See inside Lake Norman’s mansion of glass. It can be yours for $5.5 million.
Ted and Beverly Corriher quickly grew accustomed to boaters’ stares as the couple relaxed on one of the five balconies on their glass Lake Norman mansion.
Boaters would idle in front of their three-story home even during the nearly four years of construction, Ted Corriher told The Charlotte Observer Friday night.
They still do, including sightseers aboard the popular dinner-cruise Catawba Queen Mississippi River boat, he said.
Corriher realized early on that to build and own the lake’s only such glass mansion, you better be OK with the attention.
“I wave at them,” he said.
They wave back.
The couple’s 6,483-square-foot home graces the tip of a Lake Norman peninsula on Harbor Circle, off Kiser Island Road and N.C. 150 in Terrell, about 35 miles northwest of Charlotte.
Watch the sun rise, see it set
The mansion is by no means the biggest or most-expensive on the lake, Ted Corriher said, but it is unique. No other has so much window glass, he said.
And from no other home can you see the sun rise and set each day, because of the mansion’s northeast position on a peninsula, he said.
Oh, and by the way? Ted Corriher, who served as general contractor on the home, said he built the mansion with 96 tons of steel and 240 yards of concrete, and added a million pounds of Miami limestone Rip Rap coral on the shoreline.
“Yes, all hauled from Miami,” he said about the Rip Rap coral. “20 trucks.”
He started building the home in 2016 on the same lot his parents, Charles and Lillian Corriher, had a much smaller, more modest “lake house” in the 1970s. He remembers hanging out there as a boy.
Corriher said he spent three years envisioning the design of the mansion he started building in 2016.
The home also has a 2,400-square-foot dock with palm trees.
Is there any privacy?
Each of the three levels of the Corrihers’ six-bedroom, seven-bathroom mansion has concrete, heated floors. Because of its million pounds of window glass, the mansion has 24 air-conditioning systems, Ted Corriher said. The home has 153 panes of glass.
But what of those curious boaters and their persistent peeping? The windows are a special glass, tinted instead of glazed, and you get a blue mirror effect looking in from the outside, he said. The home also has 156 HunterDouglas custom blinds the couple can control with their phones.
Mansion hits market
So why, after all the time and labor creating the one-of-a kind mansion are the Corrihers selling their home?
The home went on the market a few days ago for nearly $5.5 million, according to its listing by agent Mike Toste of Southern Homes of the Carolinas.
Ted Corriher, who turns 58 on Sept. 6, said he is nearing retirement and plans to build a similar but larger glass home on the couple’s longtime property in Jamaica. And, at 27, their son is now grown, he said.
The couple also have a home in Newton and once had another in Key West, Florida.
Ted Corriher owns a Conover tractor-attachments company called Everything Attachments that does $32 million in annual sales, he said. Next year, he expects revenues to double with the opening of a larger Catawba County plant, he said.
Quit school, joined dad’s business
Corriher said he dropped out of school in 10th grade to work for his dad, a Ford tractor dealer in Newton. By 2007, Corriher said he’d grown his father’s dealership into the fourth largest in the country, fueled by internet sales.
Other dealers got upset, and he was ordered to stop selling online, he said.
“I told them to bring a big truck and pick them up,” he said of his tractors. “Then I sent them a resignation letter in 15 minutes. And Everything Attachments was born.”
Corriher said he grew his company into the largest U.S. manufacturer of tractor attachments sold directly to the public and commercial landscapers — attachments such as plows, box blades and garden bedders. The company uses “top-quality American steel” on all of the attachments made at its Conover plant, he said.
Great-grandfather traded mules
Corriher’s family roots run deep in Catawba and Lincoln counties, he said.
Great-grandfather Floyd Corriher traded mules, made wagons and was a blacksmith in the late 1800s on Court Square in downtown Lincolnton, he said.
Ted Corriher also dipped briefly into the world of politics, as a candidate for N.C. senate. He broke his back early in the campaign, needed surgery and had to pull out, he said.
Glass home plans
Corriher is also planning more glass homes.
He’s looking to build one more on Lake Norman and three in Treasure Beach on the south side of Jamaica, he said.
The small fishing town is a “six-mile stretch of coral-coloured (sic)” and sometimes black sands, private coves and rocky shores,” according to Visit Jamaica.com.
Corriher said he’s too rooted in North Carolina to just up and vanish off to Jamaica, though.
He’s working on a pilot’s license and expects he’ll enjoy flying the four-hour route to and from the family’s homes in different countries.
This story was originally published August 21, 2022 at 8:47 AM.