Who's afraid of the inspector?

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 airtight. Then, since you're sending air out the chimney, you have to poke holes in your airtight 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

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

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

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, including Moses! 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 visiting 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

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

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

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!