anticipation dissipation

Yippee!! We begin again! It has been a year now since we moved into our basement apartment. Our plan was to finish the house in the summer. Summer is long past and it looks like another long winter in this small space. This winter though, we will see ongoing progress towards finishing the house. Tilt has not taken any work until spring. Now he can work here and only here! In only a few days he has insulated the first story radiant heat, had electricians in to rough in the second story, lots of materials have been delivered, and loads of wood have been moved about for drying and for working with. He has worked on a few things for the house in his spare time these past months, but not enough to motivate me to write. I was living in fear of wintering in this tiny space again. Now that it is here though it is not as bad as the anticipation of it. This winter I can choose appliances, tiles, make design choices and watch it all fall into place. Fun stuff!
Here are some house-related and non-house related photos from the last few months.

fire art

fire man

open space is great for art...

and Birthday parties

"underwater diver guy" goes to the pond...

...and the beach

framing guys

harvesting

harvest delivery

digging!

there's a digger at the door..

walking on the moon?

Dandelion stars

This week marks a year since we broke ground on our house. The spring dandelions are blooming, though they have started to transition to seed. Last year this field was full of yellow blooms and days later it was completely white with seed pods. I have never seen the transitional time before this year. It seems to happen in two days time. I have been negligent in maintaining this blog lately. The progress on the house has been so slow and quite frankly a bit too frustrating to write about with optimism. To keep it in perspective I am trying to remember that my frustration is simply due to waiting. I remind myself daily that day to day difficulties of living in one room surrounded by mud is not always how it will be.


In the past month or so we made progress with the wiring and sheet rock for the main floor and the second story. The floor is now down on the second story. We put some speakers in the ceiling and it is great fun to connect the computer to the speakers to listen to music or to a Red Sox game on the radio. After super-K goes to bed I have often found Tilt upstairs in a lawn chair listening to the game. At least he doesn't need a blanket anymore.


The arrival of spring has really helped us to feel like we are getting somewhere. Tilt expects to work full time on our house again soon. We are waiting for him to finish up some jobs first. Until then though we have been doing a bit of landscaping that the excavation team did not finish last year. We are limited without the big machinery, but we have borrowed Dad's tractor a to spread topsoil and plant some grass. It is a lot of heavy work to get it all spread out without many rocks. I want to see the grass to grow so that it is not so muddy after every rain. The physical work feels good on my body and in my mind. My sore muscles remind me that I am helping this project move forward.


Springtime in Vermont is beautiful. Our house is located in a field so the wildlife has been amazing to watch. We have become familiar with the herd of deer and flock of turkeys that come out to eat late at dusk. There are bobolinks, evening grosbeaks and red winged blackbirds at our feeder. Some nights we see a woodcock do his amazing fling routine and a groundhog was checking the place out last week (fortunately for us, he did not find a habitable spot near our house). On a clear night we can see an unbelievable amount of stars. I expect the dandelions will reflect the stars by turning all white by tomorrow. Our house will not be finished, but in the grand scheme of things it will not take longer that the change of the spring dandelions.

Tiramisu in the snow

I do not want to put on the big coat anymore.

Birds are nesting in our house. The optimist in me would like to see this as a wonderful sign of spring. Tilt is quite angry at the birds. He had hoped to work on our kitchen cabinets over the next few weeks, but will instead be putting up the soffits and foaming the bird holes in the easterly wall. Ladders, a foot of snow, and soft mud underneath does not make for a very inviting project, but it is necessary.

I do not want to put on a hat.

We have made great progress in finishing some of the walls. Choosing colors and painting is always a fun project. The walls are Oat Straw, Meditation, and Caliente. The ceiling is Mascarpone. So if you're looking for me, I will be sitting on a straw bale, meditating to a hot pepper mantra and getting fat on Tiramisu.

I have absolutely no desire to wear my heavy winter boots.

The ceiling lights are in, but not hooked up yet. Soon we will be ready for the electricians to come back and make that happen. They look good up there with the new paint. Tilt is really good at installing the light fixtures after putting up 30 of them! We purchased some low voltage pendants for over the island and breakfast nook. I am looking forward to seeing them up too.

I think I will stop complaining and go snowboarding while I still have the chance!!

making mud built to last

The holidays (and their hangover) are behind us. We are well into our winter routines and despite the cold, it feels good. Tilt is still working on a remodel job elsewhere during the day, but in the evenings he has penciled himself in as our home builder. I am lending a hand as much as I can with a Mr. Three year old in tow. I answer over 100 "why" questions every day. Fortunately he really likes to "build things." He is working things out in his mind, sometimes he thinks that his Daddy builds everything we own. He asked me this morning "How did Daddy build our car?" And it seems that while Daddy "builds" things, Mommy "makes" things.

It is gooey and dusty, spread with a blade and smoothed with sand. Spreading mud is the name of the game at our house right now. A little bit more goes up every evening. It is great to see walls on the main level. Tilt has decided to build our kitchen cabinets rather that order them made. I am especially excited about this because I get to help with design. Our kitchen is not big so it will have to be very efficient with every space being a useful space. We will use wood that was cut into boards from the largest of the logs milled up for the timber frame. Finally we finished our lighting plan. I am ordering some very small (2 1/2 inches in height) low voltage recessed lights for the main story. I am very excited about these lights. Previously, I was resigned to the fact that such small recessed lights did not exist. Our floor system is only 2 x 4 construction above the timber frame so there is not much space for lighting. After searching the web several times I finally came across a Canadian company that has them. While so much is moving forward, we are already faced with maintenance! The windows are getting so wet with the house drying out that I am cleaning and drying the wood every day. It is super frustrating to see some mold forming on a new window. We were not able to seal them immediately because of the cold weather and now we are paying for it.

We needed a coat rack in the basement so we decided to make it a family project. It gave me a chance to use the lathe (reminding me of how much I love turning). Then Glenn worked with Keaton to "build" it with the things I "made" for it (Tilt did turn some too). Alas we have another spot to hang all of the winter stuff. It has been cold. We have a lot of gear!