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.

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

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

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 left 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

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

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

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.