A New Home Takes Flight in Libertyville – Chicago Magazine

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1 / 10

Next to the home’s four-car garage is Clatch’s workshop, where, during the last several months of the home’s construction, he was building a small airplane, his second. He says it will be completed in about a year, but it can’t be garaged here (there’s no airfield nearby).
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With wings attached, the plane would not fit through the door, so Clatch will complete construction outside. (The plane’s wings are at left, on sawhorses.)
3 / 10

The home’s interior is a great place for the family to hang out—nothing like the rented hangar where Clatch built his first plane. The double-height living room has stacks of windows that frame views out beyond the wooded yard to the native prairie through which the Des Plaines River Trail passes.
4 / 10

Atkinson milled the trees removed from the site and used them in the house: red, white, and black oak in the flooring, and black walnut in the mantelpieces and the bar top in the basement pub. He stockpiled the leftover wood for use in later houses.
5 / 10

Most main rooms are oriented toward the neighboring prairie.
6 / 10

Three of the five children’s bedrooms have lofts.
7 / 10

A large second-story deck offers a vast view of the prairie, which is covered in tall grasses from mid-summer through fall.
8 / 10

Atkinson does some fine detailing, as the chimneys in this photo and the beams in the next demonstrate.
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The trim of a roof peak shows how the house will nestle into its surroundings when they green up. (Landscaping begins today, Atkinson says.)
10 / 10

“We never build two houses the same,” says Atkinson, a builder since 1987. “If the next people want a garage for an airplane, we can do that. They just can’t have it the same as [we did] here.”

A New Home Takes Flight in Libertyville

List Price: N/A for this custom-built home
Sale Price: $3.2 million
The Property: Lots of houses come with a little workshop, but this Libertyville residence has a hangar-sized second garage, where the man of the house is building an airplane…

By Dennis Rodkin

May 9, 2011, 10:47 am

A custom-built home in Libertyville

List Price: N/A for this custom-built home
Sale Price: $3.2 million
The Property: Lots of houses come with a little workshop, but this Libertyville residence has a hangar-sized second garage, where the man of the house is building an airplane. Richard Clatch and Wendy Ward—they are both doctors—commissioned Atkinson Builders to build a home for their family of eight on a 2.2-acre lot adjacent to the Des Plaines River Trail. They closed on the purchase April 15th and will move in soon—but the body and wing pieces of the plane Clatch is building moved in months ago to the attached 1,300-square-foot hangar. Click through the photos below to see more of the house.

Price Points: Joe Atkinson has two neighboring lots for sale. Each is 1.75 acres, and they are priced at $525,000 and $650,000. He estimates that total costs with construction of new homes would come to about $1.8 million each.

Listing Agent: Joe Atkinson at Atkinson Builders, 847-680-8187; buildwithatkinson@gmail.com

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