- Andrew Hawthorne and his wife spent $900,000 to build a glass house on a lake in North Carolina.
- They plan to live there some of the year and rent it out on Airbnb for as much as $1,000 a night.
This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Andrew Hawthorne, 35, who along with his wife Maya, 32, designed and built a glass house in North Carolina. The essay has been edited for length and clarity.
In 2015, my wife and I saved up to travel to New Zealand, her home country, for five months.
We were driving out to Cape Kidnappers, an iconic lookout point on Hawke's Bay, when we saw this super-architectural house in the middle of a field. It was just sitting in the middle of nowhere.
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.
I'm not a professional builder or architect. I originally went to school for mechanical engineering, but I ended up getting out of because I went to a career fair and realized I didn't want to work for anyone else.
I've done all sorts of different things. I was a film director for an ad agency and my wife and I ran a wedding photography business.
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
The original design — a design that had been itching in my head — was drawn up on a paper bag at a coffee shop.
It is somewhat based off Philip Johnson's Glass House, which has been one of my favorite architectural projects of all time. But I also had a lot of personal touches I really wanted to execute.
As a photographer, light has always been a big part of my craft. Originally, I wanted to put massive wood slats across this open court in the center of the house, but I realized that would make some really weird light textures in the house. So I scrapped it.
I grew up in the woods in North Carolina and I wanted to create an element of time in the house. We put a Japanese maple in the courtyard and surrounded it with glass, so you can watch the tree changing seasons from inside the house.
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 hired someone to do the foundations, drywall, framing, siding, and insulation. The portions I did myself were the electrical, HVAC, windows, landscaping, the dock, kitchen and bathroom installation, finishes, electric fireplace, heated floors, and roof work.
I'm not a manual labor fiend, but I love turning my ideas into reality. You just get in a rhythm.
I work really hard. My dad was a tank of a worker.
There are definitely challenges building a house as an amateur. I couldn't buy A/C equipment very easily because I don't have a license — wholesalers wouldn't even sell me anything. I went with a Mr. Cool system because they will sell direct to consumers.
A contractor quoted me $163,000 to do the HVAC duct work. I called the county and asked if I could do my own HVAC, and they said yes. I did it for around $19,500.
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
We got pregnant with twins in the middle of this project. Everything got kinda crazy.
In the late stages of building, we were living in an Airstream on site with our 3-year-old daughter. We had the twins in October 2023 and they were in NICU.
They were two hours away, and I was jumping back and forth with my daughter. Then, we rented a house across the street. The neighbors were awesome and watched my daughter sometimes.
It was the most insane part of my life so far. I was literally doing flooring for, like, 12 hours a day. I'd go home, sleep for like four or five hours, then stay with the twins for a couple of hours while my wife slept, then I would go back.
We moved into the house on December 9, 2023.
The countertop company literally dropped off the material on Christmas Eve, so I say the house was done by Christmas.
Once you live in a glass house, it's really hard to go back to anything else. In the best way, it's like you can't escape the elements. You're always kind of outside.
I planted a maple tree on our dock, which has become a destination
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.
The tree itself was only $1,000, but sinking the barrel and supplying all the dirt was intense. It's tied to the house's irrigation system and probably cost about $10,000 total. Every day at least five to 10 people stop by on boats to take pictures of it.
The house actually has a Wi-Fi-enabled irrigation system, so I control when the tree gets watered from my phone. It's basically a glorified potted plant.
We're renting out the glass house, but I dream of growing old there
We drove the Airstream back to San Diego and came back here full-time in early August. We will be in North Carolina multiple times a year — at least every summer. The point is for our kids to create memories on the lake.
I'll be able to go here when I'm old, and there will be no stairs.
We list it on Airbnb and Vrbo, and have a direct booking system. We've had around 14 bookings since June — the price ranged from $450 to $700 a night depending on seasonality or if it's a weekend or a holiday.
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.