5.0 Rated · 200+ Projects Delivered
Hearthstone builds Western North Carolina’s finest custom homes, two hundred of them over three decades, from Biltmore Forest estates to timber-frame lodges above Black Mountain.
Since 1995, Hearthstone has built more than two hundred custom homes across the Blue Ridge - most between $2M and $4.5M, every one of them on a fixed-price contract, and every one of them still standing behind our name.
We keep our own carpentry crew, mill our own casework in Swannanoa, and take on just eight to ten homes a year. That restraint is the whole secret: enough hands to do it right, few enough projects that the owner of this company still walks your framing every week.
Explore What We Build
Six of the two hundred. Each one designed for its land, built by our own crews, and still cared for under warranty today.
A custom home is a two-year relationship. Ours is built on a process refined over 31 years and 200 homes.
We walk your lot, or help you find one, and talk honestly about vision, site constraints, and budget. Mountain land has opinions; after 31 years in Buncombe County, we know how to listen to it.
Working with your architect or our in-house design studio, we price the home as it's drawn, line by line, so the design you fall in love with is one you can actually build.
Every fixture, finish, and species of wood is chosen and locked before we break ground. Permits, engineering, and site logistics are handled by our team, not left on your plate.
Our own carpenters and a bench of trade partners we've kept for decades execute the build. You get a weekly walkthrough, a live budget ledger, and a project manager who answers the phone.
A room-by-room handover, a complete home manual, an 11-month tune-up visit, and a 10-year structural warranty. We build a hundred yards from where our clients live, we don't disappear.
Every Hearthstone home is built to be lived in for a hundred years, and to look like it was there for a hundred more.
Sam framed his first house in Madison County at nineteen, apprenticed under his father’s crew for a decade, and founded Hearthstone in 1995 with two carpenters and a borrowed dump truck. Thirty-one years later, the company builds some of the most ambitious homes in Western North Carolina, and Sam still walks every active site, every week.
“A custom home should embarrass the houses around it quietly, in the joinery, in the silence of its doors, in how it feels at 6 a.m. in January. That’s the work.”
, Samuel Hearth, Founder & Master Builder
Recognition Earned, Never Rented
We interviewed five builders in Asheville. Hearthstone was the only one who told us what our lot would really cost to build on, and then came in $40,000 under the contingency they made us carry. Two years later, they still answer our calls in one ring.
Whit & Caroline AldridgeThe Overlook at Town MountainOur 1921 four-square needed everything: structure, systems, and soul. Hearthstone's carpenters matched 100-year-old heart pine trim so precisely the historic commission asked who milled it. The answer was: they did, in their own shop.
Dr. Renata OseiWhole-home renovation, MontfordThe weekly walkthroughs and the live budget ledger removed every ounce of anxiety from the build. We moved in eleven days ahead of schedule. Eleven days early. On a custom home. In the mountains.
Tom & Bailey StricklandFernbank Farmhouse, FairviewThis is our third home built with a custom builder and the first one that felt like a collaboration instead of a negotiation. The timber frame in the great room makes guests go quiet when they walk in.
Marianne KesslerThe Sourwood Estate, Black MountainTransferable, third-party backed coverage on the bones of your home, foundation, framing, and load paths.
The number we sign is the number you pay. Scope changes happen only in writing, priced before the work.
We return before your first year is out to adjust doors, touch up finishes, and re-torque what a mountain winter loosens.
Straight answers about cost, timelines, land, and what it’s actually like to build with us.
Most of our homes fall between $475 and $750 per square foot depending on site, architecture, and finish level, roughly $2M to $4.5M all-in for the homes we build most often. During Discovery we'll give you a realistic range for your specific lot before you spend a dollar on design.
Plan on 4-6 months of design and pre-construction, then 14-22 months of construction depending on size and site difficulty. Mountain lots with significant grading or long drives run longer. We commit to a schedule in writing before groundbreaking and publish progress against it weekly.
Yes, it's often the best place to start. We walk candidate lots with clients (at no charge) and evaluate slope, soils, well and septic feasibility, view corridors, and true site-development cost. A $300K lot with $400K of hidden sitework is not a $300K lot, and we'll tell you so before you close.
Either works. We maintain long relationships with Asheville's best residential architects and are glad to collaborate with yours. For clients who prefer one contract and one team, our in-house design-build studio takes projects from napkin sketch to permit set.
Every Hearthstone contract is fixed-price, built from real trade bids, not allowances that balloon later. You get access to a live budget ledger showing every line item, every invoice, and every change order. Our average variance from contract price over the last 50 homes is under 2%.
Changes go through a written change-order process: we price the change, show the schedule impact, and proceed only with your signature. Our clients average fewer than four change orders per build, largely because our selections process locks decisions before framing begins.
Every home carries a 2-year systems and workmanship warranty plus a 10-year transferable structural warranty. We also schedule an 11-month tune-up visit and keep a dedicated warranty line, staffed by our team in Biltmore Village, not an answering service.
A first conversation costs nothing and commits you to nothing. You’ll leave with a real budget range for your land and your vision, in writing.
