cambria quartz countertops — American-made, with Cambria’s limited lifetime residential warranty
- GE Café series appliances
- Ducted range hood, vented outside — standard, not an upsell
- Under-cabinet lighting, standard
- Kohler plumbing fixtures
- Your choice of undermount stainless or an enameled cast-iron apron-front farmhouse sink
Baths
Tile, stone, and fixtures chosen to be cleaned for twenty years, not photographed for one.
- Porcelain and natural stone tile on floors and wet walls
- Fully tiled curbless walk-in showers with a linear drain — no curb to step over, no fiberglass unit, not in any bath
- Where a plan wants a tub: cast iron, with a fully tiled surround — never a one-piece plastic insert
- Kohler fixtures throughout
- Main-level living, built in: blocking for grab bars in every bath including the powder room, 34-inch vanity height, comfort-height toilets
- Powder rooms get a floating warm-wood vanity and a wall-mount faucet
Mechanical
Named brands, because you’ll ask — and because we’re not embarrassed to answer.
- Trane 16-SEER heat-pump HVAC
- Navien tankless water heater — hot water that doesn’t run out
- EV-ready: conduit from the panel to the parking side of the house and breaker space reserved — add the charger whenever you’re ready
- Indirect up-lighting on the vaulted wood ceilings and porches, on its own dimmer — the wood glows after dark
If a line on this page matters to you — a window brand, a tile, a door weight — bring it up at the kitchen table. We enjoy that part.
Next step
Every build starts with a walk on your land.
We’ll look at access, slope, soils, and utilities — then put real numbers to your lot. Free, and in writing.
Schedule a free site evaluation