Little House on the Hillside

Our favorite supermodel

     It was brought to my attention that I have not mentioned the type of house we are building. After many months of looking at plans, shuffling room sizes, and grappling with square feet, we finally settled on a simple cape-style house, 32 feet long by 24 feet wide. Even better, it is a do-it-yourself house kit. This design is the brainchild of David Howard, founder of First Day Cottage. I won’t go into many details right now about First Day—you can click on their link to find out about how their ideas can revolutionize your homebuilding experience. Don’t worry, plenty more will be said about them as the building actually gets underway. But I will say we are grateful that our paths have crossed with theirs, for without First Day Cottage, this process would have been improbable, if not impossible.
     Back to the house itself. We toyed for many months with the idea of a very narrow, long, two-story design—16’ by 40’. It was economical, easy to build, and fast going up. The more we tried to layout the interior, however, the more problems we would come up against. Little things, like the placement of a kitchen table, to bigger things, such as the placement of a functioning staircase. Whenever we mentioned these dimensions to any one else, their brows would furrow in consternation as they tried to envision what such a long narrow house would be like to live in. We finally grew exhausted tying to make it all work, un-furrowed our own brows, and moved on to a new design. After kicking around a few other ideas—a saltbox, a ‘cape’ with a five-foot knee wall--we came around to our present little gem: a traditional cape with a two-and-a-half foot knee wall. The upstairs will be funky, with angled ceilings and secret tunnel closets, not to mention soaring ceilings. A master bedroom, two small kids’ rooms and a nice bathroom will provide for all of our sleeping and showering needs quite nicely. Downstairs is more open concept, with a kitchen flowing into a dining area, which in turn flows into the living space. A woodstove is the visual divider of these two spaces, possibly with a band of slate flooring running between them. There is also an ‘away room,’ a library/study which will be separated from the living room by a glass door, so it will be private but not shut off entirely. Next to this room will be the second bathroom, which will be accessible from the front hallway as well.
     The basement will be full and heated. This space will probably evolve into many things over the course of time—playroom, music studio, workshop, storage facility. The outside will be vertical siding to start, eventually clapboards. The roof will be metal, a charcoal gray color. Trim will be a yet-to-be-decided color, as will the front door. Of course, many of these details are subject to change, and probably will.

     Here is a picture of a model (I like to think of it as our supermodel) of our little cape. Note: goldfish not to scale.

 

Supermodel

 

     I strongly encourage anyone who is thinking of building or designing a house to make a 3-d model of it. The spatial relations of the different rooms becomes much clearer when you can hold and rotate your design. Believe me, the two hours you spend cursing at your glue-stick is worth it.

 

richard

 

You look radiant, darling

     Labor day couldn’t have been more aptly named for us this year. A whole weekend of work was squashed into one day due to the remnants of Ernesto that blew through the northeast.  It was a long day indeed.

     On Saturday, Anne and I laid out the plastic sheeting for a vapor barrier on the basement floor. We then moved all of the blue-board insulation into the hole, and were ready to start cutting it to size. But then a thought struck: if it does pour down rain tomorrow, won’t the floor become a big swimming pool as no water can drain past the plastic? A call to our excavator, a well-timed lunch break, and a return call confirmed we should cease and desist and wait until Monday. So we did, even though our first laborer arrived that afternoon. That would be Bridget, who arrived with three bottles of wine, a plethora of fancy cheeses and chocolates,  and dinner from an Indian restaurant. Hooray for Bridget. She received a swift promotion to “Chief Assistant to the Head Laborer.”

 

 

Free labor

    

Sat and Sun were spent in a very leisurely fashion, as there wasn’t much choice. We were marshalling our strength for Monday, and by 8 am Monday morn we were on the hillside and getting work done. We laid the plastic back out on the floor, and then began laying out the blue-board. It went smooth, with everyone keeping busy cutting or measuring or moving pieces. There was a long break in the action as we did some math and soon figured out that we were one board short—I believe I said something to the effect of: “You have got to be sh**ing me.” I probably said a lot more than that. Use your imagination (I sure did). Anyway, Anne ran down to Hamshaw’s lumber to pick up a sheet while Bridget and I laid out the rest of the insulation, and then started on the radiant tubing.

     The tubes came in 300 foot long rolls, and seemed to be spring loaded. It was quite a wrestling match and took some doing to un-do the mess I quickly had in my hands. But we soon got it under control and had four or five runs laid out by the time Anne returned from Hamshaw’s. Soon afterwards, Carrie and Simon arrived to whisk Bridget away from us and back to her non-tubing and insulation related life. Carrie and Simon quickly received the title of “Most Esteemed and Thoughtful Visitors” since they came bearing two important gifts:

    

     1) A battery powered saw/drill kit (borrowed from our friends Cecily and Brett, who have the honor of being titled “Last-minute Lifesavers”)

     2) Cookies and brownies

    I hope all of you out there who are planning on stopping by are seeing the trend of visitors arriving with edible gifts. Let’s try and keep that theme going!

 

 

Siblings visit

    

Bridget’s VW barely made it down the driveway, and it was just Anne and I left to finish the job. After some layout discussions, we figured out what would work best, and motored onward. During our discussion, we had one more visitor, a quick stopover by Barb (who brought M&M’s) who stopped by after a busy day monitoring the boats at Lake Skatutakee.  She witnessed one of many long strategy meetings, and quickly beat a retreat.

     This story has a happy ending, however. The tubes were laid out, the manifold hooked up and pumped with air (which was a whole separate adventure in and of itself), the cracks in the foam filled, and measurements taken for future reference. It was a twelve hour day, but mission accomplished. Our floor is ready, and now awaits the slab to be poured, which I thought was to be done today, thus staying and working until dark, but as it turns out, probably won’t be poured until tomorrow. Well, at least it is out of the way. It looks, in my opinion, absolutely radiant.

richard

 

Finished

 

Air compressor3

 

Air compressor2

 

Victory

Hello, Mr. Chips

     The chipper finally arrived today. I am not speaking of an overall state of mind that descended on the hillside. Neither am I referring in Anglo-slang to a fish-and-chips van. I am speaking of a beastly machine that can shred a human torso into bite-sized pieces in under ten seconds. That’s right—heavy machinery. As if the backhoe and bulldozer weren’t enough, in comes this monster. We fed it all day, and it still wanted more. Quite the insatiable appetite.

     When you clear a site for building, you have a few options of what to do with the tree limbs and brush. You can either leave it in big piles and let it slowly degrade over fifteen years, pile it to be burned in a series of bonfires at a later date,  truck it out, or shred it to tiny pieces which can be later used for things such as landscape mulch and barbecue seasoning.  Chipping is a cost-efficient way to get rid of it without leaving huge piles all around your new house.

     Four of us worked all day and still did not get it all. The rest will be finished tomorrow, in time for the shipment of our lumber. The hillside is really starting to shape up.

 

richard

 

Chipper

                                      this thing is about as loud as The Who in concert circa 1968

Things that make you go boom

     A beautiful day, a momentous day, and an overall up-and-down day. The day began with the final bit of chipping—no, not tricky golf shots from the rough. See yesterday’s entry for specifics.  Once that was done, I was awaiting the BIG delivery of our lumber. To pass the time, I decided to clear the water out of the foundation in preparation for tomorrow’s pouring of the floor. I had laid a tarp down over our radiant tubing and insulation, and it did a good job of keeping the rain out of our foundation. A very good job.  A 67 gallon good job. Yes, I spent some quality time with a 4-cup measuring scoop, a 5-gallon bucket, and 67 gallons of rainwater. I took no pictures of this endeavor, as I have no wish to remember it. All in all, it was worth it, as our foundation is predominantly dry and ready for a floor to be poured.

     The delivery was late—scheduled to arrive at 12, but not actually getting there until almost 2.  In the meantime, the crew was working on the septic, and the news was all good. The soil was perfect, the elevations were exquisite, and this would be the best septic system in Nelson, hands down. Let me tell you, our hillside was really shaping up. With the brush gone, the logs stacked, and the site straightened up, ready to receive the lumber, I could begin to visualize what the finished product would eventually become. The birds were chirping, the sun was shining, and I was whistling an old Irish jig. Life was grand.

     Then came the trucks. Our excavator had gone out to check on another job, and came across our lumber trucks lost in an adjacent town. Evidently, they had been lost for quite a time, and were not happy. After being chaperoned back to Nelson, the boom truck had a heck of a time making the turn up the driveway. The driver was less than thrilled.  His face was a shade of red usually reserved for very ripe tomatoes, or very fast Italian sports cars, and the words that jettisoned from that cab made me cringe. Me, who has been to a number of Yankees/Red Sox games at Yankee Stadium! This man was not a happy camper.

     The site was not level. There was no room to put anything. He couldn’t turn around. The sky was too blue, the ground was too brown, etc, etc. Without getting into too many tedious details, the lumber was all off-loaded with the magical boom arm of the bigger truck (it truly is a wondrous machine), and they headed out, as did the wonderful excavating crew, who hung around to help me deal with the prickly situation. I was left alone, staring at the hillside which, just a few scant hours before, had left me almost speechless with its beauty. Now all I could focus on were the piles of lumber, everywhere, askant and askew with no respect to order, not to mention gravity. Luckily my excavator crew is going to help me get it straight in the morning, 6:30 am to be exact. So it is time for me to retire.

 

richard

 

 

Delivery

                                                             Where can I shove this thing?

Stick around for the floor show

     It’s a funny thing, punctuality. When you want it, you rarely get it, but when you need a little extra time, people show up early. This morning the excavators and I are trying to move the wood that was jettisoned all over the site yesterday by Mr. Happy. We are working hard, but it is a big mess to clear up, and if the concrete truck would only be just 15-20 minutes late, we would be sitting pretty. No pretty for you! The concrete truck rolls in five minutes early, resulting in a mad scramble to get lumber out of its path.

     In the end, however, the results were excellent. Our radiant tubing had a few mishaps with loose staples, and the concrete truck had to deal with a tough angle for his chute, but overall the guys did a great job, and the floor looks real slick. All that’s left to do is paint on the lines for the basketball court before Anne gets home, and I’ll be all set.

 

richard

 

 

Floor

 

Floor

 

Floor

A journey of one thousand piles starts with the first step

     Following the advice of our favorite communist folk hero Woody Guthrie, this weekend we decided to organize. While his concept of organizing included exciting elements such as marches, rallies, and protest songs, ours was decidedly more mundane. It involved stacking... and piling...and arranging. At times, we arranged our stacks into piles. This was often followed by re-stacking our arranged piles into new arrangements of piled stacks. Then would we pile our stacked arrangements into stacks of piles. Then all of our hard work would be covered by a tarp.

     We spent one and a half days doing this, and we still aren’t quite finished. Luckily we had our second bit of free labor, Anne’s dad Fran. He called on Friday to see if we needed help. I informed him we would be mostly stacking and piling and arranging. Being a librarian, he salivated at the opportunity and arrived on Saturday afternoon, and dutifully helped us to organize. But we did let him have a little fun as he showed us how he used to cut boards before the advent of electricity.

 

 

Fran

He also arrived with two six-packs of beer and a dozen eggs.  While not an obvious pairing of food, both served us quite well over the course of the weekend.

     I cut the rest of the sill plates by hand (sill plates are the pieces of wood directly attached to the foundation), and they should all be attached by tomorrow. I believe you can count today as our first ‘official’ day of building. Insert fanfare here.

 

richard

I'm sill standing

     The sill plates are attached to the building (read this in a deep, sonorous voice, akin to how you would announce “Elvis has left the building”). A day of drilling, placing, hammering, pounding, swearing and bolting resulted in the permanent attachment of the first pieces of wood to our foundation. The work is not inherently exciting, but the progress is.

 

Sills

Sills

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

    

The most dangerous part of this endeavour is the mental aspect. As I was working, I was trying to think of a witty title for this entry, using the word ‘sill’ in a punny way. When I came up with ‘I’m sill standing,’ I was satisfied, and ready to move on. But my brain was not. Instead of enjoying the serenity of the hillside and the random noises a patch of forest provides throughout an afternoon, my brain decided to replay the awful Elton John song, ‘I’m Still Standing,’ over and over and over, so on and so forth, ad infinitum. These are the true hazards of working alone.

     Speaking of hazards, Anne had to go to the time-out corner the other day for the willful misuse of duct tape. Let this serve as a lesson to you all.

richard

Time out

When you swish upon the tar

     A rainy Friday morning allows me some time to give the latest report. We have spent the last two days between rain showers applying the waterproofing to the outside of the foundation. A technically convoluted procedure, I will try and put it into layman’s terms. Bear with me.

 

Step 1: Dip long-handled brush into black goop

Step 2: Smear black goop onto wall

Repeat until wall is covered. Move on to next wall.

 

     That’s about it.  Actually, before you brush on the black goop, you actually apply a different grade of black goop with a trowel into the small holes created by the rebar. Then you brush on the other black goop. Then you try and get it off your hands, which inevitably leads you to wiping it on your pants, which results in you sticking to all manner of things, such as leaves, sticks, small animals, and the seat of your car.

 

     Anne and I were able to get three of four walls done before quitting due to rain. More rain today, so it looks like we will have to wait until tomorrow to finish.

 

richard

 

 

Tar

 

Tar

It's a septic--boogie woogie woogie

Not much to say, really. I just had to use that title. Enjoy this behind-the-scenes, little house on the hillside exclusive look at our leach field.

 

richard

 

 

Leachfield

Welcome to the House of Blue(board)s

     Anne and I spent the day putting up the exterior blue-board insulation around the foundation. Pretty straightforward, all in all, though a bit sad to cover up our beautiful tar. A warm day, perfect for working outside. Our smallest maples are starting to turn red, hinting at what the hillside will look like in a few weeks' time.

     With the addition of blueboard, the foundation is almost ready to be backfilled, finally eliminating our moat around the house. That will be nice, to be certain, but I am not sure what to do with the alligators. We have become quite fond of them. Maybe the leachfield...

 

richard

 

 

Blueboard

 

Blueboard

He came, he sawed, he timbered

    

     We were lucky enough to have a visit from Geoff Jones today. Geoff is a co-worker of Anne’s from The Society for the Protection of NH Forests, and is pretty handy with a chainsaw. Pretty handy is an understatement. Geoff is the New England Society of American Forester’s 2006 recipient of the Austin Cary Practicing Professional Award. Not to be confused with the Austin Powers Groovy Baby, Yeah! Award, although I bet he could win that one too, if he tried. Anne had asked him to come over and help us take down the trees needed to get in our power line from the road. Well, he didn’t help us do it, he just did it himself.

     While Anne and I spun our wheels all day trying to figure out the exact center line of the foundation and debated ratios and the Pythagorean Theorem, Geoff took down trees of various sizes, dropping them exactly where he wanted to. It was a true show of woodsman skill. Chesterfield supervised the whole operation, making sure Anne and I were well aware of who is

really in charge.

     Now we are ready for power—it should be arriving by the middle of next week. Until then, we'll keep firing up the generator.   

 

richard

 

Geoff

Chesterfield

Great Wall of Nelson (well, I think it's great)

     Our first wall is complete! The wall that runs down the center of the house through the basement that carries the weight of the floor joists and the center walls above it is finally done. Anne and I started on Sunday, sort of, and managed to build our first post. Anne wielded a framing hammer that is as long as her arm and pounded nails into submission. It was as if the mighty Thor himself returned to Earth in the form of a mild-mannered woman with a pink toolbelt. Truly a sight to behold.

     I mostly finished the wall yesterday, and was in the home stretch when Anne returned form work and we did a few readings of the level. This revealed the walls were all about ¼ inch too tall. Luckily, I hadn’t permanently attached the posts and was able to take them all down and trim them to size, just as it was getting dark.

     Today, the wall was completed, and is now ready to receive the floor joists. Now all I have to do is cut 88 2x8’s to exactly 12 feet long and nail them together with a 2x4 sandwiched in between. (Don’t worry if that made no sense. Stay tuned for pictures that will help to clarify this entire process).  I spent most of today sorting through the aforementioned 2x8’s, measuring and crowning them, and piling them accordingly. Yes, I am still stacking stuff, and probably will be throughout this entire process.

 

 

Sept20 017

     Entries may become a bit more random and a bit less frequent from this point onwards. Not only will I be spending the bulk of my time on the hillside, but our computer situation just got a bit more dodgy, if that is even possible. So unless someone out there has an extra low-Earth-orbit satellite they can task to Nelson, NH, our dial-up woes continue.

richard

Time to back-Phil

     This morning is a gusty, wet introduction to autumn. All of the little red and yellow leaves that have been hiding up in the canopy have been driven to the earth and amassed themselves in rusty-colored piles on roads, lawns, and decks throughout the town. Just like that, my brain processed that summer is over. A few red swamp maples in the wetlands by couldn’t do it. Some yellow patches in the upper branches of sugar maples didn’t do it, either. No, not even the appearance of apples at roadside stands and a gift of fresh cider from a neighbor did it. None of these things were strong enough to make me start my personal transition into fall. It took this morning--a chill, blustery wind laced with a cold rain, carrying with it the hints of colors to come--to adjust the settings on my internal clock. Now I can put away the shorts and sandals, and dig out the sweaters and heavy socks. It’s a sad farewell to fresh tomatoes, but a warm welcome to hearty soups and stews. Transitions are funny—some come gradually, and some occur at the drop of a hat (although if it happens too quickly, can it still be a true transition?). At any rate, it’s time to pull up the tomato plants in the blue containers on the porch, and shake the seeds out of the morning glory vines and store them for next year. Autumn is here.

     The luxury of autumn is mornings like these, where there is no guilt in sitting with a cup of tea and writing for an hour or so. Later today, or tomorrow even, will be time enough for work. Today is not fit for framing. However, excavators seem not to mind at all.

     Phil and his crew are working hard at the site this morning, trucking in sand and gravel to continue backfilling the foundation. This essentially means creating the proper grade up to the foundation walls. It also means the end of our moat, and the plank bridge of dubious construction we have been using for the past month. Fare the well, dear bridge, you will not be missed.

     Prior to backfilling, the foundation drains are installed, which is a simple matter of laying a perforated pipe around the perimeter of the foundation walls. It is sloped in such a way to carry any water that seeps through the ground away from the house and through another pipe that travels a fair distance away before coming out to daylight and shooting the water down the hillside. These guys have been at it for a few days now and with every truckload of sand I am amazed at how little it fills. The truck is big (at least to my eyes), and it dumps a huge (at least to my eyes) pile of sand and then rumbles off to get another.  Meanwhile, the excavator picks up sand in its bucket and drops it precisely where it is needed. I do not know how many piles we have been through, but by end of day yesterday the backfilling looked about half-way completed (at least to my eyes—that’s the last time I’ll say that, I promise).

 

 

Backfill

Drain (1)

    

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

    

     I have spent the last few days building box-beams for the first floor. I will explain this in a bit more detail next entry, when I have some pictures to illustrate my needlessly wordy explanations. For now, know that it involves a huge amount of measuring, cutting, assembling, and nailing. If the weather was more suitable, we would be installing those beams today. Hopefully we can get them in place by tomorrow.

     A funny surprise (not exactly ‘ha-ha look at the clown funny,’ more akin to a ‘holy crap, what the hell is going on here if I don’t laugh I might cry’ funny) occurred on Thursday. I drove up to the hillside and saw some boxes scattered here and there, and then saw some windows, and then spied a few doors. I quickly realized that these were not only the doors and windows for the house, but the kitchen cabinets as well! Now, I like to think that we are moving along at a nice steady pace, but two weeks is not a lot of time between your first shipment of framing lumber and your next shipment of kitchen cabinets. I called First Day and was reminded that I knew the dates of all shipments, which I did, so the blame is mine. But the difference between a penciled-in notation on a calendar and the reality of over 12 piles of tarp-covered lumber scattered throughout a tight building site is vast. I had no clue where this stuff was going to go. Somehow, we found a place, and everything is safely stowed away, awaiting its time of deployment.

 

 

I think the cabinets look good right about here

    

     Finally, I have heard a few interesting birds while working. Most mornings, I hear a loon calling as it flies overhead to one of our many near-by lakes. If you have never heard a loon call, well, you should do everything you can to hear one. It is magic. I also heard a barred owl yesterday. It gave a two-note performance, and then gave no more, no matter how hard I called for an encore.

When a tree falls in the woods

     Yes, many trees have fallen already on our hillside. It is not a pristine site—it was logged cleanly about 100 years ago, by a neighbor’s estimate. There is always a twinge of guilt as you watch the trees go down, but these lovely oaks, birches, maples and beeches will keep us warm for years to come, and we were as selective as possible when choosing what trees came down.

     A bit of debate surrounded a large oak at the end of the driveway. It was tight to the first turn, and had a large scar and cavity on one side of its base. It would be tricky to take down safely, which is why we didn’t remove it from the beginning. Today our tough-tree specialist arrived, and after some discussion and serious cogitation, we decided it had to come down. This was no small undertaking.

     Joe, the tree guy, warmed up with a dead birch, not too big but big enough to be dangerous. He climbed it with spikes on his boots and a belt he looped around the trunk, going about half-way up so he could tie off some ropes which would help guide the fall. The other end of the ropes were attached to a few sturdy trees as well as the excavator, which provided pressure as Joe made the saw cuts at the base. As the tree began its fall, and the excavator pulled the line taut, the birch snapped in half and crashed to the ground in a heap. It was a graphic illustration as to why you have to be extremely careful when cutting dead or dying trees—they can go anywhere at any time.

 

Dead birch

    

This was all business as usual for Joe, and he moved on to the big oak.  Once again, he climbed it to a big fork about half-way up, and began attaching ropes. He also attached a steel cable, which was attached to a chain, which was attached to the excavator. This sounds fast, but the whole process took about an hour. Then, he sharpened his big saw, and started cutting. He took his time, taking out a bit here and there, finally making the notch which would hopefully dictate the direction of the fall. If it fell the wrong way, it could block the road and take out power lines. He made his cuts from one side, then another, then back to the first. He then had Jeremy put a bit of pressure on the chain, kept cutting, a bit more pressure, a bit more cutting, a lean, a creak, a groan, a crack, a whoosh! and a CRASH! It came down right in the driveway, a perfect placement, in my eyes. We spent the rest of the day bucking it up and chipping all of the brush that came from it and a few more trees.

 

Run!

 

Joe

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

    

 

 

 Joe was a funny guy. When I asked his opinion on whether to take it or leave it, if it was healthy enough to stand or not, he said, “It could go next year, two years, ten years. Who knows? We all gotta go sometime.” And later, “Well, if it does fall, it’s not going to take out your power, just your neighbors. It’ll also block them in. But, that’s why you live in the country, right? You gotta expect this.” He was a bit nuts, all in all.

     Note to self: don’t wear your NY Yankee cap when subcontractors will be at the site. The chances of them being a fellow Yankee fan are slim, while the chances of them being a Red Sox fan are pretty good.