Our House on the Creek

Cozy in the middle of winter

2012-01-19T15:16:00.007-05:00

It's been about a month since we moved into to this house and it seems our collective brains are beginning to settle. Mine, anyway, has been a little wilder than usual this past few months. Striving for the goal of moving in by the holidays with all that had to be done (firewood, a spring box, the ceiling in the dance room, another chimney for an upstairs stove, sealing up a couple doors, etc.) meant living pretty lean as far as time management goes. Writing in this log was among the places to trim fat.

Now to be clear: having moved in by no means means the house is done! You may be able to see in the pictures that the drywall has no mud or paint on it. And the downstairs drywall is still mostly sitting stacked and waiting to be hung up among moving boxes waiting to be smiled upon.

Erica and I are sleeping up in the attic, the kids are sleeping in the dance room where we also eat and spend most of our indoor time. One of the bathrooms has been turned into a temporary kitchen, and the other has a toilet (yesssss) and some more boxes.

So far we've been getting all of our water from the creek, and filtering our drinking water through a countertop filter. It's a romantic notion to haul your water up from a wild stream, but the romance is tested as you walk up the hill. I've been taking strength thinking of people in dryer, poorer parts of the world. There is a video series at our library called Families of the World, which shows a day in the life of a child in all different kinds of places, and one of the things that strikes me about these videos is how many people haul water as a major part of every day, sometimes for miles. What happens when they get sick? Retire?...

The pink insulation in the foreground here surrounds our water source, a spring box. By this I mean it taps into the water flowing just a few feet beneath the surface. There's a line buried that runs up to the house, along side it lies an electrical line. Because the water is so close to the surface, we'll still run it through a filter to keep out bacteria and whatever weird stuff might be running off of our house and vehicles. But what an exciting thought to be able to wash hands and dishes in flowing water! And once we connect gas to the house, we'll be able to choose cold or hot! So far the only water outlet going is the kitchen sink.

The house has been keeping pretty warm, but it gets a little hard to heat when it gets down around 0º. It'll probably be a lot easier when we set up more permanent, efficient wood burners.

Idgy has been coming to visit a few times a day now. I think you can see why.

The goal for 2012 is to finish the downstairs enough to move into it and also build the porches. We plan to have a deck-building party sometime late this summer, maybe Labor Day.

So far we don't have a very good phone connection, but please text anytime, or use a texting website like txtdrop.com. Otherwise stop on by!

We moved in

2012-01-04T19:54:00.000-05:00

It's been a busy period since diving back into building this fall, and I apologize for not making time to write, but here are some photos that tell something about what's going on.

Happy new year!

Woodpile days

2011-10-17T20:57:00.005-04:00

Well it's National Forest Products week, as you're probably aware. In case you didn't know there's still time to put your inflatable Paul Bunyan out in the yard. The holiday comes at a good time for me as I'm done hanging drywall for a while, and on to gathering firewood.

I had nothing to do with this photo other than nabbing it off of a sculptor's website because it inspires me. -link- I don't think I'll be making sculptures this year other than the usual rectangular shapes (which I always find attractive).

Yep the upstairs drywall is all hung up now and cleaned up. The joints aren't taped yet but we're going to put that off until the downstairs is finished so we can move in very soon (~1 month?). There will only be a very basic kitchen and other plumbing as it progresses.

This is the fourth year in a row now that we set out in Spring with the goal of moving into this place before Winter's snow. Everyone's getting excited as it seems really close this time.

Erica and I celebrated our 10th wedding anniversary by staying the night out at the house without our children. And by taking a hike up 'Shattuck's hill.'

Neighborhood place for sale.

2011-10-12T11:58:00.004-04:00

Update: This cabin was recently acquired by a friend named Cory and his parents and brother. We're grateful you're here!

The neighboring land halfway to the pavement is still available.

How to bend drywall

2011-10-07T21:38:00.010-04:00

A strong wind this weekend is stripping the trees and giving us the sky back. The colors, smells, and other sensations of this season have been fantastic as usual. The biggest news in the neighborhood lately is the birth of a baby girl to the couple next door. She was born healthy through a long labor and during a hurricane-strength wind storm. As for me, I've been hanging drywall.

We have a plan to get us moved in before the heavy snow which is to roughly finish the upstairs and move into there, and then work on the downstairs through the winter. The other significant part of the plan is that I've committed to working 40 hours on the place every week. This means only a half day on Tuesday and Wednesday and a full day every other day except Sunday. It's not different from what I've been doing except that now I'm counting the hours. It makes a huge difference, as it's very easy to stretch breakfast and checking email into the afternoon. Now if I do that I have to stay at work until after the kids are in bed.

Breaking news: The attic room now has a staircase.

Now to the drywall bending. After experimenting with long scraps over the course of the last couple months using the various tips I learned from people I talked to or read about online, I've come to an understanding of how this is not difficult at all.

The materials you are dealing with are gypsum and paper. The paper holds the gypsum together. Gypsum becomes flexible when moistened, but paper becomes very weak when wet. This is not really a problem, though, because gypsum is a mineral which sucks water out of whatever it can.

So:
1. Cut the width of your piece as it's much easier to cut a straight piece.

2. Lean the piece against a wall at about 45º.

3. In humid weather this may be enough to get the bend you want. If it doesn't bend much over the course of an hour or two, you can loosen up the gypsum by wiping the top side of it with a wet (but not dripping wet) sponge or dampening it with a spray bottle. Add a little water and wait an hour to see if you need more.

Be sure not to get the paper on the lower side of the sheet wet, because this will cause the sheet to break. Also be sure both sides of the paper have dried before handling the stuff. You may also want to wait until the mud dries inside before handling the piece so it's not too floppy.

We have a few curved drywall surfaces in this house, and although there have been moments of impatient regret in the process of their construction, for the most part I love the curves.

Wedding party process wrapup

2011-08-19T07:55:00.022-04:00

It's been almost two weeks already since Auntie Nora's wedding and we're just now getting back on the house building side of things. I don't have any pictures from the wedding itself (except for the little one up and to the right which I swiped from my cousin Peter's flickr page - sorry Pete, I was desperate.) But you can see some at the blog of the official photographer, Kat Berger: ellagraph.blogspot.com

It was a fantastic time with family and friends from all across the country and beyond, kids chasing each other in their party clothes, superhuman dancing to irish accordion tunes, a margarita bar across a fresh bridge, the list goes on and it was all to celebrate the joining of these two people so dear to my heart.

But the wedding itself was only one part of the celebration. Nora and Jared came to stay with us for a whole month before the big day, and we worked, ate and played together on the house and grounds as other family members came in numbers congruent with the crescendo of energy leading up to the wonderful happening.

It's remarkable that almost the whole clearing and landscaping for the wedding happened in two two-week sessions. The first being in May, which was mostly Erica and the kids cutting trees and clearing brush, and the second being the last two weeks before the wedding.

Here's May:

And the same spot on August first. In this photo we're putting a new handle on the post hole digger. The only way I knew it was the same place was by the trees that Erica is sitting on in the previous photo.

One of the first excavation jobs was to make a little road down to the site to haul things up and down. This photo looks up the hill in May.

And this one looks down in August.

To get the stumps out and smooth out the site we had help from a rented mini-excavator and our neighbors on their tractor. This is the last week of July.

Assembling the stage.

Then came the sod.

Painting signs

The lumber which became a dance floor is to become a wood/bike/tool shed in the future. The delivery of this lumber didn't go so well. The truck got stuck in some of the freshly broken sand and it took a few hours and eventually a tow truck to get it out. The poor driver left in the dark, as our kids had just fallen asleep.

A lot of people worked with shovel and wheelbarrow to turn the rugged hillside into pleasant pathways.

Keep in mind it was exceptionally hot and humid these last two weeks. This photo shows the late morning humidity dripping off of a single-pane window. Now that the house is insulated it stays comfortably cool on the ground level all day.

If all this looks like a ton of work, it was, but I dearly love it. I'm tempted to apologize for demystifying the wedding experience for any of the guests, but I'm not going to. Part of the reason I keep this blog is to show what a pain in the ass country living is. There is a story told again and again of a young family moving out into the woods with a notion that it will be a simpler better life only to find that it's not very easy or comfortable. It pushes them to the limit and sometimes beyond. Erica and I were lucky to have a few years in different types of woods houses and most of a year in a tent together before we bought this plot of land. We had a pretty well developed idea of our own limits and each other's as well, but that's not to say they haven't developed further!

For all it's pain, however, the rewards are excellent. Getting to know yourself and your family better is a real wealth. And this time of year, when the berries are ripe, the bugs are gone, and the water is warm is hard to beat. Last night when I stopped working on the insulation at about 9:30, I had a beer on a stump down by the creek, listening to the water and the rustling of the night creatures. Bats, birds, flying squirrels. A coyote sang in the distance. Sometimes I have conversations with the neighbors where we say things like "We get to LIVE here," in hushed tones as if someone might hear. And sometimes I gloat on the internet.

Mudboarding

2011-07-20T18:44:00.007-04:00

Our 'mudboarding' party was a busy one. There was way more food and beer than necessary, but we're doing a fine job of using it up before it goes bad. And who can stop the karate chop? Look out.

I'm sorry I was so scatter-brained over the weekend. It had been a long week of putting up insulation and making other preparations. I usually underestimate the time it takes to get things done, but with insulation I was exceptionally optimistic. Anyway thanks to everyone for coming and helping turn this place into a fine place to live.

Hauling in nearly 200 sheets of sheetrock was a feat in itself.

So far we have sheetrock hung in a bedroom and a half, as well as in the mud room. Sheetrock is one of those brand names, like band-aid, that does a nicer job of describing the thing than the generic term.

This week is focused on outside work, though. We're preparing a place for my sister's wedding reception and since we're renting a mini-excavator to take out stumps for that there are a bunch of other things to do while it's here. I worked with it today. It's not cheap but worth a lot more than what you pay if you think of how hard it is to dig out a stump by hand or dig a ditch.

Insulation period

2011-07-10T00:48:00.008-04:00

It's been a busy week leading up to this drywall party. We've had a lot of help, which keeps things light. The other day, when there were half a dozen people putting up insulation, Seamus asked his mother, "So, is this a insulation party?"

There is still a lot of insulation to put up, but the downstairs is pretty much ready for drywall. And upstairs a lot of the fussy parts are done, so I think we may get that done today.

I finally got the materials estimated on Wednesday and ordered them Thursday morning. We're expecting a truck Saturday morning around 9:00 I think, and it needs to be hand-loaded as I couldn't get a forklift truck at such late notice. So if you're coming Saturday and can make it there early-ish it would be appreciated.

Thanks Jim for the drywall hoist. I've never had the pleasure of using one of these, but so far I really like it.

The weather is supposed to be warm this weekend. I made a little path down to a bathing pool in the creek just upstream from our place. It might not actually be on our property, but it's real close.

Summer evening tacos with the bride and groom after much fiberglass and a swim, and before a hike up Oakytop to see the Big Bay fireworks. The fireworks were pretty far away and had some stiff competition from the moon over misty green mountains.

Nora and Jared have been staying out here for most of the week, bringing a wave of fun and energy to the project.

Graduation of a building

2011-07-06T09:53:00.005-04:00

Yesterday the building inspector and the plumbing/mechanical inspector gave their approval of our house's bones and guts, respectively. Yesssss.

This means the next thing to do is insulate the place. We're using fiberglass because it's cheap and durable. Perhaps its greatest downfall is its tendency to leave glass needles in your flesh, lungs, and eyeballs. So you have to wear a lot of clothing, glasses and a respirator to keep it happy. Let's all wish for a July cold snap, eh?

The drywall party next weekend is still on. If drywall is not your thing, there is an elliptical stage to build down by the creek, an arched ceiling that needs wood, possibly a well project to put together, and tent spots that need to be leveled, among other outdoor things. Speaking of tents, camping is encouraged, as the Big Bay road gets longer at night. And bring an instrument if you have one to play, acoustic or electric. So far quite a few musicians have shown interest, so it'll be fun to see what comes together.

More details about the party will come as we get them worked out.

On Sunday the 17th you may consider leaving the site to walk a while at the Eagle Rock site. There is a ceremonial walk then and there, not a protest, with the goal of acknowledging that this is a sacred site. If you haven't been there, you have my word that this is a powerful place. The building inspector who stopped by yesterday had just been up at the mine site there and remarked that level of safety and cleanliness up there was far beyond anything he'd seen in his 18 years as a building inspector. I heard another account like this at one of the informational meetings. I wonder if that powerful presence there, highlighted by the people who have been calling attention to It there, is affecting the builders and engineers, nourishing their respect for the earth and the lives of the people who work there.

Anyway the walking ceremony starts around 10:00 and continues until sunset, with the goal of walking around the site (4 miles) three times. This is a solemn walk from one drum site to the next. This link may or may not work to a facebook page about the event.
More information is available at standfortheland.com.

We're going to need help this weekend, too, order to get insulation installed. It's both fussy and uncomfortable, but also very satisfying.

Who's afraid of the inspector?

2011-06-24T21:37:00.003-04:00

Today we had the framing, plumbing, chimney stuff and electrical rough-in inspected. There were a few notes, but nothing serious! There are a couple plumbing fittings that are the wrong kind for their use, a question about whether you can have more than one woodstove on one chimney flue, and then this funny thing about 'combustion air.' When you build a modern house you're supposed to make it air tight. Then, since you're sending air out the chimney, you have to poke holes in your air tight box -to let air in.

It is slightly more intelligent than that, in that you can control where the cold air goes and put a damper on the hole that only opens when the house needs air, but it is still a little silly. Anyway it's an easy job, poking a hole or two (we actually already built one in, but it is only for the masonry stove.)

So a very short list before we can move on to insulation and wall boards. Yay!

Seeing lucky stars

2011-06-16T21:57:00.005-04:00

The big news today is that Aya Jane is okay! She catapulted out of a hammock this morning and hit the ground head first. About an hour later she started feeling out of it and I told her to take a walk to clear her head. This was terrible advice but a walk in the woods is my standard medicine for her and usually is a perfect cure for listlessness or general loss of focus. I hadn't really heard about the hammock crash or if I did I didn't record it in my memory thinking it was no more than the usual tumble.

Thankfully she found her way back but still felt off. So she took a nap. When she got up an hour later she wasn't able to answer simple questions. She was mumbling, blankly staring, and unusually drowsy so we rushed down the 550 to the hospital where her condition worsened to the point where the ER Doctor said repeatedly, "squeeze my hand if you understand me." And she responded by raising her other hand.

She had a CT scan to be sure she wasn't bleeding badly and she wasn't. Whew, but she was still in and out of consciousness and not able to respond to simple questions. What is your name, where are you, etc. She would occasionally answer in complete jibberish.

I had been praying for a while, envisioning angel hands of golden light to clear the way of healing, but as she dozed there in the noisy hospital afternoon and we were left alone I held her hand and prayed a hail Mary silently. When I got the end of the prayer her mouth whispered the first comprehensible word in an hour or more, without opening her eyes, "amen."

The doctor ordered an MRI, which took a few hours to complete with all the waiting around in square rooms. During this time I watched our dear girl come back almost completely. By dinnertime we were home and she ate a small meal and read a few chapters to Moses at bedtime.

I've come to understand that this is sort of a normal thing that happens to people who get a blow to the head. I guess a crash of that magnitude is rarely life-threatening. I probably wouldn't have been so worried if I had just called upon the wisdom I gained from watching the Dukes of Hazzard all those years.

But it really does put things in perspective to see your loved ones so helpless. And what do you make of the Hail Mary story? I don't even think she knows that prayer all the way through, and besides I wasn't praying out loud.
I tell you the next world is not far away. It interlaces every living thing at all times. Dead things too I bet.

We've picking away at the to-do list that precedes the rough-in inspection. This is when you have the framing, plumbing, and electrical stuff inspected before it gets buried under insulation and the wall boards. We have yet to run wires to a box by the generator, and a couple minor framing tasks. I'm pretty excited for the next phase.

Speaking of which, if anyone's interested we're planning a work party for the weekend of July 16th. The main objective will be to hang drywall. There will also be outside work, including making tent spots for camping and other party preparations. We'll be camping out the weekend and I don't know what kind of music and dancing we'll put together, but so far a lot of musicians have shown interest in this party, so it may be a progressive jam time.

Mossy made himself a guitar, amp and mic on a stand out of the scrap pile. Seamus is playing the bottle-with-a-stick-in-it. The future of rock n roll is in good hands.

Full-Swing Spring

2011-05-18T15:26:00.009-04:00

Leaves are popping out in lime green waves across the hillsides. We have been in a planning mode for a while, laying out a schedule that will allow us to move in this fall –this time for real! It involves a rough-in inspection within a week or two, a wedding and two work parties: a drywall party July 16th, and a porch party Labor Day weekend. It's nuts.

It's been busy since last writing. Aya Jane turned 13.

We have run wires all over the place. By the way, I have to express my gratitude to all the people who came out to help rough in the electrical. You can read how to do about anything on the internet or at the library, but when you learn by doing with the help of experienced leaders, things go so much smoother and happier and also faster.

Here's a nice trick Paul had to keep wires pulling smoothly: hanging up a spool of wire on a piece of pipe and some scraps of wood.

Much of the past couple weeks have been spent clearing a flat spot in advance of my sister Nora's wedding. It is a very fun motivation but the pressure is on to get grass started to be ready for an August gathering. If anyone out there is excited about this sort of work, we'd be happy to have you.

We slept on the floor in the new house these past two weekends. It is nice to make a little shift from work place to home place, but not that easy. It's far easier for me to obsess about the details of this place if I don't leave it. So I'm learning again how important it is to control my mental flow. I'm finding the need to step outside of the mental world and be a natural man whenever the planning begins to be a destructive force.

The road is nearly dried up. I look forward to being able to drive in easily, even in our two-wheel-drive truck. So far the bugs are not flying very much, but you can see them thriving in swamp pools and ditches. Hm.

So the to-do list before our rough-in inspection is as fathomable as a to-do list of unfamiliar projects can be. We're hoping to be through it by the end of next week. As busy as we are, we're still making a little time to get out to secret spots on Sundays.

April fools

2011-04-10T00:27:00.006-04:00

The road out of the woods is exceptionally muddy this mud season, so we've been mostly walking in from the bridge, sometimes from the sand pit. Sometimes we try to make a run through the mud holes, especially if there are heavy things to haul. This is our neighbors' car that we passed in a surprise parking spot.

Another neighbor has been pulling a trailer with a four-wheeler, serving as an open-air bus, a delightful ride if it's warm and you don't mind a little mud on your trousers.

We now have about a foot of snow on top of the mud. It looks like it will be a while before we drive all the way in. You can't be too sure about things in Spring, however.

So the plumbing rough-in is done! I checked the water lines with air and they've been holding about 60psi for about three weeks. That plumbing project was a different process from other building projects. It was a time of doing a little bit every day, and then one day you've done the last little bit. It's ironic that it was a less-fluid process than is landscaping or carpentry.

After plumbing comes electrical, and a bunch of people have come out to make that come together. It happens that a few of my friends who are experienced with electrical work also have had a little down time this past few weeks, and so the electrical rough-in is already nearly done. There are just a few more circuits (out of 19) to run wire to and then the service panel to organize. Then there is the solar set-up to figure out.

I just have to give Kitty (the dog) some praise for sitting on the stairs here while we worked and other dogs ran around. She did also eat a plate of bacon off of the counter that day, so don't let her get a big head.

Shanty Boys

2011-03-16T18:13:00.004-04:00

We've been out gathering cedar posts from the swamp, as you can see in this photo, taken with a Mossomatic 2002. The small amount of crusty snow we had for a while was ideal for skidding logs out of the wilderness. It was a nice activity to be doing this month while at the same time reading about the lumberjacks, or shanty boys, as lumberjacks used to be known.

That's me third from left.

You can see these guys were pretty skilled, moving so many logs using only pike poles and horse-power. But holiwah did they ever wipe out the white pines. This whole Northwoods region used to be dominated by them and now they are like occasional ornaments among the mixed hardwoods and other pines. After the great pines were exhausted, there were huge fires and then -because the young white pines were growing up all bushy together- they were vulnerable to moldy funk and many died or couldn't compete. And then the deersss. When winter food gets scarce they eat the needles if they can reach them.

So plant some white pines if you live in the Northwoods! Especially if you have a dog that keeps deer away. By the time you and your dog are done living where you are they'll be safely out of reach. You can get them at this link to the Marquette County Soil Conservation District.

The weather has changed now to slushy so the good logging days are likely done. I think we have enough poles now though to support most of the porch. So it's the end of the plumbing I'm back chasing.

Happy St. Paddy's Day!

Noggins and wishes

2011-03-01T14:10:00.010-05:00

I don't like to live for a season I'm not in, but it is really nice to think about working without gloves whenever you want and so on. Winter is sometimes my favorite season out here, but it does make most of this building work more difficult, so this year it's especially exciting to see the sun getting higher in the sky.

This past month we spent a long weekend in the Detroit area visiting friends and family and returned with some inspiration, as well as bacteria and viruses. These things together made for some good quiet introspection.

Along the trip we listened to a tape of someone reading John Steinbeck's The Pearl, where a young couple's baby is stung by a scorpion and the doctor refuses to see them because they have no money. They go to the ocean and pray for a great pearl which they can sell and have a lot of money and pay a doctor. They find it and it becomes a terrible curse and leads them to a most dreadful fate.

The story, along with the many billboards announcing the Powerball jackpot led to the question, "What would you do if you won the lottery?"

My list was something like this:
Pay off loans, good traveling car, college fund, health insurance, retirement fund, go traveling to inspiring places now and then, and give the rest to the community and so many worthy charities around the world, including setting up an endowment to provide for really fun concerts in town every year.

It's a fun thing to think about. But after listening to the end of the story of the Pearl, I had to rework my list a little. The mistake that was made in the story is that the parents did not pray for the baby's health, but for the money to pay for things to go their way, in other words power and recognition. They got it, and then it got them back really bad.

So... maybe what I really wish for is to not be worried about money or health or education and to be a musician. Whew! I can do that. It asks a lot of me to be true to those wishes, but no more than I already have.

We spent February finishing up some framing tasks, like closets and the blocking you can see in this photo, staggered between the floor joists overhead. These pieces, called noggins by some people, keep the joists from twisting in the middle and tie all the joists together to firm up the floor. It seems like an easy thing to do, but you have to cut each one just right and getting them to fit snug involves a lot of ramrod-type behavior, which is fun for a very limited time. I recommend putting them in before the floor is nailed down if you know where your plumbing and ductwork are going to go.

The plumbing rough-in is also nearly complete. I'm putting separate lines to each fixture rather than mainline with branches. This is partly because a lot of the fixtures are right near where the water comes into the house and partly because it is nice to use these manifolds (pictured) with shutoff valves and have very few joints hidden inside walls. Besides, the hose is cheap relative to the fittings that join pipes together.

So here's to you and the most perfect wishes you can see!

Chillin

2011-02-01T19:11:00.009-05:00

This is the cold time of year. I sure do love it though. The routine is simple. The woods cast a spell on you by way of silence and emptiness. Maybe it's the oxygen in the air. Or perhaps it comes over you when you see a hare's tracks in the snow and since it's always snowing you know you are the only one who will witness this piece of a furry thing's survival story.

This is also the time of year for planning ahead. We are more than excited to be moving in this year. There are still so many things to do, and my head is ready to spin at a moment's notice. It takes a vigilance to keep it on straight. Last Saturday as I was working alone inside a cold closet all day, I started to feel foolish again for getting myself into this project. It could have been so simple.

Of course we get ourselves into these struggles because they cause us to grow.

It actually hasn't been unbearably cold out at our building site, partly because of the weather and partly because the house is developing. Having a larger wood stove and all of the windows and doors in makes a huge difference, especially downstairs.

The plumbing lines are mostly in place now. This picture shows (from top) supply lines and drains for a shower, a toilet and the kitchen sink downstairs. The pex hose we're using goes together so easily it almost seems weird. Drilling holes in the right places has been the big challenge there.

This last couple weeks has mostly been spent on the last details of framing: a few closets, a wall into the dance room, and access to the attic. The end of things is exciting yet usually more fussy than the the rest of the process.

We look forward to a few big parties this year. More on that coming soon!

Happy Christmas

2010-12-24T11:40:00.010-05:00

Yesterday we stopped in at our 'big house' to pick up some Christmas supplies and I snapped a few pictures. Here is the new landing at the kitchen door.

And here is its secret. Shhhhh.

And here is the arch door in its place. There is about another day's work ahead tuning this door and giving it a knob. But for now I'm happy to see something in the last big hole.

It's Christmas Eve here in Big Bay and a quiet day, except for the motor sounds of our boys pushing their trucks and talking through their teeth in big man voices, and for the sounds of Christmas cooking and cleaning going on downstairs. I'm sitting in bed hoping to shake a cold I've been half-denying all week. All a sick guy wants for Christmas is to be well again. I have a warm dry house, a caring family and a few days with no plans which couldn't be easily canceled or modified to allow for lying around. So I guess I have it made. If nothing else it's a good day to play around with the internet. The new background photo is from this Spring on top of the hill behind our little cabin.

Here's wishing you peace and joy in the darkest and sweetest time of year.

Rest in peace, Anniemoosh

2010-12-12T16:59:00.009-05:00

Our dear dog has fallen victim to the snowy Big Bay road. She was twelve.

Last winter we witnessed that Annie was too deaf and blind to sense cars and so since then we've been keeping her on a leash unless we're out far from traffic. Now and then of course she'd get free and come back, and I regret to say we started letting her out on her own on occasion this past few months.

I picked her up from a sled dog farm in Skandia in August when she was about a year old and the people there had decided she wouldn't be much of a sled-puller. She had never been in a car or house and the first night wouldn't even stay in the house where we lived in Marquette. She and I slept in the backyard.

She never did get too civilized, in fact she was such a scrapper at parties that I used to joke to myself that she gives bitches a bad name. So we stopped taking her to parties and for the most part there was peace with the neighbor dogs.

An old dog dying seemed a small tragedy at first. But digging her grave yesterday was so sad. I sang the Bob Dylan song "He was a friend of mine" only saying "She" instead.

There's a shadow in our house where she used to be. When a piece of popcorn drops to the floor or when I get the urge to go outside before bed. It's just sad and that's that.

This picture is from a couple years ago when our neighbors' dog Alice was hit by a car.

Today we took our time saying goodbye before burying her body in a spot where we can plant an apple tree in the spring as a memorial. It's never easy to say goodbye to your loved ones, but we all felt better after talking about it together in a snowstorm.

She was a good dog. She never learned any tricks and didn't always come when called, but we lived harmoniously with her. When we were new in the woods and I often came home late and had to walk the last quarter mile in the dark, she would be there waiting for me in the driveway. She was a darn good dog.

Commitment

2010-12-07T10:49:00.004-05:00

I've had a fair amount in trouble in life trying to distinguish a whim from a calling. I'm finding that to hear a calling you have to make yourself quiet. Free from the noise of your head (daily work, resentment, fear, anger, ...) and the noise of your environment (machines, TV, email, ...)

When you ignore a whim, it goes away leaving only what trace you attached to it. When you ignore a calling, though, you end up getting sick, spiritually, mentally and physically. This is the belly of the whale, where I've been many times.

A few weeks ago I had something of a whale-belly experience as a result of my anxiety and short-sightedness about this house. Sometimes this project is so big that I allow my worry machine to get control. I find myself reading how-to material whenever I have free time, often when I should be sleeping. My wake-up call this time came in the form of a strained back muscle, which for a few days made even yawning sharply painful.

After some consultation with Erica, a jump in Lake Superior, some prayers and the abundance of friends, family and music I enjoy here I am still feeling a ton of pressure. I have just learned again that I can ride it and not be consumed by it.

The landing at the back door is done as of yesterday, and the arch door is very nearly hung. The door is taking so much time. I sure hope it works!

Here's one of two flying squirrels we released in an old abandoned cabin at the end of November. This one is eating snow. A moment after this picture was taken he 'flew' over to a nearby tree and then climbed way up the tree and flew into the woods. His spouse went into the house.
They had been nesting under our bed inside the floor. It's much quieter at night now.

Let the snowflakes fall

2010-11-14T11:06:00.005-05:00

Since I started living in the country house-builder lifestyle, about 8 years ago, Autumn has been a manic time. The outdoor goals of the year face the dwindling warm days. And firewood has to get piled up. Our two-wheel-drive truck becomes useless on the backroads when the snow starts to pile up. So ends my list of excuses why I haven't blogged in a while.

It's been a beautiful Fall, we managed to get wood piled up pretty good, hauled in almost all of the insulation, and even began insulating the block.

There's another couple weeks of framing work to do: closets, a landing at the back door and so on.

Then there's this big old stove my dad and Moses helped me haul in. Hooking that up and building the chimney are also on the table. We had used it the last couple years we were in our little cabin. It's way too big for that place, but it was nice to have the open fire.

As for today I'm resting my body after straining a muscle in my back on Saturday while taking the garbage to the dump. It's feeling better by the day and the old dog should be back on line come Thursday when I plan to get back to physical work. Until then I have plenty to do on paper, planning ahead for the Winter.

Labor Day Lost and Found

2010-09-19T14:44:00.004-04:00

Please call or write if you know who these belong to.

Shingling Digested

2010-09-13T09:10:00.003-04:00

The shingling party was such a whirlwind that it has taken a few days to be able to start to get my head around it. We counted over a hundred guests, and almost that many bundles of shingles.

I was describing the event to some friends this Tuesday and they said it sounded like a mingo, a type of building party they had witnessed in Ecuador. At a mingo (I think this is the word) each family in a village sends one member to help with whatever project it is.

This is similar to our experience, as a few people came from all the facets of our social lives: our village. We are so fortunate to have such a large and loving village. I am grateful to everyone for their hard and focused work, but the project itself stands as a mere symbol. In a few thousand years the next ice age will wipe all semblance of this house away, but the happy spirit of everyone is way bigger than all this stuff.

Here is a video featuring music of Pitchy Kanto recorded Saturday night. I apologize that there aren't more pictures or video. We were real busy.

Click here to see photos posted on Facebook.

Shangled!

2010-09-10T00:21:00.000-04:00

Shingling eve

2010-09-03T22:08:00.006-04:00

Green Guy has been busy.

He set up a kitchen.

Even a chillout room.

I think he's excited to be having a party.

Daddy, where do shingles come from?

2010-08-26T22:49:00.005-04:00

The boys and I went out to the shingle mill in Trenary yesterday. I asked them as we were loading up what kind of saw they used and they eagerly gave us a tour. They slide 16" or 24" logs on a carriage over a rust-brown circular blade which is about 40" across. The shingles fall onto a conveyor which takes them up to another cutting device which cuts them to width. The waste is baled and sold for archery targets or other uses.

We bought the cheaper shingles, both for the price and the character knots. I don't like the uneven bottoms, though, so today I spent an hour trying different methods of cutting them square. The chainsaw wins again. When the shingles are snug in their bales you can go right down the edge of them. Chainsaws, albeit noisy, are the closest you can get to a real light saber, as far as I know.

Our to-do list before next week's party is still something of a Goliath, but we're just going to keep whipping stones up there and know that this event is not going to be what we think it is. It's going to be just what it is.

Shingling Soon -- Party Details

2010-08-19T15:52:00.009-04:00

Summer is now standing by the door, scratching her head, and there's only two weeks before our shingling. Since last posting I've managed to get the attic room framed and a few more windows and doors trimmed.

This party is getting exciting. We conceived this house with the community in mind, since we won't need to use a dance room all the time —and since it's often hard to have a gathering in the woods around here when sleet or bugs are in the air. This will be the biggest gathering yet, and though there's still so much to do it's great to see this building becoming useful.

So the party will be starting Saturday morning, September 4th and continue until Sunday night. We'll be nailing up shingles in teams during the day and playing music in the evening. The bands Lovechild and Pitchy Kanto have pledged their presence as have a handful of other musicians, and all attendees are expected to bring an instrument, sing, dance, or at least bob their heads in whatever way comes naturally.

Camping is encouraged. There are lots of places to put a tent and lots of floor space inside once things quiet down. We're planning to serve Mexican food on Saturday and Italian on Sunday. There'll be things to eat and drink during the day, too. If you want to bring something to share then you should do that.

A hammer and a nail apron will be useful if you have them. You may wish to use earmuffs sometimes. We have a few pairs and earplugs, too. If you have experience with this sort of work, you might find yourself being a leader for a while.

There will be wooden signs once you get off the pavement, so it shouldn't be too tricky.

Here's the Googlish map, if that helps:

View Larger Map

Hope to see you there. If you can RSVP by facebook or the comment place here that would be helpful to estimate food and beer requirements.

Shamphurgial Preconcertions

2010-06-27T20:51:00.006-04:00

Oh baby the drain system is done. I think. There is one spot where the pipe is kind of crooked in the joint fitting. It's probably okay.

The to-do list is changing shape, becoming fathomable. Last week I had a mini freakout when someone asked me to do a concert in Big Bay's school gym (July 23rd). So I spent a few hours making a list of everything I plan to do this summer, and what it demands of me. It's still a busy time, but my worry machine is lulled to sleep for a while so I can enjoy life!

The new focus is the exterior. The blue wrapping paper we put on the house a year and a half ago has been unprotected way too long. The manufacturer's website says it starts to degrade after 120 days of direct sun. Under the shade of trees I think we have a little longer, but we're definitely pushing it.

So we're having a shingle party!
Labor day weekend, September 4th and 5th.
There are a few bands who've offered to come play. We'll make dancing space in the dance room.
Bring a tent, or find a spot in the house to camp.
There'll be food, beer and happy people all over the place.

If you want to come help get ready for the party, I'll be out there most Mondays, Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays from now until then. We have a door to hang, some windows to trim around, some roof braces to build, and so on. If you have a question, want directions or think of a name for this event, please post it here or send me a message by email. Some names suggested so far: Cedar Shingle Hootenany, Waitefest, Section 23 South Side Shingle Session...
I thought it might be nice to create a name that had not been made up yet, but that sounds like it means something, like Shamphurgium. "Will I see you at the Shamphurgium?"
"Yes, I look forward to it."

Strawberries already

2010-06-14T00:24:00.006-04:00

I didn't expect I'd be still working on the drain pipes in the middle of June. I hope that theme doesn't get too tiresome for you blog readers!

The pipes are going together well enough, though. It's a stinky job, fastening them together with solvent. But I wear a respirator and it's exciting to see it nearly done. Outside we're almost ready for shingles. The ledger boards (where future porches will attach) are up, and the trim around the downstairs windows is complete. Also I think we have our siding plan together at last. We have come back to the idea of using a preservative on the shingles, after having thought about it and looking around at other houses with mold on them. But we plan to use a less-toxic type called Cabot.

In other mental news, I think I have a solution for finishing the arched ceiling. Think overturned boat.

I sure like writing in this blog. When I'm in the middle of these projects it's easy to become caught up in the daily struggle and become obsessed about details. This is one great way to step aside and look at it as it is: some nice things to do, even if it is a boatload of nice things.

Seamus had his 4th birthday party in the new house. We asked him what kind of birthday party he wanted and he had no ideas---until a couple days before the day when his sister told him it would be his golden birthday, it being on the 4th. To this he said, "No, it's my purple birthday, and I'll have a purple crown and a purple cake. A train cake." We took note.

Here he is, kissing his cake.

He is such a happy child, and in a phase where random kisses or hugs are common, as well as saying "I love you" to anyone or anything ("I love you tree!") whenever the moment strikes him.

Aya Jane has been working on a little garden out in the clearing where we park, with some help from her brothers. She has been bringing buckets of rich black muck from the creek's floodplain to mix into the sand and has peas, beans, pumpkins, sunflowers, a tomato, and I don't know what all else.
I don't know what Mossy's planting here. Those are lucky seeds though.

May got hot

2010-05-24T12:11:00.012-04:00

Summer is here with its bugs and hot weather already. We were making fires in the woodstove two weeks ago and last night had a fan in the window.

The kids are adjusting quite well. As I write today they are clawing at sand on the Beach in Big Bay, with a creative energy I can't hope to match today. I'm fighting some kind of bug which has been making its way through the family. Seamus has had it worst, with coughing fits at night. But it's moving right on by, getting better everyday.

It has been a delight to work in warm weather. The house has the smell of fresh cut lumber seasoned with a touch of toxic glue and mold which brings back fond memories of Summer visits to camps of friends.

This month I picked up where I left off last Fall on hanging a door in our bedroom. It's an old door with a big window which we cut down to function more like a window. It took about a week to get that right.

We've decided against staining the cedar shingle siding. It's a kind of thing you don't have to do.
We have the building process pared down to what's necessary for us to move in: finishing the walls and ceiling of just the kitchen, dining room and one bedroom. The outhouse is working just fine. And floors? Not a prority. It's not that our current apartment is terrible, but it is not our home. We find ourselves going over to our 'big house' even on days when we're not working on it.

Coming soon- water supply and siding!

If you build it... ?

2010-05-02T10:40:00.005-04:00

We're back from a two-week-long break from house building. We took a trip down to Lower Michigan last weekend to visit friends and family, and celebrate birthdays, and play some music and dance. Erica took a class in Indian classical dancing. I played a couple shows with my dear drummer friend John Churchville and just last Saturday night, back in Marquette, Erica and I got to sit in on a concert with a big fun band.

Here's a slice of the cake my cousin Rachel made for Erica's birthday.

Aya Jane had the idea to tour waterfalls to celebrate her birthday. She got us out to some wonderful places.

The time away has been great for focusing our vision. When we are working on the house every week for months it gets kind of boring and we wonder why we're going through this. But in my quest for clarity during this break my message was continuous:

You have to build this house.

What comes next I don't know. I guess I don't need to know.

So yesterday I went back to the plumbing, rerouting a pipe in this tree so it doesn't go across the window. And running vents up to the roof, including cutting a hole in the roof. How often do you get to cut a hole in a roof big enough to peek out? It was fun for me anyway.

Meet Mr. Stack

2010-04-23T15:08:00.006-04:00

I think I have written before on this blog that the progress of housebuilding compares to watching kids grow. Your friend's kids (and house) seem to grow faster than you can keep up with, while your own develop at a varying pace which seems to oscillate between extremes of molasses-slow and then "holy wah, look at 'em go." This plumbing phase has been pretty close to the molasses edge. Maybe molasses in July. It has been a fun puzzle, just a little more time-consuming than anticipated.

Anyway the drain pipes are almost all cut and in place. My wish is that someone more experienced will come look at them before they get welded together. I think this guy with the Dodgers hat on is what they call a soil stack: where all the drains come together. There will be a vent pipe coming out the top of his head and continuing through the roof.

These pipes are to the drains in the second bathroom.

We're out of town this weekend in Ann Arbor visiting friends and relatives and playing a little music. It's always nice to go south in April and experience Spring a few weeks ahead of the UP. It's tulips and lilacs already down here. We're having a nourishing time and an excellent break from the routine. Lord knows it will be nice to be back to it again, but I don't know that yet. I got a few more days.

2010-04-10T22:06:00.006-04:00

I think I finally have the wastewater drain system figured out. It was a lot more puzzling than I thought. There are a lot of rules to follow: pipe size, type of fitting, vents can't run horizontal until they're higher than the flood level of the highest fixture they serve, and on and on. But they're all for a reason and I'm glad I'm not just winging it and having tons of problems down the road.

The second bathroom is just about roughed-in now, and that was the hard one. Lots of drilling big holes in framing. In fact I burned out the gears in my neighbor's right angle drill, and have to go shopping for a replacement tomorrow (so I can borrow it some more). It was a cheap one, and maybe I should have known not to push it so hard, but hey.

Here is a sketch of what pipes are going where.

We have a general plan of what to do before we move in that puts us moving in at the end of the year, maybe before the snow.

Here's an abbreviation of that plan:
April-Rough Plumbing
May-Rough Electrical
June-Insulation and siding
July, August, September-Drywall and paint
October-firewood, chimney and stove
November-bathroom floor and some kitchen finishing.

Spring came early this year, but as usual it's an in-between time when you don't know what to expect. A wet snow caught these daffodils by surprise. People around here are gradually giving up on another heavy snow storm.

Electric Days

2010-03-27T23:04:00.008-04:00

My friend's father who is an electrician is coming up this weekend and she volunteered him to come assist us with the electrical rough-in. It's a barter deal: I'm playing music at her wedding this August.
So we've been in electricity high-gear, studying codes and planning where we want switches, fixtures, etc.
As much as it can be an oppressively humongous project, building this house is so good for me when it teaches me how the parts of a house work. I can remember being a very young man and being disgusted by the idea of a stud-wall house. It seemed so deceptive to stuff everything into the empty walls and then cover it up with trim. Now I see the logic in it. I've been so corrupted I can even understand why someone might use (gulp, wince) vinyl siding.
So no building pictures today. But I'll post a couple photos which show how early spring looks here. The warm weather has been a few weeks ahead of schedule for a month now.
This hill is what we call Horsepoop Mountain. It's a 20 minute hike uphill from where we're staying now.

These are some baby irises that popped up last week. One of the friends we're staying with keeps a magnificent flower garden out our bathroom window. These are the first.

This link will take you to a page which really helped me understand the wiring rough-in.

Here are the electrical drawings. It feels a lot like I just turned in a research paper.

This last photo shows the electrical plan as revised after the rough-in, just before insulating. You can click on it if you want to read the details.

The arch is framed- whew!

2010-03-16T11:56:00.005-04:00

This is the end of the dance room where the arch meets the gable end. It's also the end of interior framing. It's always a relief to get to the end of anything, even if it is the first part of the above-ground building process!

Next to happen is the plumbing. I took my drawing of the drain and vent system to the inspector the other day and he answered my questions and told me the plan was up to code. There was a moment when another inspector stopped his cubicle to ask a quick question, at which time the plumbing inspector took the clipboard my drawing was on and held it up near his chest so the other inspector couldn't see. I think these guys are being generous to guys like me for helping do things well while not holding us to the letter of the code, carrying that burden of doubt on their own shoulders.

Tomorrow I plan to line up where the pipe is going to go and drill some holes. I must say I'm a little nervous.

If I don't get clear about it I have a couple plumber friends to run to. There's always trim and siding to work on.

Coming Along

2010-03-11T01:44:00.004-05:00

We're enjoying an unusually warm winter these days. I'm sure there will be another storm or two, but it really feels like Spring tonight with soft rain falling. It's not even supposed to get below freezing for the next week. I'm happy to announce that the arched ceiling is framed in after weeks of work. Next job is to tie it to the outer wall with framing materials and to do that we first had to pull the wall back to plumb. It had bowed out over the past year and so I chained it to the other wall and squeezed them together with a come-along.

Why is it that chains and come-alongs get me excited? Maybe it just makes me feel like mighty-man to use my own body and some gears to do something superhuman. Bicycles are like this, too.

This warm weather is bound to make our road a mess. So this weekend might be a good one to go visit my friend who's putting tinted plaster on his drywall. It's an alternative to the standard mud-and-then-paint system that sounds appealing. If I can work with him for a day or so maybe I'll get it. Anyway my most faithful laborer is busy getting ready for a certain St. Patrick's Day party.
Slainte!

Nerding it up

2010-02-28T19:48:00.003-05:00

I've been putzing with this sketch program (Google Sketchup) every now and then and today it has been helpful to visualize siding. We keep coming back to cedar shingles, but it would nice to know whether we want to stain them before putting them on. Then there's deciding whether to paint the trim. And that big space on the right side of this wall, what do we do with that? So far we can see hanging artwork, running horses or cranes in flight or something. There's no hurry for that part, but we're already pushing the siding date pretty far beyond what's recommended, as far as leaving housewrap out in the wind and sun. So siding time starts pretty soon.

We put a subfloor on the attic space in the past week and a half, and the work continues framing the fancy ceiling.

We've been really blessed with mild (for February) temperatures and that is forecasted to continue into the first week of March. There are several things like taxes that have been on a list of things to do when it gets too cold to work on the house this winter, but I might just have to skip out and do them in this balmy 30º stuff.

But tomorrow I can't resist getting back to the ceiling. It's just getting so close.

Ceiling takes shape

2010-02-14T02:28:00.000-05:00

Assembling the ceiling

2010-02-05T21:05:00.010-05:00

I've heard it said that before you start a project you should make your best estimate as to how much money and time it will take and then double the money and triple the time and you might be close. I've found this to be generally true except when it comes to working with rounded shapes. In this case what you have to do to the time is septuple it, if you will.

Not that we're not having fun. Here's how this ceiling is going together:

1. My dad cuts out a thousand pieces of studs.

2. I nail them to the trusses and the walls.

3. 3/4" plywood, cut into an arch shape (also mostly by my dear Dad), goes on the studs.

4. Ribs are fit in between the arches

It's exciting to see it come together. The cold weather has been a challenge any time when we're not moving around a ton. But when we are, I often don't really notice until times like now, in the evening after warming up and I feel like a sleepy old elephant.

I'll be back out there tomorrow and welcome anybody who wishes to come out.

There goes the neighborhood

2010-02-05T20:33:00.004-05:00

This 20 acre plot is halfway to between us and the blacktop. Under the trees in this area are sand dunes on top of red-brown sandstone bedrock. The cabin is very small.

I took a walk around the place with a camera in fall of 2010 and made this video.

Happy new year to you... In Jail!

2010-01-17T10:42:00.005-05:00

We're settling into Winter now. Movies, skiing, stories, introspection, and house building of course. I took two weeks off from building over Christmas and I think we all could have used a little more time. But we're committed to a schedule and sometimes we will er on the side of 'gidderdone,' though I hate to admit this.
Things are going great out there, though. The bulk of the framing is done now. All that's left to frame is the closets and attic walls and the arched ceiling. I spent a few hours yesterday cutting out the pieces for that ceiling. I found it takes about an hour to cut out each set of pieces and there are sixteen total. It may also take about an hour to nail each one up.
I understand now why there are so few curved walls or ceilings in buildings anywhere.
The weather has been so accommodating this week. Doing rough work like framing can be a pleasure when it's 25º out. Today it's above freezing and Sunday (when I take a day off). So it's out to make snowforts and snowdragons and stuff. Aya has a goal of sleeping in her fort this Winter sometime. It's looking pretty nice in there. Man, even Winter is not long enough anymore.

Tilting up the Bones

2009-12-12T22:02:00.012-05:00

We've been framing in the interior walls since my last update. On the right is a bathroom and you can see the dropped ceiling above it and the little transition room.

If you want to see the plan drawings, there is a link at the bottom of this page to all the other posts. The drawings were posted in August 2008

It got very cold this past week, though, dropping below zero at night and so I moved downstairs for a few days and set to work on the framing there. I put a couple pieces of foam over the stairway hole to hold in some of the heat from the woodstove.

I'm having fun in the framing stage. And I don't mean fun facetiously either. I mean creative, expansive, –albeit sometimes exhausting, obsessive or boring– but fun!

Here's of the chicadees who've been popping in now and then to look for flies.

My dad has been out to help a few days this month already and a couple other friends have dropped in to help too. I'll be out there most every Monday, Friday, and Saturday through the Winter in case you want to have fun too. O ya.

Thanksgiving

2009-11-26T11:27:00.008-05:00

Winter is peeking its head in the door, and I'm not scared. All of our materials for the final framing and trim are stacked inside the house, the trim is going on according to schedule, the kids all have skis and coats and so on, and there are only two more openings to close in: Our bedroom door (which is more like a big window) and the entry door upstairs. Add to this the fact that I figured out how to finish the framing of the arch ceiling and the stairs to the attic, and that I'm sitting in bed listening to Renée Fleming's Sacred Songs and you find me in a state of content rare for a mental case like myself. It's a great recording. I think if the sun suddenly kicked into supernova gear I would put this on and it might even be enjoyable being burnt to a crusty crud.
I was laid up for a couple weeks with a pulled muscle and took the opportunity to take on some of the planning and vision that I'd been putting off. One of the fun parts of this was figuring out how to build an arched ceiling. The shape that seemed to make sense was something like a segment of an ellipse, as in this sketch. What is an ellipse? It's just like a circle but with two centers, called foci. It's the shape of our orbit around the sun, where one of the foci in the center of the sun. The other is also inside the sun, so it's pretty much a circle. But other objects like pluto and some comets have orbits which are not so circular, but also are ellipses where one focus is the center of the sun.
Why does any of this matter? Because it makes a beautiful arch. Maybe it's beautiful because it represents the balance between a force and a reaction and maybe it's just a lot easier than trying to draw such a large shape freehand. But here I am after drawing a full-scale diagram of the walls and trusses and experimenting with nails in the floor for focus points and string lengths to get a radius that would fit comfortably inside the framing. Now all we have to do is cut this curve into a bunch of pieces of plywood and attach these to the trusses, and then fit little studs in between them and we'll have the bones up and ready for drywall.
The first things to do though are closing in the basement and framing the bathrooms. This will give us the downstairs to work on through the cold months. The bathrooms are priority so that we won't be held back when we're hooking up plumbing.
As for today, I'll put it down and go feast with the Grandma and Grandpa in Harvey. Go Packers.

Calendar

2009-11-16T19:24:00.002-05:00

Eager to get back to building

2009-11-10T18:38:00.005-05:00

The leaves are all down now, other than the real stubborn oaks and beeches. And after the violence of autumn the woods once again is at peace, arms reaching out to the coming snow. I am reaching the same contentment, with nearly all the Winter's wood stacked in the shed, and a vision of the next phase of house-building becoming clear.
Someone reading this might wonder where I find time to build a house. I'm always trying to figure it out myself. I work at night, which gives me the days off, sort of. I sing two nights a week and three nights a week I sleep in an apartment where two disabled gentlemen live. This night work is sometimes real easy to work around and then sometimes the lack of sleep catches up and I become useless or even ugly. Today and yesterday could be tallied under useless builder days –which followed a couple ugly days, come to think of it. This past weekend my impatience with finishing up the Winter's woodpile had me working a little harder than a peaceful man should, substituting coffee and chocolate for rest and as a result I woke up feeling very sore and worn out on Monday morning. I pulled a muscle somehow and after spending most of Monday lying around I feel mostly free from pain. So today and tomorrow I'm going to try to keep out of any heavy lifting and that should be good.
The next thing we have in mind to do with the house is to close in the lower level. I had hoped to close in the entire place by Winter but the lower level could be done real soon and that would allow for much easier working conditions in the cold months. We'll be able to make a fire and keep ourselves moving freely. I know there are some builders up here who work year-round, our next-door neighbor Dave for instance, and I marvel at their endurance but find it hard to be productive myself when it gets below about 20º. So that's the plan for now.

Octoberfrust

2009-10-21T11:28:00.006-04:00

Not much progress to report yet this month. The woodpile is looking better, and some of the materials have gotten organized so I shouldn't complain, but I just might. This process is so enriching and energizing when things are flowing and you can see things getting done at some sort of regular pace. But it can be really trying when things happen slowly.
I know– in my reflective blogging state– that these trials are actually more enriching than the smooth sailing periods. This assumes that we manage to keep faithful through them, which for the most part we've been doing. I did allow a knot of anxiety to build up over the past couple of weeks which led to a head cold taking me out of service for a couple days this week. But that seems to have moved through.

There was a question in the comment box today asking how we got a permit to build in a wetland. We're not exactly in a wetland. We're about 25 feet in altitude up from the floodplain on a little sandy knob. It happens that water is very near the surface because bedrock is not very deep in this area. On the surface it looks like any other northern mixed-hardwood forest. It's only after you dig down a few feet, on the west end of the site, that you strike water.
So no special wetland permit. We did need a soil erosion permit for building near open water, which was not too difficult to obtain. Even if we got really badly washed out, there is no real chance that our disturbing of the earth would clog up our dear little creek.

So there is another week or so to spend on the woodpile, and then it's on to trim around windows...

Make mud while the sun shines?

2009-09-27T18:05:00.009-04:00

Ever since the Spring I have been feeling the pressure of the coming Winter, but now as the leaves begin to change and the birds and bugs make their preparations and migrations the cold air is so close I can smell it's sharpness in my mind's nose.

Most years I feel an increase of pressure at this time, but this year if anything I feel something of a relief. Relief because the bewilderingly long list of things to do has been shortened to things that need to happen before the snow and frost –Which is really only firewood, closing in the doors and other openings and building a chimney. Of course all work is easier in the warm weather so there is pressure that way, but we should be able to get the wood stove barkin' once we get the other doors and trim on, and frame in the ceiling, and so hopefully by the time it gets really cold we'll be able to work in relative warmth.

For the chimney there are still decisions to make. We're committed to using some sort of thermal mass wood stove. But there are different ways to build these things.There are some kits like this one you can buy for a $5000 and up that go together easily and seem really well-designed. We also have a few friends who use these and say they work great.

Then there are different ways to build them yourself. Here's one set of plans. One way I've only learned about this week is called a rocket stove. It's a little screwy but could be made beautifully and would only cost about $300 or so.

So I guess the masonry stove can wait until next year. Closing in is going to be enough of a project with three doors, all the trim, and the ceiling upstairs and so on. I was thinking it was a priority because it would be easier to frame wood around a chimney than to build a chimney in between walls. And it's getting closer to time to frame in the interior walls. And then you can't build masonry very easily in the Winter.

But there is plenty to do until Spring thaw. And I'm grateful to have the time to learn more about these stoves.

Sorry, no new pictures of the house. But this one of the boys at black rocks on one of those warm September days we had.

September is my favorite

2009-09-10T21:45:00.011-04:00

The end of Summer here has been gorgeous. Warm, no bugs, getting dark at a reasonable hour. Here is a picture of the kids on top of our neighbor Jim's hill. We went up there for a Labor Day hike.

We've been preparing for a trip down to SE Michigan for Erica's sister's wedding. Fixing cars, practicing music and so on.

The dry weather has caused us to need to water the young grass every other day. It's not that hot, though and most of the yard is in the shade.

Here's the pump we're using to draw up creek water. It works great, but I have spent several hours screwing around with it to get it working.

Here comes the grass.

The main thing I've been working on with the building this past week or two is the door that we'll use as the 'public' entrance, upstairs near the dance studio. I decided to build my own door. It has been kind of fussy, but also kind of fun. It's a simple design. The top is rounded. I think my inspiration was all those pictures of Jesus knocking on the door. I love that image. You never know what wonderful beauty and love might come knocking.
Speaking of great images, here's the clamping system I used to glue the door together.

I'm back out there today to work on the doors...

Come on, baby! Light my fire!

Grass Planted

2009-08-28T19:36:00.003-04:00

Tonight the grass seeds lay in their earthen beds listening to the sound of the raindrops. It took way longer to grade the yard and plant grass than anticipated, but c'est la vie. C'est la housebuilding anyway.

Earthy delight

2009-08-20T21:55:00.005-04:00

I've been busying myself with landscaping ever since backfill time. There's tons (literally) of dirt to move around before I'm satisfied enough to plant grass, but it's very satisfying work and I had my dad out with me all day yesterday, so I don't think it will be too long until that part is done. It's exciting any time we get to any part of this which is the finished state. It's just in the past few days that it donned on me that I'll have to find a lawn mower at some point.

This past Saturday my friends Kurt Prond and Captain Andrew came out and helped me hang two doors on the west end of the house. It was wicked hat. Tonight it's so cool we shut all the windows, talked about firewood. Wheew.

House Call from Dr. Fill

2009-08-11T10:11:00.010-04:00

Yesterday our neighbor Justin came over on his tractor. He and I worked until the sun left the tops of the trees roughing out the landscaping around the house. It was hot sometimes and then there was rain for about an hour. Mostly a wonderful Summer day. Justin was able to save a lot of the topsoil and so there's still a lot of work to do busting clods and shaping and then there's sowing grass and/or clover or whatever wants to grow.

Here's some before-and-after pictures:

Buddy Blog

2009-08-02T19:01:00.003-04:00

At the beginning of July, so many people came in to town that I nearly stopped working on the house for about a week just to visit. Before my work-to-do-conscious caught up to me, however, a dozen such visitors came out to labor on a beautiful Saturday and refueled my vim.
One of them, JoAnna Ellingsen wrote about her experience before returning to Columbia where she's been teaching high school in a small town. She is moving into a new life in the big city of Bogota now. Here's what she wrote:

Big Bay House Building July 2009

I wasn’t sure if I should even go. The $250 car I bought last summer had a slow leak in the front right tire, and the starter was getting iffier and iffier. I knew the house was tucked in pretty deep on the way to Big Bay, and I wasn’t sure that I could get cell reception if I got stuck. Or lost. Mike drew me a map, on the back of an envelope at the bar the night before, but even with my faith in his topographical skills, the map gave little assurance that I could get there… I get lost with even the best map. I got lost once on the beach. I don’t need to tell you that a beach is a straight shoot. Water on one side, land on the other. You can only go one of two ways. Yet, in looking for…damn, I don’t even remember who or what, but in looking, I got lost and couldn’t figure out where to go… but I DID have cell reception and could call someone for directions even though all I needed was a simple go right or go left… Anyway, the point is, I just wasn’t sure if I should go.

But I did.

But first, I took a bath in Lake Superior. Molly said that even though the waves were pretty big and it wasn’t more than 65 degrees outside, the lake should be warm, and it would be a great day for bringing the shampoo down to the beach. So we did… The wind hadn’t blown as much of the illustrious warm top water into shore as Molls had expected, but we soldiered through the slightly painful wading to the ankles… to the knees… to the hips… and finally the 1, 2, 3-first dunk under. I let out a screech when I came back up, but lathered up anyway knowing there would only be two or three more dunks to go before I could say that I got clean in the greatest of all great lakes on such a beautiful, windy, white- capped day…

So I dried off and headed for Big Bay in just my bathing suit with clothes in the backseat to change into…I was already an hour late, and this wasn’t Colombia.

The map was good, and right where it said I should, I turned off the main road, and then off the smaller road, and then off of that. I went over what Mike called a bridge, but was really just planks of wood allowing passage over a little creek.

I got out of my car and put my jeans on as I stood between my car door and seat. Mike saw me and pointed the way to the huge beautiful house they were building…As I walked in, I heard banging hammers and saw people laying flooring… I felt a little like a stranger… everyone there seemed like they had been working on that house since the beginning of time, or at least just the get-go… everyone seemed to know what they were doing… EVERYONE had a carpenter’s belt… I was just glad I remembered socks and shoes…like I said, I wasn’t sure I should have gone…

Mike gave me the tour through the bones of the body of the place built for bodies and bones, and I smiled the whole time—more at the flashbacks I had of him playing trombone in 10th grade- super imposed on his 33 year-old self directing construction—than at the vision he had of the house… not that the vision wasn’t good—great really—it’s just that I have always had a hard time seeing things that aren’t really existing yet, and an easier time seeing things that haven’t been there for a long, long time… So I was there to pound a nail or two and I made it clear that that was my intention. I was set up with Rachel, a woman of obvious strength whom I had met the night before when this nail-pounding plan was just an idea… Of course, Rachel had a carpenter’s belt. She seemed like a goddamned house-building goddess. Mike’s wife and my friend, Erica introduced us, and as we checked my tires to make sure they were okay, I learned she was one of those crazy energy healers. I had had an ear-ache for a while and half-heartedly asked if she could fix it. Saying nothing, she put her hand to the side of my face and brushed something away. She continued to touch and brush like that, occasionally picking something out of the air and discarding it like a nit. Listen, I don’t spend much time in vans. I'm tethered to my cell phone, and I’m more than occasionally not politically correct. I dig folk music, but don't listen to it much, except for Mike’s, and I leave the lights on when I leave home because I don’t give a good goddamn about the universe when I’m coming home to a dark house. I’m much more afraid of the dark than I am concerned for saving the planet. While I love my many hippie friends, and often envy their days and ways, it is sure that I will choose Prada over patchouli any day of the week and that my love affair with sequins and stillettos will likely be the most lasting relationship of my life. With that said, I didn’t disbelieve what Rachel said she could do, but I certainly wasn’t planning to be surprised. Hence the term surprise I guess… Rachel pulled the pain out of my ear like it was on the end of a string. Erica teared up. I really didn’t know what to do. One minute I had a pain in my ear, and the next, I didn’t. It was that simple. Then she was done. And there was work to do. Mike explained to the two-man crew of Rachel and me about the physics of freezing water below a house and his ideas about how to circumvent it. There was something about insulating the ground, or was it the house? Insulating something, with something, which involved digging and shielding with wood and then something else… Rachel was set on copper… and Mike thought… and shook his head about expense…but then, as she would continue to do for the rest of the day, Rachel insisted that cooper could be done… Mike didn’t fight her… he liked the idea, and shucks, maybe the price of copper would go down like pork bellies. After Mike’s beautiful rendition of what seemed like an almost comical impression of his dad teaching about whatever he teaches at the university, he finished his discussion of subterranean insulation. Then he passed me a can of spray foam insulation and let the games begin. Rachel and I sprayed cracks and then checked my tires again while we waited for the foam to dry. Then we nailed boards and then cut more boards to fit – her with her hippy handsaw—that chick is a master with a handsaw… Anyway… we built something… and from what I understand, it will buried under thousands of pounds of iron-enriched red soil, but, I’m here to tell you, we built it, goddamnit, we built it. Then, after some chatting and beer we settled down for a dinner of the best black bean burritos I’ve ever eaten in my life. Erica was a nervous homemaker in her home that wasn’t even finished yet. It was almost as though she thought we were surprised that she hadn’t called in for uniformed help to serve the hors d’oeuvres… I could relate to that feeling… no matter how much we deny the need to be Mrs. Cleaver, there’s something in every American girl that wants to don a lacy apron and pearls and smile as though making a dinner for people is as simple and relaxing as fanning oneself on the beach… but she came out shining as we all devoured her cooking and went up for seconds… I remember discussing child psychology and how to make very small children stop being loud without saying NO! But then someone just turned to the child banging the pot with a spoon and said NO! And it worked. I wonder how many times that theory has been proposed, agreed upon and debunked in the same breath… And then I had to leave. I hugged the children and my new friend Rachel. I hugged Mike. I teared up with Erica as I hugged her goodbye. I wasn’t going farther or for longer than any other time I had left, but we were both feeling this time more than before…maybe it’s just that as we mirror each other in our thirty-something faces, she and I are both struck lately by the feeling and amazement of old friends and are both just a little more than a little disturbed by how time is screeching past us as the notches on the doorpost climb… I drove off to find Brook… home from pennsylvania… her new home… and I teared up again entering the Sloan-Beauregard Compound as another wave of memories threw me over my sail again.

Our foundation passes inspection

2009-07-30T21:23:00.008-04:00

Yes, the other day the inspector came out to tell us that the goofy, complicated foundation we made here is the way it should be. There's 2" of pink foam on the footing and we continued it up to ground level all the way around, covering it with treated plywood for protection. Jared and Mossy got much of the foam up early this month. Their red visors had much to do with their productivity.

Around the base of the foundation is a drain for groundwater consisting of a 4" slotted pipe surrounded in gravel and covered with a fabric that keeps sand and silt out.

Wherever the foundation is not deep enough to sit below the frost line, we put foam on the ground next to the house, jutting out to keep the earth's heat in.

On the inside of the house, we had lots of help from travelers. Nora finished grinding the channel to drain the slab.

And a big crew came out to lay down the basement subfloor. It looks like they're mostly just standing around, but this just happens to be the only picture where everyone's not blurry.

Here's Dad taking a break well-earned be scrubbing this post for hours to get the moldy spots off.

It has been very encouraging to have all the family and friends come out and help, through words and through deeds. Just in time, too, as I was getting to a point of boredom with the whole house at the beginning of the month. Boredom is a dangerous thing. People want a peaceful life, and then when we get it, it's boring. So if you don't keep yourself inspired the natural thing to do is to start some trouble. So thanks to everyone I've talked to whose assured me that I'm in plenty of trouble already.

Justin is coming with his tractor next week so I'm busy making work ready for him.

Holy crap it's July

2009-07-02T13:04:00.008-04:00

Progress in June was very slow, but progress just the same. I put a heavy waterproofing membrane on the foundation. It was kind of a fiasco, as a big section of the stuff fell off at night and there was a sticky mess. But we fixed it up and I think we should be nice and dry for a hundred years at least.

The next thing we have to do is insulate the foundation. Ground water is only two or three feet down at one end of the house, so we made a shallow footing. Frost here can get almost four feet down so we are insulating the footing to keep the place from moving up and down every Winter. This past Winter a crack opened up in the center of the slab about 1/8-inch wide, and in the Spring you could occasionally hear pops coming from the framing as it settled back into place. It sounded like what you hear in a new house made with green timbers or logs as they dry and take a new shape. Anyway here is the beginning of the insulation project. These corners have been screwy to figure out.

The other major project has been the subfloor downstairs. It is a little more than half done, and isn't too tricky now that the floor is mostly level.

Here you can see the done half before my dad and I piled everything from the other half on top of it.

And here's the not-done half. I'm making little channels in the slab so any water that does get in can easily drain out. I put some water on it to test how it drains and to add a little excitement.

My dad has been out at least once a week which has been very helpful. This month I hope to see some of you who may be visiting as well as anyone from around here who feels like coming out. We'll be having some sort of party July 11th, and hope to be putting up shingles for siding on July 25th.

2009-06-10T21:48:00.006-04:00

We're gradually getting more settled in here. There's a little camp kitchen and we've been eating dinner as a family out here every couple days. The apartment where we stay is only 15 minutes away, but everyone feels a little more at home here.

This house building experience is weird. The only other thing I can compare it to is pregnancy and raising children. It gives its own energy, and can often bring an awareness of a love so much greater than all of us. But then it screws with your sleep and your hair and teeth deteriorate faster than normal. I can't say I recommend either but then you have to do something. And I'm grateful that I've parachuted into these battles. They're fun.

It took most of last week to level the low spots on the slab and Monday and Wednesday were spent framing in this curved wall which will catch the end of a beam.

I'm eager to start laying the subfloor down. It looks to be pretty simple. The black stuff rolls out (you can cut it with a knife), the OSB board goes down and then you screw it in. The catch is all the drilling to fasten it to the concrete. Doesn't look too bad though.

Come out and see it anytime. And don't ever feel guilty, like you should be helping build this place. Do whatever is clear for you. Your open positive intentions are a tremendous help on their own. Of course if you do find yourself with the time and energy and inclination to come out, don't let anything get in your way.

As of now we're planning to have a regular party every other Saturday, starting this Saturday June 13. On the menu are French lentils with rice and hummus and bread. Bring your instruments, whatever they are.

2009-06-04T09:11:00.009-04:00

Lady slippers have returned. Last Saturday my brother Greg and our dad came out to smear mortar on the foundation. Aya Jane followed behind cleaning up the globs. This weekend I plan to put a rubber sticker on, to keep out the moisture.
The house is not very deep in the ground, but that's because the ground water is just a few feet down. So for another layer of petroleum-based security we're laying down a membrane called Platon underneath the subfloor.

Before that happens I've been leveling out some low spots in the slab while it's still relatively easy to do.

Mossy clearing some brush.

The cool air has been great to work in, and kept the bugs down too. They haven't really gotten annoying yet. There were a couple days when we had to dress Seamus's head up to keep out the buffalo gnats.

Happy 3rd birthday little Mouse!

Outhouse up and running

2009-05-28T22:29:00.002-04:00

We now have an outhouse, on loan from the Dalman collection. Plenty of room down below.

2009-05-27T21:07:00.015-04:00

The May magic is working. I'm remembering how marvelous this place is. What was a desert of snow a few weeks ago is now so alive and wild it's a little disturbing. This past Wednesday while we were up putting shingles on the roof 90º air came cruising up through the woods on a hearty gale. Occasional gusts would send me crouching to keep from being blown off of the ridge. One of them was exceptionally fierce and there was a snap and in an instant this 85-foot-tall spruce lay on the ground, narrowly missing the house on the side where we were working. Here are before and after pictures. The one of Aya and my mother at the base of this tree is from a few weeks ago.
At the suggestion of a few people I bought a lottery ticket. It was a winner! I got my money back plus a dollar. It's nice to reflect on what you would choose if money wasn't a factor. I don't know if I would change that much about my situation. It would be nice to pay my friends what they're worth when they come and work on this place.

Lake and John were up on the roof with me this week, a couple days got very long. Tuesday the delivery guy came and his conveyor belt was electric and it wouldn't work with our little generator. So we slid the bundles up the ladder using ropes on the ends and all three of us heaving in concert. Wednesday was long by way of being hot,Thursday was a little rainy but a good day to set up scaffolding and deal with the fallen tree, and Friday we stayed until about 7:00 (or was it later) to git-er-done, if you will. Roofing is simple, brutal, dangerous and satisfying. Here's John tarring on the last shingle.

Saturday's work party was a most perfect fit. The week's work of roofing had taken a lot from our family balance. It was grounding to be among the neighbors of this small area, to share the space, the projects of the day, and a meal together after. Rock on, west side of section 23.
Michael and Ryan were able to put in a south facing sliding door which slides smooth and lovely, and the very last window opens up the north side of the house. The children debated what to do with their playtime. I think they settled on a bike ride, a creek ponder, game of hide n' seek, with a little cabin picnic to follow. Just before dinner, they joined in the work effort by gathering and baking lasagna with Heidi and stacking wood in the nifty new shed.
It's wonderful how different we all are. The shed project met me with head scratching. And I'm sure if it was left all in my hands, I'd have done a lot of staring into the trees. Courtney's sensible self cut all that away and l eft the task an easy one, enjoyable.

Mr. England, whose camp is next door, came by and finished up the bird blocks with Ryan. We then sat down to sup. Some sat on pottys, that were imaginarily flushed down during the meal, thank you Seamus.
This week we're focusing on closing the space in in hopes of keeping the bugs out. June is the height of bug season around here. There are doors to hang and this big one to slide into place.

This train is rolling

2009-05-10T17:55:00.004-04:00

Spring is here in all its glory. Babies are being born. Marsh Marigolds are about to flower. Birds are enraptured in their own dance of reproduction. Yesterday I had to stop the car on the way out of the woods because a pair of grouse were not yet finished with their dance. The papa bird had his tail fully fanned out and his neck super puffy. He ran a circle around her and then they walked off on either side of the road, seeming a little embarrassed I think. Maybe I was the one embarrassed.

I have been somewhere between very focused and obsessed with this house lately. Spring plays tricks on my energy every year. I like to think I'm much more thoughtful and collected than those birds, but I have gotten carried away with all of it on a regular basis.

This year seems shorter to me than any I've seen, with only about twenty-four weeks until the ground freezes again. The credit world is tightening up, meaning we'll have to get a final inspection before we can get a regular mortgage (this was not the case a year ago). This means that we'll have to spend some more money than we thought on some things in order to be up to code. A drilled well instead of a hand-dug well is the most cringe-worthy example. To counteract this, though, there is some 'stimulus' money available for first-time home buyers, which we might qualify for and would soften the blow.

Here are the stairs I'm sort-of proud of. They're done and they will work but there are some major gaps here and there. I scratched a few hairs off of my head getting them to line up with the upstairs and downstairs finish floors.

At the top of the stairs is this fancy window which was installed by my friends Jeff and Andrew.

Only one more window to install. Lots of door work left to do though. We have six exterior doors to hang, one to make and another pre-hung door to install. Holy wah.

Why so many doors? To answer that I have to tell the story why we ever wanted to build this house. If you are in a hurry, just skip to the partytime part.

Everyone is a house builder I think in some part of themselves. I've never seen a child who didn't get excited by a blanket over a couple of chairs. So factor number one is base human reflex, not a good guiding force, but an excellent place to go for energy when faced with a challenge like this.

Soon after Erica and I met, we heard some kind of calling to go to the country and build a house of stone. Now these kind of messages are often like riddles. You have to decode them in your meditation. I've come to believe that the stone part refers to a solid faith and purpose. Nurture those things and you will be at home anywhere. So factor number two was a calling from the Great Mystery out there, the ultimate source for direction if you can figure out how the heck to apply it.

After going around the country on our vision quest, we kind-of-accidentally stayed in Marquette for a long time. I went back to school. During these years it came clear this area was the place for us to settle. We started looking for land and I started drawing houses.
Presto! Aya Jane was born. So now we were looking for a place to raise a family. Factor three was very practical and wholesome, however selfish.

The original plan was to build a house, have a big wedding on the property, and then have a baby. Years went by. Aya came along with no regard for our little timeline, and we still hadn't lined up our house. So we got married one morning on the Top of the World with little or no notice to those in our families (sorry). We were still holding out for our big homestead wedding.

Soon we found the land that took our hearts –The muddy earth actually consumed Erica's Claddagh ring I had given her as an engagement ring. And both of our mothers had their heel slip in the mud in this very same part of the trail –This was before we had decided to buy the deed to it, so we did our best to dismiss the symbolism.

We moved into a tent on the property when Moses was just a few inches tall in his mama's belly. The plan at that point was to build a little 'practice' house that summer and build the house we're building now the next summer.

We pushed through childbirth, puppies and all, and moved in in the sweet cold darkness of early February, 2003. Between finishing the little house, celebrating our two and then three children and producing a CD we didn't really get started putting in full days on the big house until Summer of '07.

I set up a drawing studio in our old pop-up camper and began sketching. We also cleared the lot and had a septic system installed that year.

In the course of drawing and analyzing house plans, we realized that we were laying out the plans for our lives. It was an agonizing process, and took many months.

A big breakthrough came at a desperate point a year ago when we felt this project was too much for us. The message was clear: It's not for you!

What?

Okay, so our Beautiful Stone House is in our hearts, and we are just visitors in this earthly house, in this world for that matter.

So what is this place to us?
A home with heat and cooking and the means to wash and rest. A place where we can practice our trade and also prepare and recover from trips to perform.

Why a studio in the house?
I once heard someone answer the question “why don't the Amish use electricity and gasoline power” this way: So that the farmer can hear his wife calling out the back door at any time –You can't work thousands of acres with animal power. We're both very sensitive people and found it imperative to have this kind of direct family connection while still being able to go to work everyday.

Since we'll have this huge room in our house and won't be using it all the time, what else could it be?
A place for small concerts and workshops (<100 people).
A place for community gatherings, from music and dance jams to funerals and weddings.

These uses often involve people who need a place to stay the night. We wanted all the bedrooms then to have access to the outside without going through the middle of the house. This explains the three doors downstairs. The five upstairs I hope will relieve any claustrophobia at a busy concert or meeting time, as well as help us deal with any fire code if we ever come to that. Maybe that was too long-winded about the doors.

PARTY TIME PART
We're going to start having music and building party every Saturday. This is informal-potluck-hootenanny style. Bring a song, dance, story, poem, joke and/or a dish. We'll have plenty of food, coffee and water and we're working on an outhouse. If you want to come and help build, I'll be starting around 10:00. At 6:00 the children can ring the bell to stop me and announce dinner and music. You can come and go at any part of the day of course. We'll keep a list of projects we're working on at the top of this blog on the right side. You can come on other days too! Be Free! If you need directions please call us at 360-SONG (7664), or email michaelwwaite@gmail.com.

Spring Me

2009-03-25T11:18:00.000-04:00

Spring up here as I see it has three parts. The first is sugaring time when the snow begins to really melt, but the ground is still so cold and hard that the water from the snow just freezes to a thick layer of ice on the ground. Then comes mud season, when the ground breaks up, the geese pass over, the creek runs over its banks and for a few weeks the clay parts of our truck trail turn to a marvelous pudding consistency. And finally real Spring comes, with the overwhelming leafing out everywhere and the beginning of the year's procession of blossoms and bugs.
The sap has been running daily for a couple weeks. Our neighbors are collecting a horse trough full. I've been plugging windows into their holes a little at a time. We have all of the windows on the site. We collected them over about 5 years from renovation junk piles and from Habitat for Humanity's thrift store. There are about 5 new windows which came from a Weather Shield outlet store in Kingsford. You can spend a ton on windows, so Im grateful to have found a complete set of warm ones (hopefully) for about $2000.
I'm also grateful Mike Potts left his scaffolding at our house when they were done working in December. It would be terrific to get the exterior work done before he needs it, especially the work on the eaves.
I want to do open eaves. I just love the way they look. So the rafter tails need to be cut I think and then vents and rain gutters will need to be installed. All of these jobs would be crappy to do on the top of a ladder, so their moving to the top of the list.
One of my goals this week is to haul up materials for these projects so that when mud season breaks (which may not be for a couple weeks) I'll have materials enough to stay busy even if I have to walk in from the bridge.
I'll be out there Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday pretty much every week for a while. Some Saturdays too. In a month or two there'll be a party to assemble the ceiling in the dance room. It's going to be a giant basket made out of 8-inch wood strips.

Snowfort Season

2009-02-20T08:07:00.005-05:00

Here is a picture my sister Nora took on New Years Eve I think.
Jared said about this picture, "someday... we will all get crazy in this place."
We haven't been out at our building site much yet this year. But at least our kids are productive. Aya Jane had snowfort fever for a while there.

I don't think we ever got close to the size of these forts in my childhood. It helps that we have a record amount of snow and a plow that piles it all up for us. But holy cow. Way to go kids.

Seamus, where are your mittens?

No pie.

High and Dry!

2008-12-18T21:48:00.000-05:00

Hello again. I haven't written in a while because I've been a nutcase lately. My estimate for framing up to the roof with a hired crew was about half of the actual time it took. The snow started falling nearly every day. Add to that the fact that we were asked to leave our apartment in town.

Despite all of that, things are going well. Mike Potts and his crew were a real blessing to us. There were three or four of them steady working out here in the cold and snow every day except one when it was windy and something like 4º. I really appreciate being able to work with people who aren't too proud to teach and learn as a part of their every day. And the pace was nice. Everyone has their own place on the spectrum between git-R-done and nit-picking, and these fellows fall in a place where I feel at home. We did have some problems, the worst of which was an injury. One of the crew, Josiah, fell off a nine foot wall about the second day we were there and cracked his heel on the concrete slab. It sounds like he'll be on it again before too long but what a bummer. That's mostly all of the bad news, though.

The closing in of the building took a while longer than I thought. This seems to be the usual when you're estimating something you have little experience with. The only other standard stick-framing project I ever was a part of from start to finish was the building of Aya's little seven-foot square bedroom in our cabin. That took about three times as long as I'd guessed, too. But that amounted to only about a week all by myself.

We had to leave our apartment because our kids made too much noise for the downstairs neighbor to stand. The timing of our move out could have been a lot better, but it's great to be away from that whole situation.

We moved out to an apartment just outside of Big Bay next door to the landlords and good friends Sven and Marcia Gonstead. -- If you ever find yourself looking for an excellent guitar or dobro, you ought to talk to Sven. He custom builds the best guitars I've played. Really. Check out www.gonsteadguitars.com for more information.

The apartment is great for us. It's a bit smaller than the last place but we don't need all that much right now. It's hard to say exactly how long we'll stay since our building pace is going to slow down for a while. I can see us moving in the Summer. We're focused on renewing our vision and family harmony over the holidays and getting back to building in January.

Anyway here are some pictures showing how the trusses went up. First we put up a section of wall on the upper level that we could heave the buggers up onto. After they were all upside down on the walls we flipped them and skidded them into place, using wooden blocks to stop them in place on the wall plate, and metal doo-dads that space them out nicely about two-thirds of the way to the ridge.

Putting up the eaves on the gable ends was a little tricky. Anything 20 or more feet off the ground is tricky.

Anyway we got a roof deck and good roofing underlayment on. That should keep us dry until I can get up there next Spring or Summer.

There are more pictures to come whenever I can find the little USB cable.
Merry Christmas to you!

What's Black Friday, anyhow?

2008-12-02T12:31:00.000-05:00

Erica here, writing this one.

Our building party has come and gone, without any photographs to show. I am sorry this is the case, for there were beautiful people there erecting walls and working off animal fat from the day prior. A tall second story dance hall now hovers over the creek. Thank you, family and friends.

Walls go up

2008-11-27T14:13:00.000-05:00

Happy Thanksgiving.

I am thankful for having a moment to reflect, however brief.

Having a regular crew has been wonderful. We've been out there most of every day since last Monday. And despite Josiah falling off a wall and bruising a heel pretty bad, and a few technical problems we've managed to get the downstairs load-bearing walls up, and fix the floor joists and upstairs subfloor on top of them.

Tomorrow we'll have a party all day and begin putting up walls upstairs. Tools and materials are all ready to go. We'll bring sausages, bean salad and tea. The little cabin will be toasty. You are welcome to come out and make a joyful noise in the quiet woods.

Framing begins

2008-11-17T21:58:00.000-05:00

Framing time has begun. We got the site cleaned up this past weekend in preparation for a crew of four and two loads of forest products from Alberta and other far away places. It's always a little wierd buying wood from far away when you live in a forest. But it's like gathering firewood. If you can get your truck right next to some, it's a whole lot easier driving for a half hour to get it, rather than hauling it on your shoulder four hundred feet from your house. The wood came late, and we time to go make a fire in the little cabin before the driver came up the road, swearing and sweating.

He dumped it like a madman.

By the end of the day we had a wall and half up.

tomorrow should be exciting.

More Drawings

2008-11-11T19:55:00.000-05:00

Here's a view of the dance hall from the woodstove.

Also: some sketches of where we intend to put windows and doors.

Masonry Complete!

2008-11-08T02:07:00.000-05:00

It has been a good, difficult week. We were blessed with help and weather at the same time, and were able to get the concrete work finished, with the exception of waterproofing the exterior.

Monday morning was friggin' gorgeous. ->

Brad is on the left here, trying to see how far it is to the ground. The next photos jump to Tuesday.

Here Ian and Lake are making turds out of mortar.

Our kids as well as Chris and Jen's came out on Tuesday and were able to help quite a bit.

On Wednesday we came out to fill cores with concrete and rebar. Kyle joined us and had more patience with the children than me. Here he helps Mossy, but Moses did fill one of these cores all the way up by himself.

Erica had a nice chat with the mixer.->

Thursday and Friday were clean up days, filling and smoothing joints and making a concrete shoulder on the footing. It's a great relief to have this behind us. Now comes the very exciting framing stage. As always, help is welcome. I have a notion to have a roof raising party on Thanksgiving weekend or maybe even Thanksgiving day. More to come on that. Let me know if you can come.

2008-10-29T01:57:00.000-04:00

Our friend Kyle Miron came out to visit and take pictures. You can find him at ckunlimitedphotography.com.

First Snow

2008-10-27T09:38:00.000-04:00

The snow is falling this morning, whitening rooftops and car hoods in Marquette. Our basement blocks were delivered on Friday. A friendly guy came and drove his 18-wheel truck right out onto the slab. There they sit.

About a week ago I strained my back wrestling with the kids. I love how they make me feel young but this time I guess I went too far. Anyway I feel fine today. I think a couple more days rest are in order before any hard labor. It's hard to hold back at this point, but a body can only do what it can do. I'll be calling masons the next couple days to ask for help getting that part together.

Slab it to me

2008-10-16T22:42:00.000-04:00

Here it is. Three trucks full plus two more cubic yards of concrete poured into a rectangular shape in the middle of a wilderness. It is absurd I know.

These are lintels to go above windows in the block wall on the north side of the house. The south side will be a stud wall with the East and West stepping in between.

Note the difference from last week on this shot. Fall moves so fast.

Bring me mud

2008-10-10T22:27:00.000-04:00

After a few weeks of fussing with levels of earth, stone and sand we are ready for the concrete trucks to come. Just in time, too. I was driving in the last stakes by the light of the moon tonight and the concrete is due tomorrow at 9:00.
Today was a hectic day of details. I made it more hectic than it had to be by working faster than my rainbow could keep up with. That's partly why Mossy got his head busted into with a stick. He and Bird Jane were working as too-hard as I was in the brush pile and it ended up with a trip to the ER. Nothing too serious: After many stickers and promises of ice cream he let them wash his eyebrow and glue the gash back together.
Anyway, good night. I'm wasted.

The end of groundwork is in sight.

2008-09-26T23:19:00.000-04:00

This picture describes pretty well what has been going on at our building site lately. My dad and I busting our backs while Mossy reclines and gives his advice. Looking at this picture is encouraging to me. It's from a week ago and we've come a long way since then. The crushed stone layer was leveled and then compacted. And then we put down a 1" layer of insulation, and just today laid down a plastic vapor barrier and most of the sand that will be directly under the concrete. It's slow and exhausting work. But we're getting there. Tomorrow I plan to finish the sand layer and start setting up the concrete forms. Since our footings have to be 18" deep for most of the perimeter of the house, I plan to build forms that can be re-used in our dance room as movable room dividers/platforms.

Here's the foam board all in place. The channel down the middle is for a footing under the center walls, so they can support the floor upstairs.

The colors are really starting to change in the trees. It's always insane how dramatic the leaves are this time of year. Sometimes you can see a difference from morning to evening.

We'll need lots of hands for the concrete pour, maybe on October 10th or 11th, a week from this coming Friday and Saturday.
Happy Autumn!

Preparing for concrete

2008-09-17T23:13:00.001-04:00

Justin came over with his tractor again and spread sand and stone into the hole. Here you see me compacting the rocks with the old Subaru. It looks kind of sinister with the one hubcap missing. I'll give it a fair chance by also posting a picture of it on a pretty lady's head.

Permission Granted

2008-09-07T21:35:00.000-04:00

Yesterday our building permit came in the mail. It was encouraging after a week of digging out footing trenches. I've known for a while that I would sooner or later have to get in shape by way of hard labor. I've been getting some exercise this summer, but mostly the very easy kind. Walking the dog, riding bikes two miles with the kids, occasional wrestling around. This past week it has been pick and shovel every day. My dad gave me a pick a couple years ago that the local state prison had given away. In the middle of this week I wondered if they had been forced to give it away because it was so cruel and unusual. Mostly I'm joking of course. In truth part of me loves this stuff. This is my first sand castle that won't be just vague lumpy forms the next day. But here's a picture of the progress. You can see it doesn't look that different from the scene on August 20.
My next door neighbor Charles lent me his laser level. I th ought I'd just use it once to mark the corners but it has been the magic tool of the week, since I've had to reset the corners and level of the slab a few times.

In the thick of the quiet tedious week I found myself again asking why. Why are we doing this?! Do we really need such a large house? This is something I've thought about many times.

What do I need? The answer is another question: What do you want?

You see, if all you want is to live in a bush next to the freeway in Southern California and die at age 38, then all you need is a few donuts, two 40 oz. bottles of malt liquor, a little tobacco, and something to do with your hands like carving images into pieces of found wood.
So I say to the Answerer: Okay smartass, what do I want? This is answered by a feeling so wonderful it's terrifying. An opening of a chasm inside my own chest which makes the Grand Canyon appear as trivial as a track in the mud from some sticky kid's bike tire.
Thanks for that, and I'm sorry I called you a smartass. He laughs at me.

So: I want to thrive. I want to take the seed of Love sown within me and glorify it deep into the earth and as high as the eagles fly when they're so high you'd have to be looking hard for one to see them. Beyond that, I want my family to do the same. And furthermore, I want this for my extended family and friends and really all the world.
So how and where and when do I start?

Tomorrow morning

Done Planning (for now)

2008-08-25T22:31:00.000-04:00

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.

Nearly done getting ready to begin

2008-08-20T22:16:00.001-04:00

On the right is the site as it looked at the beginning of this year. Señor Savu from the other side of 550 came over on his tractor last week to make it bigger and more level (next one down).

Below is an action photo of him milling a log into boards for us (in 2007). This particular log comes from a white pine I grew up knowing. I remember my brother Greg once climbed to the top and said he could see Lake Superior. We plan to make a beefy table out of it.
The rest of this year so far has been spent making plans. There are so many facets to this project. It's taken a long time to develop these plans while learning how best to do things. The little house we built 6 years ago was very design-as-you-go style, but this one Erica and I have been planning intensely for. I have spent so many hours looking at books and houses and drawing and re-drawing it's insane. But I think this stage is almost complete. I'm ready.

Old news, August 2007

2008-08-20T21:43:00.000-04:00

Hello from down in the hole. This is a picture from last summer of a test hole that ended up being the hole for our septic tank. I'll put a couple more pictures from last summer in this posting from last summer. Above is our neighbor Rick digging out the house hole. The clearing and excavation proved to be enough work for one year.
Thank goodness we had help.

By the end of August we had other projects which needed our time so we called the building off for the year. We also needed to clarify our vision of what exactly we wanted in this house and how we intended to pay for it.
Winter was difficult in our one-room cabin, and knowing how much town-type work we had to do, it turned out to be best to rent an apartment in town until we can move into our new place.