Nappe Road

A Lakefront Custom Home on a Steep Slope

4,080 sq. ft. · ICF construction · Custom timber trusses · Completed 2023

The Brief

The homeowners wanted a new custom home on their lakefront property — without leaving the lot or disrupting the house they were already living in. Souleau built the new residence just steps from their existing home, on a site that drops nearly 30 vertical feet from the road down to the water.

The Challenge

A slope like this rules out a standard foundation. The home needed stepped footings across five different floor elevations and a foundation built entirely from ICF (insulated concrete form) rather than wood framing, all while holding the required clearance to the family’s existing house next door. Partway through construction, the structural engineer flagged a lateral-load condition from the backfill that the original design hadn’t fully accounted for. Rather than stop the job, Souleau worked with the engineer on a revised detail — two additional concrete buttress walls and a relocated foundation wall — and kept construction moving without missing a beat.

What We Built

A 4,080 sq. ft. custom home (2,286 sq. ft. main floor, 1,794 sq. ft. lower floor) on an ICF foundation, framed with engineered floor systems and topped with a hand-built timber truss over the great room — carved posts, braces, and split-ring connections, not a stock truss package. The home runs on in-floor radiant heat, a heat-recovery ventilator, and an air-source heat pump, with a building envelope that exceeds code-minimum insulation values across every wall, roof, and floor assembly. A sub-slab radon collection system runs throughout for long-term air quality.

The Result

The result is what the site always promised: a beautiful custom home on the water, built into the same slope that drove every foundation decision on the project. The extra engineering — the buttress walls, the stepped footings, the ICF construction — is exactly why that view was buildable at all. The home was permitted in 2021 and completed in 2023.

From the Client

“Souleau jumped into our custom home build, undeterred by the structural and other complexities, demonstrating: – Expert project management and drive – Positive, professional, collaborative & service oriented character including accountability and cost consciousness – Initiative & resourcefulness, bringing both experience & outside ideas to generate solutions

We would definitely recommend Justin”