Done Planning (for now)

Here are the house plans I have been working on for the past few years. I think I'm pleased. It's too close to me right now to be objective at all, but I intend to take them to the county tomorrow morning to apply for permits.

This design process has been great and arg. There might be couple of days spent over a table fussing about inches here and there and then some major question like "do we really want to live here?" or "what do I want to do with my life?" comes along and when we come back to planning we have to start all over again.

That has really been the beauty of it, though. Conscious of the 30-years of debt we are entering into, decisions about our favorite kind of kitchen floor became less significant than the bigger picture.
Where do we want to be buried? Where will I sit and play fiddle when I finally learn to play fiddle?

If you double-click on any of these they'll get much bigger for you if you want to take a closer look. I think the only way to get them small again is to use the back button of your browser. The "great" room is really a dance room. I just put that on it so the permit people could relate it to other houses. The "office" is Bird Jane's room. That's another permit-type adjustment. We have been debating for a long time whether to apply for permits at all. Out where we are you can still usually get away without them. But this year the fines (if you get caught) just went up to a minimum of $5,000. That and the peace of mind of not having to sneak around with truckloads of lumber are leading me to the county courthouse tomorrow. I'm 90% for sure going.

The next step is to set the corners and call to order gravel, sand and concrete and set up forms. I'll need extra hands on the day the concrete trucks come if you're nearby. I can't say exactly when because I have a lot to do to prepare for that and then it all has to be inspected. Hopefully within a couple weeks though. Thanks for your intentions. It really is meaningful.

Here is a poem by Robinson Jeffers which has been sliding around in the folder where I put house plans:

The polar ice-caps are melting, the mountain glaciers
Drip into rivers; all feed the ocean;
Tides ebb and flow, but every year a little bit higher.
They will drown New York, they will drown London.
And this place, where I have planted trees and built a stone house,
Will be under sea. The poor trees will perish,
And little fish will flicker in and out of the windows. I built it well,
Thick walls of Portland cement and gray granite,
The tower at least will hold against the sea's buffetting; it will become
Geological, fossil and permanent.
What a pleasure it is to mix one's own mind with geological
Time, or with astronomical relax it.
There is nothing like astronomy to pull the stuff out of man.
His stupid dreams and red-rooster importance: let him count the star-swirls.