Orientation

Our Aunt Mary wanted to get a little more clarity about where the house sits on the property. I did up a Sketch-Up drawing that hopefully will clarify things a bit more; the relationship of the buildings can be a bit hard to discern from photos since everything is so close together.

The garage/breezeway will be coming down as soon as is feasible, so when looking at this site sketch, imagine the long blue structure in front of the house gone. Also picture the circles (current and former locations of the yurt) gone and things start to look a little calmer and less crowded.

The challenge we haven't really solved is what to do with the driveway. We don't really want to look at our car(s) right out in our front yard, so we'll need to play with our options once the space is opened up.

(For a large scale version of the drawing, click on the image and you'll get the big view.)

Update

Wow. Its been over a month since the last posting.

In the meantime we've continued to refine our plans. It is a process of moving to ever greater detail about everything. I used to work for an architect and my experience of the design process in that setting was was a steady, but not rapid, progression from one stage of design to the next. There hasn't been the same breathing room in our process, or to be a little more accurate, we've had to jump around a bit and do some pricing while still working elements of the design out. Its in the last week or two that I feel like the two are more realistically in sync.

I've struggled a bit with working out the details of the site plan. I can easily see, feel, and mentally experience the house, but when it comes to representing and "feeling" the contours of the site, I find it a bit harder. I built a model today, but it wasn't as revealing as I'd hoped it would be.

We area still waiting on confirmation of our septic plan. We hope to get that in the next week or so. With that in hand, we'll be able to move pretty quickly with scheduling and beginning work.

The photo above is of a rest area on I-89 in Williston. Its captured my attention for a number of years and I recently stopped and snapped some pics.

Slow and Steady

The last couple of weeks have had lots of ups and downs. After arriving at a settled plan, we dove in once more, revamped, simplified and came out the other end with the next iteration. Feeling a little worn down from the process and not trusting the last bit of work I'd done, I put down my drafting tools on a Friday afternoon and decided that I needed to forget about the house for a bit. I spent the next day and a half building bee equipment, cleaning bike parts, and puting Nancy's bike back together. I needed a little distance. It took a while, but I DID forget about the house and it was good to have done so. On Sunday night when we came back to plan our next moves we looked at the plans and we were both struck with a sense of "Hey... that's it... its good." Further refinements have transpired, but at this point we're around the last corner design-wise and it feels very good.

On the other hand, the septic issues have been rough. Our ideal siting for the house is not feasable given the resulting location of the system and the soils underneath. That pushes the house back up into the site a bit more then we'd like. Its not perfect, but I think we both feel like we can go with it. More to come this week.

Also, we're clear now that a slab-on-grade will not work here, so guess what? We're gonna have a basement. That's great from an extra space point of view, but increases costs. On the whole, I'm actually pretty glad about it. We can now do a root cellar, we'll have semi-c0nditioned work space in the winter... nice stuff.

What, you may ask, is happening in the picture above. Well, after cleaning my bike chain, I cooked it in a mixture of parafin and some of our beeswax. The connection? You know; getting away from the house project and all. Thinking about something else for a little bit.

Timber!

This weekend our friend Adam came up from western Mass to visit and help with taking down some trees. With skill and accuracy, he was able to scope out the big tree we'd been a little worried about. He set his mark, made his wedge cut, then came in from the back to form a T, inserted his wedge, cut the T and down she went. He made it look easy.

This tree came down for a couple of reasons: It is located where we are planning to put the yurt in advance of starting site work and it creates shade on the future house when we'll most want low winter light and warmth. There is something awe inspiring about the felling of a tree. Its like removing a building in short order. One minute there is a massive structure and the next minute it is laying in the field.

Additionally, Adam gave me an excellent introduction in the safe use of my brand new chainsaw. A chainsaw is a fearsome instrument, but with Adam's guidance, I was making inroads quickly, helping to limb the big tree, and then later planning and taking down a smaller tree that was nearly within the footprint of the house.

The taking down of these two trees is the first visible step towards making the house come to life. Its the first shaping of the environment that will be part of the extended whole of the house.

After the tree work, Adam and I rode up and over the Appalachian Gap to meet Nancy in Bristol for the contra dance. Nancy was calling (Go Nance!)and it was a great time.

Home: Present Tense

For the last six years we've lived in a yurt. It's been an excellent home, and we've learned a lot about the land we are on, what we like in a "house", and what we'd like to have that we currently do not.

The yurt started out as an experiment. We'd been living in Boston and were both eager to move to the country. Having both just read the Nearing's "The Good Life" we were inspired to shape lives that included growing food and living more closely to the rhythms of the seasons. My parents were game to let us put up a yurt on a piece of their land and so we went ahead and built a the yurt. (See the process here.) Instead of buying a kit, we researched, designed and built it as a team with the help of lots of friends. It was a great learning experience and we got a feel for our individual strengths and weaknesses, which we will be employing again going into the house building process.

Folks often credit us with living "sustainably", but that's never really been the goal per se. It's more that we've just done whats felt interesting. The fact is we live in one of the most poorly insulated homes I'm aware of -- not really sustainable. We aim to make amends in that area with the new house.

The yurt is roughly 480 sq. ft. Its been a pretty cool experience to figure out how to live in this little space. With very few exceptions, its been easy, comfortable and fun. We like to joke that we have the biggest living room of anyone we know. And the biggest bedroom. And the biggest kitchen, etc... since its all one room. We've honed the space into something that feels good. That said, we don't have enough room for guests, we have to schlep a lot of stuff in and out to the garage, and there is no running water-hence no real bathroom. We head down to my parent's place to do dishes, takes showers, fill up water containers and such.

Having lived here for a while we've established a bountiful garden and have really settled into this place. Its a privilege to have the opportunity to build a house here and know that we'll be here for the long run.