Built to order: Very, very fast

As a home builder, Jack Quindlen knows it's always good for one's work to be in demand. Even so, the demand for his services on one particular house caught him quite off guard.

In January 2009, when Quindlen and his wife, Mary Ellen, received an unsolicited offer on their own home - it wasn't even for sale - they pondered starting over in a new place.

The time seemed right for more manageable spaces, since their son was already away at college and their daughter would be leaving for her freshman year in the fall.

Plus, they had a property to move to: a wooded acre in an arts-and-crafts community in Rose Valley only a half-mile from where they were living. Jack had planned to sell it, but the location was too perfect.

"When he bought that lot, I told him, 'There's only one problem, I want to live there,' " Mary Ellen recalls.

The Quindlens faced a wicked deadline, though: The buyers wanted in by the start of the school year, leaving little time for the couple to plan and build a new house.

Jack was certain he could handle the challenge. They broke ground in mid-April, with a move-in date in late August.

"I've worked on several tight deadlines, but this was just the most bizarre," Jack said. "When I told the inspector our schedule, he said: 'You're not going to make that.'

"I told him, 'We are going to make it, and we'll be living in this house.' "

Acting as his own foreman, Jack supervised and worked with a small army of subcontractors, some of whom he has been using since he began building houses more than 30 years ago.

"Toward the end of the job, we were averaging 20 trucks a day," he said. "My job in the morning was traffic cop, keeping them off the neighbors' grass."

The Quindlens were happy to find the new neighbors supportive. They would gather to watch the construction spectacle and unanimously signed on to let Jack work on holiday weekends - before they even knew the builder was the homeowner as well.

"I didn't know what kind of summer we'd have, so they had to put up with dust, mud, noise, and intrusion into their quiet weekends for the summer," Jack said. "Most people hate builders, but every day I'd have an entourage come down the street, and every one of them would say, 'Hi.' "

The weather, it turned out, was not at all cooperative. Torrential rains threw a wrench into the plans, and the original detailed schedule had to be thrown out.

To keep up, Jack worked every day at the site from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m., managing his business' other projects via laptop and cell phone from the bed of his truck.

The whole family pulled together to help. Son Jack spent the summer installing baseboard trim and doors and working on framing. Mary Ellen handled interior-design decisions and made sure materials arrived exactly when needed.

Even though the deadline was near, the Quindlens wanted to move into a finished house without cutting any corners.

Jack managed to build around natural features, removing only one hollowed-out tree on the verdant lot.

"I like to make a house fit in along the topography and greenery," he said. "It makes it feel like the home has already been lived in."

He was also conscious of building into the neighborhood stylistically, "an old-style house using new materials," as one neighbor put it.

Inside, the Quindlens concentrated on making the four-bedroom dwelling comfortable for Mary Ellen and Jack while their children were away.

They scrapped the idea of a formal living room, opting instead for a family room. But they kept a favorite concept from their previous home, a first-floor master suite. With just two people in the house, zoned heating and cooling systems allow energy savings.

"I feel like we're living in the best part of the house," Mary Ellen said. "It's smaller than our last one, but we were ready to downsize."

The new house is not as spacious as the old, which hosted more than 100 of daughter Julia's classmates for a school-play cast party. But it has already comfortably accommodated 30 of their son's cross-country teammates.

"It's never just one or two kids, they come in packs," Mary Ellen said. "I guess they just like the food."

The kitchen was designed with entertaining in mind. A large island and plenty of counter space make prep work easier. Moving the fridge to a wall opposite the range and ovens helps cut down on the traffic congestion around the refrigerator when Mary Ellen is cooking.

It was a rain-soaked day in late August when the movers brought the last of the Quindlens' furniture into their new home, that seemingly impossible deadline met after all.

The neighbors welcomed them with two separate photo albums documenting the project - a lovely gift for a family too busy building to take pictures along the way.

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