USVI-On-Line

Holy mackrel, has anyone been following this place? The recent photos look amazing! Randy and Marcia you must be so proud!
OK, I feel I need to stay there. But i'm not going back in 2008, right? RIGHT???????

http://www.reefmadnessvilla.com/Madness-9.htm

I have been reading for quite a while and check the website every morning. (Please, please more posts!)

This place may pull us over to Coral Bay for the next (2009) trip.

that's what I'm thinking as well. I have been looking at places over there for a while now.

We stayed over in Chocolate Hole last year and realized that for all the driving (and dealing with traffic) we did, we should just stay more towards Coral Bay and save ourselves the aggrivation.

We basically just hit the North Shore beaches anyway and since our son was born, we don't go out as much in the evenings.

Both husbands and I come from construction families and continue to work in the field so I just love reading blogs that tell the tales of building on STJ.

I have not checked that blog in a while, thanks for the reminder. It really is a beautiful home.

I thought I was a "Gift Hill for life" person.

Now I'm having second thoughts...

I know what you mean Augie - I thought we were locked in to our favorite location too and quite frankly, I can't believe I am looking elsewhere.

We drove up the hill to check it out on Saturday. I'll post some photos later. It has a great view facing South and will get better afternoon sun than the houses in Coral Bay facing East. The access road is straight forward; the driveway still needs to be paved.

I seriously considered taking the cancellation penalty on Bay House to move to Reef Madness for March. This villa is going to be impressive.

Cheers, RickG

A question for Randy when he gets around to reading this. I can't figure out from the photos how you access the bedrooms. Are they both exterior access?

We had planned to stay at Reef Madness in May and were watching it being put together piece by piece. We were not rushing to book the villa because it was open until May, unfortunately, someone booked the 10 days we were planning on ! Boy were we surprised. Randy had been sending me whatever pictures he had that were not on line so that we could have a good idea of whatthe villa was going to look like. He was really sweet. For the price, at least this year, it looks great.

I'm going to be staying there at some point. It's gorgeous!

Randy, I am so thrilled for you and Marcia? Your home is lovely!

AWESOME!!!!!!

Hi Guys... And thanks so much for all your kind words. For those of you who have been following our blog you know how trying (sometimes - OK, a lot) this whole building process has been for us. We talked to Jeff and Russ of Bongo Bongo many times in an attempt to avoid some of the same pitfalls they had, but it seems as if the project took on a life of its own and down the same path we went. We kept telling ourselves that their story had a happy ending and maybe ours would too. But as the time dragged on and the budget exploded we had our doubts. We always tried to maintain our sense of humor but it became more and more difficult. Everything changed on our last visit. Suddenly things seemed to come together and on our last evening there last week we looked around and said to each other "Wow - we did it! We've got a great looking home on St. John!". There are still some hurdles to jump and some questions to answer, but right now we're feeling pretty positive. I got an e-mail from someone yesterday who asked me "Were you out of your freaking minds?" Well, yeah... I guess we were. But I suppose you have to jump outside of your comfort zone sometimes to follow your dreams. For now, we'll spend as much time as we can there and attempt to recover some of our enormous debt through the short term rental market. For the long term, who knows... We really love St. John and we really love all the folks we've met there both as vacationers and as homebuilders. We can both see the possibility of spending all our time there someday. In answer to some of your questions: The bedrooms are in a seperate building from the Great Room; 2 master suites (upstairs and poolside) each accessed by outdoor private entrances. The access road and driveway are being paved as we speak. Pictures of that on the blog tomorrow and we will be driving on it when we arrive (again) this Thursday evening.

It was great meeting some of you at the forum gathering on 10/28 (and on Memorial Day weekend as well). I consider many of the folks here as part of my family and it's nice to read the comments that you all have made to us, both here and at our website e-mail.

Marcia and I were married on St. John almost 8 years ago so it's a very spiritual place for us. We wanted our villa to be a home for us and for it to be a special place for anyone else who stays there. We think we've succeeded. We're feeling pretty good about it right now anyway...

Thanks again for the kind words...

great for you guys! thanks for answering my question.