Little House on the Hillside

How spring in NH is like a box of Happy-O's

    Well it’s been about a month since my last entry. I haven’t written much because I have been busy shoveling snow and digging out my snow boots which I had shoved into the farthest reaches of the closet. Oh yes, spring has arrived in New Hampshire, and with it, cold temps and a fair bit of snow. It is not snowing right now, on May 1st. That would be ludicrous (but not unheard of, and frankly, not that surprising). But we have gotten more snow in April than I care to remember. Here is a picture from April 12th:

April fools

     Yeah, that snow is still hanging around in shady patches and on the north side of the house, which will henceforth and forevermore be referred to as Far Siberia. This hopefully will help to illustrate how spring in New Hampshire is like a box of Happy-O’s. Happy-O’s are our grocery store’s generic equivalent to Cheerios. They are in a similar box. They are round, and made of oats. They have a hole in the middle. And, they cost a fair bit less than Cheerios. It is easy to get fooled by the oh-so-persuasive Happy-O’s. Heck, how different can they be? They look the same. Similar ingredients. They are even next to each other on the shelf. Why not buy them, and save a few bucks? So you do.
     The following morning, your error in judgment strikes you squarely in the palate. The Happy-O’s instantly become a soggy beige mass of fibery gunk that looks as if it would do an admirable job patching holes in plaster. And the taste is…off. It is just not right. In short, there is little to be happy about with your big box of Happy-O’s. I scatter a few on the ground outside and even the birds are smart enough to not eat them. They approach, cock their heads quizzically, and then I swear they shoot me a dirty look before flying off.
     So the lesson here is not to get fooled by the calendar. Trusting in early spring to be warm and sunny is like trusting generic Cheerios to provide a fulfilling breakfast. It’s just not going to happen.

     Aside from bitching about the weather, and fighting off a never-ending cold, we have managed to make some progress on the hillside. We are basically at the point where most of the tasks are being done to get ready for plumbing and wiring. That means building interior partition walls, adding some insulation here and there, and cleaning out our wreck of a basement. The insulation has proved to be interesting. We decided to continue our efforts to go as green as we can, so we purchased some recycled cotton insulation. It costs much more than the regular fiberglass stuff you usually use, but it is completely safe to handle, and there are zero harmful chemicals. It is mostly made from recycled denim scraps from blue jean production. The insulation is primarily being put around doors and windows. We will also insulate the walls of the bathrooms, for sound-deadening purposes, since some things should really remain private, if you catch my drift.

Jean splicing

Blue Jean Baby

Anne’s sister Bridget visited and helped with another insulation project in the basement, which needed to be done before we install the radiant tubing. This stuff, unfortunately, was not made of cotton, but it was scraps of rigid foam left over from the house kit, so financially it was a big hit with me. Bridget and Anne also tackled the mess in the basement and did an amazing job getting that mess in order. It hasn’t looked this good since it was first poured.

  
     The interior walls were another challenge, the main one being deciding on a final design and sticking with it. The two small bedrooms were pretty straightforward, but when we got to the master bedroom and bathroom, and closets and pantries, it was like a G7 summit. There was bargaining, give and take, compromise, stonewalling, bluffing, capitulating and good ol’ wheelin’ and dealin’. When all was said and done, we came up with some good solutions to some tricky problems, and I think we are both satisfied that the layout meets all of our needs gracefully. Once things were decided, I could go ahead and construct the walls, which are now done for the most part. Upstairs is a warren of studs and headers, but if you know what to look for, you can really see the space defined. It is pretty cool to have finally made it this far.

     Next is plumbing and electrical. This week I will be getting together with our electrician to map out our strategy. The plumber has already been through once to tell us what needs doing before we are ready for him. Luckily, it was not much, the biggest task being to actually buy our tub, shower, toilets and faucets. Then he can get started, and the hillside will be that much closer to completion.    

Owls, frogs and guerillas

Many of my friends from NY wonder why I decided to live in such a rural place. Here are two quick reasons:

1. The animals
          Anne and I were taking a walk at dusk the other evening when we saw a large bird fly overhead and perch in a tree. It immediately began calling out a familiar call. It was a barred owl. We stood and whispered, trying to get a good look at it in the failing light. It obliged us by flying to a closer tree, where it continued its calling. Cool, we thought. It obviously had the same thought, because it decided to fly even closer so it could check us out. By now we were within spitting distance, and it kept calling at us. I am not sure what it expected us to say, so we said nothing. Eventually, evidently bored with the one-way conversation, it flew off, to find someone more polite to talk to.            The other thing that you cannot miss at this time of year is the sound of the Spring Peepers. These are tiny little frogs with BIG voices. Their calls can be heard from over three miles away, and these guys are smaller than my thumb. When it is a warm night and you are near a wetland, the sound is deafening. It is awesome, and I mean that in the true sense of the word, awe-inspiring, as opposed to the modern ‘like, totally’ sense of the word. Take a listen:

SpringPeepers

2. The people
         Our soon-to-be new neighbors on the hillside did some guerilla-style planting last fall of some daffodil bulbs on our land, and we are now seeing the results. They decided to plant some daffodils from their yard in an undisclosed location around our driveway, and just like that, the landscaping of the hillside has begun. A welcome splash of color, and a warming sense of neighborliness.

Guerillaflowers

 
 

Down to the wire

     For the last week or so, I have been wiring the house. It feels weird to say it, since it is something I have little to no experience with, and it would be an untruth to say I have done it alone. But like most other projects on the hillside, this one started with, yet again, a large amount of homework.
     I spent a few days studying my wiring book Wiring a House by Rex Caldwell. He covers every aspect you can think of, from choosing a panel, to grounding, to installing a dishwasher. I certainly didn’t get everything on the first pass, but that is certainly no fault of his. This book has become my Bible over the last week, and probably will be for the weeks to come.
     I also had a few consultations, one with a local electrician, Harvey, and another with my future neighbor Rick (he of the guerilla daffodils, see below).  Both had keen insights and supplied me with critical information before I made any mistakes from the get go. Harvey is going to mount the meter on the outside and set the grounds, as well as hook up to the power company when the time comes. Rick has been over for a few days already, fine tuning my layout, showing me how to strip wires and hook up circuit breakers. Without him, I may still be standing there with my wiring diagram and a blank look on my face.
     The wiring diagram is another one of those things that takes up a bit of time but is pretty essential to keep everything straight in your head. It is basically a floor plan with outlets, switches and light fixtures penciled in, and then lines going to and from switches to fixtures to show which switch operates which light. It can get confusing very quickly. I would suggest to anyone out there who is contemplating this do it in pencil, and to have a big eraser handy.
     First thing you do is nail up all of the outlet and switch boxes, so you know where to run your wire. Then you figure out which outlets and switches will be on which circuits. Finally, you figure out how the wire is going to get to these boxes and remain hidden. This is where, on a First Day Cottage, or on any other timber frame structure, things get a bit tricky. In most houses, there are 2x4 studs covered by drywall from floor to ceiling, as well as drywall on the ceiling. Hiding the wiring is an afterthought, since every surface has a cavity you can work in. But on the hillside, I have spent a truly disproportionate amount of time thinking up clever trim details, deciding where I will add wainscoting, and generally pulling my hair out deciding the best way to run my wire. The house is designed with the idea that you run most of your wire on the outside of the house, an idea which always shocks people when they hear it. I have managed to avoid a lot of outside runs, but still use the technique in a few key areas. I spend more time standing in the center of a room, mumbling to myself and tracing imaginary wiring paths in mid-air, than I ever thought possible. I feel a bit like Gandalf, but with bushier eyebrows.
     By now, the first floor is mostly done, thanks in great part to Rick donating some precious hours to the cause. I hope by the end of next week to have the bulk of the wiring completed. Then I can turn my attention to something I actually know how to do, like putting up trim, staining siding, and drinking gin and tonics.

Great, now Simon has a hernia

     Our good friends Simon and Nicole have just returned from a 14 month research trip in Rwanda. They are some of our dearest friends, and we took a day off over the weekend to see them. Simon is a handyman by trade, and generously offered to come up for a day and help out. Great, I told him. It should be easy. We’ll be mostly pulling wire and drilling holes all day, no big deal. A nice easy day to get you back in the swing of things.
     Simon arrived early this morning, and after giving him a tour, the first order of business was to get our new one-piece tub-shower unit to the upstairs bathroom. This thing is not overly heavy, but very awkward. We carried it around to the back door, slid it into the hall, and that’s about the last thing that went right for the next three hours. I had assumed since the house was new construction, with a staircase that met code and was yet to have a railing attached, that this guy would just slide right up. Not quite. I’ll file this experience in my ‘Never Again!’ drawer, right next to the picture of me swilling cheap tequila from a plastic bottle on a beach in Mexico (don’t ask). You can see where this situation is going. And for the record, the aforementioned drawer is getting quite full these days.  
     So it quickly becomes clear, as we slide the shower into place that it is not going to go up as is. We’ll need to take a tread off. Ok, no big deal, the treads on the stairs are temporary anyway, until construction is complete and I can put on the nice oak ones. So I unscrew one tread. That gives us another inch and a half. We need…oh, I don’t know, roughly…a hell of a lot more. Crap. We wrestle the unit in and out, try turning it this way and that, all to no avail. I need to cut into the center carriage of the stair.
     If someone had told me last month that I would one day soon be hacking off pieces of my painstakingly constructed staircase, I would have called them a dirty name. But out came the Sawzall. I told Anne the other day, as she was working on something downstairs and I was cutting out a misplaced stud upstairs, that at this point in the game, if you hear the Sawzall, you know something has gone wrong. Truer words were never spoken.
     I sawed off half of one riser. We moved the tub back into place. Still not enough. We moved the tub out of place. I removed another tread. Moved the tub back. No good. Moved the tub out. Took off a floorboard upstairs. Moved the tub back. Nope. Moved the tub out. Cut another riser. Moved the tub back. Damn! Moved the tub out…
     It went on and on all morning. By the fourth riser I am going a bit crazy and Simon has blown a major gasket from leaning over and holding the weight of the tub form above. We know it will go eventually, and after about 3 hours, it finally does. We lift it up what’s left of the stairs, swing it around in the upstairs hall, and slide it into the bathroom. Voila. It fits like a glove, standing there next to the toilet. All of the sudden we have the makings of a bathroom.
     We spent the rest of the day running wires, but we were pretty spent, so we quit around 5:30 or so. Simon hobbled back to his van and sped away, only after erasing my number from his cell phone and requesting that I do the same with his. I haven’t spoken to him since, but his lawyer seems quite nice, and I’m sure we’ll settle out of court.