Andrew Roby

And the winners are...

Award-winning renovation turns dated Lake Wylie home into an airy ‘tree house.' - Allen Norwood

Mar 27, 2009

An updated Lake Wylie house won top honors in the annual Excellence in Remodeling contest, earning “Best in Show” for contractor Andrew Roby Inc. and architect Lindsay Daniel.

The house is a 1970s contemporary, but was showing its age. Roby and Daniel updated it throughout, adding spacious decks with innovative cantilevers. They decided to enter the project in the Facade contest category, where it took Gold.

“Lindsay calls it the ‘tree house,'” said Trent Haston, vice president for Andrew Roby, Inc.All the changes allow (the owners) to basically live outside.”
Entries in the contest fell almost 40 percent from last year, but judges were impressed enough to award three special prizes.

Roby won a second with ALB Architecture; the third went to Creative Design Solutions and Buzz Knight Construction. The contest is hosted by the Remodelers Council, an arm of the Home Builders Association of Charlotte.
Judges this year were interior designer Teal Michel, Sarah Nielson of FRESH Designs, builder Tom Pruitt and architect Don Yelverton.

Awards were presented Monday by John Harmon of Harmon Construction and by council chairman Bob Pugh of Simonini Builders.

This year's contest drew 37 entries, compared with 61 last year. Remodeling contractors compete in categories defined by the type of the project and by the cost.

While the number of entries dropped from last year, Pugh and Haston said there was no drop in the quality of the winning projects. “This is a stellar group of remodeling contractors,” Pugh said.

What has changed is the motivation behind many remodeling projects. These days, contractors say, more owners are remodeling because they plan to stay in their homes, not because they plan to sell.

“In the last six to eight months, I've heard people say, ‘I'm going to be in this home a long time, so I'm going to enjoy it,'” Haston said. Pugh agreed: “They say, ‘I'm going to stay put – so here's what I'm going to do to improve my house.'”

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