Lavamos las ropas

In another one of those milestones that requires a yelp of joy we hooked up our washing machine on Saturday morning.

With the sheetrock work complete we didn't loose a minute before priming the walls of the small cubby space where the machine sits. Nancy and I hauled the thing up from the basement with the crucial aid of a lifting strap that distributes the weight of the object being carried evenly between two people and allows the body to lift the weight safely.

Once we had the machine in place, our dear friend Mary (visiting from Portland, OR) and I spent a little while removing the barrel stabilizers, hooking up the water lines, installing the drain hose and firing 'er up. The directions say to run the first load without clothes, so we did, but as soon as it was complete we started doing laundry in earnest. I joked with Nance that finally we don't have to wait three months to do our laundry on Cape Cod, which is a bit of an exaggeration, but its true that we have gone long spells between doing loads of laundry and end up bringing it with us on visits to Nancy's family's place on the Cape.

Where's the dryer, you might ask?

We've hung our laundry either outside or in the yurt to dry for years and saw no reason to start now. Besides which, dryers use a lot of energy, contribute to wearing out clothes, and in a tightly built house such as ours serve as a contraption for blowing hot air outside. Actually that's true in any house, but we need to think carefully about when air is being moved in or out of the house and if that is being balanced in some way.

In the warmer months we hang our laundry in what we refer to as the sugar shack--our covered outside structure we use for all sorts of stuff. We have a clothes line that runs through the rafter ties. Its easy to reach and keeps the drying laundry out of the direct sun. We'll work out something eventually for hanging laundry inside. I've got some ideas for that.

The Second Floor

A drawing of the second floor plan. (Click on the image for an enlarged view)

Our friend Mary recently wrote asking about the second floor and what our plans are.

It was an astute question because the truth is we haven't ever really nailed down our plan for the second floor. At some point way back we decided we could sort it out later. Well, later is now, and we are trying out different ideas.

We've actually been sleeping in the house since the end of April and so have had an opportunity to place our futon in various locations to see how it feels. We started off with the bed in the upper left-hand corner of the main room. That had sort of dark light and no distinct views. It felt sort of just shuttled out of the way. Mary's question got me thinking that we needed to pay a little more attention to this area of the house and so I started playing around in Sketch-Up and soon found myself placing the bed lined up to look west out the double windows. It looked good in the drawing, so I slid the bed over and tried it out. Lo and behold, it felt good.

The issue with this spot is that it is very near the current entrance to the bathroom, so in order to make way for passage to the bathroom we slid the bed a bit to the left and now are going to try that arrangement. I'd rather the bed be lined up nicely with the double windows, but something has to give.

The other issue involved here is guests and the guest room. We'd like to make it so that guests can come up the stairs and pass by our sleeping area without the feeling like they are completely walking through our room. The arrangement as shown above doesn't quite do that, but we are going to dwell on it a bit and see what thought come up.

More on all of this later...

Hi Mary...

Garage in the foreground, with numbered days

Our to-do plan and schedule for the next 2 1/2 weeks

Among the many items we need to move on, a Easy Spindryer vintage washing machine. I had fantasies of running of powering this by bicycle. Never happened, but we did actually do a couple of loads of laundry in it

I re-framed the opening for the window coming up the stairs, and soon we'll relocate the window to match the new height. The original location was a bit high.

Recent events have prompted us to refocus our energy on taking down the garage sooner then we had originally planned. It means some scurrying now, but we're both excited at the prospect that the house will be able to stand on its own without the dubious presence of the garage right in front of it.

Given this new challenge, Nance and I have been working through the logistics of everything that needs to happen to actually have this thing torn down. Currently (no pun intended) the electric line from the pole goes to the meter and panel housed in the garage, as does the phone line. Relocating these requires timing, coordination, digging, and materials all be lined up and carefully ordered so that we are able to maintain service and make the switch safely, allowing for a large excavator to come in, knock down the building and then load it into dumpsters. Never mind that we have tons of stuff in there we need to sort through and then relocate to the basement. Its a big project, and it will delay focused progress on the house a bit, but it is ultimately part of getting the whole project done, so it really is just a reordering towards that end.