The Quince Bush

Some of the first flowers on the quince in its new and final home

We are seeing the first flowers on our durable and patient quince bush outside the house. Those flowers are a promising indicator that despite some rough conditions and two relocations, the bush is still alive and healthy. I am very glad because this bush forms an important link to the longer history of the property, and it feels important to have some elements of where we now live that have carried through all the changes we've made.

When Nancy and I first started living in the yurt on the land where the house now sits there was the old garage and breezeway still standing from the original property that burned in the mid-nineteen-nineties. Along with those structures, there was this great old quince bush that had been planted and cared for by the original owners, and over the years it had continued to flourish. The quince has been a steady presence on this property for years and we've enjoyed it since we first moved here.

The yurt, the quince and the corner of the garage from the old days

When the foundation was dug for the house we asked the excavators to relocate the bush outside of the work zone, which they did. It was sort of plopped down out of the way and given a modicum of fill around it to keep the roots covered -which seemed adequate- and it managed to flower of the summer of 2010. The plan was to have it sit there until such time that we could place it back in the landscape around the completed house. Last fall Mac, our excavating contractor, moved the quince from its temporary location back into the center of things outside the south-facing kitchen window. It has since served as a nice screen between the house and the driveway and gives us a head start on our eventual landscaping.

Furniture and such

You can see the yurt through the window from whence this furniture came. Its a little bittersweet to be moving out of the yurt, but wonderful to be in the house

The kitchen up and running. We still need knobs for the cabinet doors

Close up of the cabinets

Making parts for the stair railing

Starting to fit it all together

We've moved bits of furniture into the house bit-by-bit over the last week or so. You'd think we were done or something!

I've spent the last couple of days working on the "temporary" railing around the stair opening on the second floor. I say temporary because I was unsure of what I wanted to do here and at some point decided I'd just do a quick black-metal pipe industrial solution that would allow me to feel out a nicer option with some more time to think about it, and that is essentially what I'm doing. That said, its' turning into a reasonably time-intensive project and might really end up being the foundation for the permanent version--we'll see. I guess I'm pretty distrustful of anything that is done as "temporary" or "for now" because quite often it becomes what stays for a long long time.

The kitchen is functional and we're really enjoying it.

Our first house guests arrive tomorrow. Before they arrive we'll be cleaning up and trying to get the house in shape for entertaining rather then building.

(Camera woes again: the lens is messed up on our camera, so I'm relying on our fallback which is the lower quality iPod Touch camera. I'm glad to have a back-up but look forward to getting our otherwise trusty Canon back in working order. Sorry for the sub-quality photos.)

Away

We left town for a few days to celebrate Thanksgiving with Nancy's family. To take advantage of this we spent the day and a half before we left applying the polyurethane finish to the windows and doors. This stuff stinks, so we figured we'd get a whole bunch done and then have a few days away from the house allowing for things to air out. We'll have to do another coat or two sometime soon and will probably stay in the yurt to avoid the stink.

The Quince Bush

The quince bush in the old days before we'd moved the yurt or began work on the house. Its got a great spring bloom.

Moving it to it's new home

When Nance and I first started living in the yurt on the land where the house now sits there was the old garage and breezeway still standing from the original house that burned in the mid-nineties. Additionally, there was this great old quince bush that had been cared for by the original owners. This bush has been a constant on this property for years and it feels really great to be bringing it with us in this new chapter of the story.

When the earth work began last summer we had the quince bush relocated until such time that we could place it back in the landscape around the house. Today was the day it made sense to move it to it's permanent home since Mac is finishing up his grading work.

We'd discussed the location and knew we wanted to use it as a bit of a screen to the neighbors yard as well as a shaping element to the entrance of the house.

You'll notice in the last photo the dark material on the driveway. This is the last bit of work Mac is doing, which is laying grading material in our parking area. I made a somewhat casual decision to go with "Stay-Mat" stone grading material, which, if I understand correctly, is crushed slate. It is a dark blue-ish color that can almost look like pavement. I'm not sure it was the greatest choice aesthetically, but it is the best material to handle potential erosion issues, which is a concern since we are at the bottom of the driveway and historically have had water travel right down into our property. We've done a lot of work to mitigate this but it seems prudent to do what we can if the driveway should deteriorate and water start traveling into our parking area.

1969-2010

Sunset for the garage, now with windows, doors, power supply and stuff all removed

A photo from the days when we were living in the garage. Dana and Nancy we're making dinner

The same space today. Astute observers will notice the larger window at the end of the building which I switched out for the smaller one seen in the photo above

Another shot from today

After 41 years of service, the stalwart garage right next to the house is due to come down tomorrow or the next day.

This building has served many purposes over the years. When we moved onto the property in 2003 my brother-in-law Randy was storing his Volvo 122 sedan in the garage, and the breezeway space was filled with lots of relics and junk. At first we were living in a tent outside the building, and then after a short while we moved into the garage. For a while we had a refrigerator, stove, two computers, a futon and a dinning table all happening in the midst of the space. We moved on to live in the yurt shortly afterwords but have remained grateful to for the shelter.

Later I used it as a workshop and we used the breezeway as a general purpose storage unit, housing extra clothes, books, garden stuff, art supplies etc...

As the house has taken form most "shop" type work seems to just happen in the house so in the last few months the building has been useful primarily as building-related storage. In emptying out the space we've had to move large amounts of stuff to the basement of the house and are already feeling the need to have some sort of utility space besides the garage that would serve to house bikes, garden tools, bee equipment, woodworking projects and the like. We'll see what shape this takes over time.

A couple of friends have written asking why we are not taking the time to take the building down and salvage the materials. The answer in short is that this project was not something we even anticipated doing until August, but in order to meet the certain permit requirements in a timely manner we've had to move this project to the fast track. We leave for vacation this Friday, so we needed to have the project complete before we left. If time were not pressing, I think we'd be fairly inclined to take the building apart.

Although I am glad that the building is coming down, I feel slightly wistful about the passing of this building. Its not pretty or heroic, but it is a tie to the property from before we were here and when the building is gone there will be very little evidence of that past. Sort of feels like passing the last island out as you set sail for the wide ocean.

Behind the scenes

So, we recently had a comment from our friend Wendy who wondered just what Nancy is up to while Joe and I are getting all the attention while building this house. Excellent question, and I'm glad Wendy asked. Its easy to focus on the visible aspects of the project, but there are many important elements that have had to be lined up in order to make this all happen and Nancy is responsible for much of that work.

This project has been a collaboration from day one when we decided that we were going to build a house. We met with others who had built houses, talked about what we wanted together in a house and debated and reviewed the plans as I worked on them. The planning and design process was a team effort with me doing the day-to-day footwork.

Nancy engineered the whole loan process from start to finish. This included visiting various banks and narrowing down the field and finally deciding on which bank to work with. That of course led to the massive amount of financial information that needs to be organized and submitted. She's good with that kind of stuff and if it'd been left to me there'd still be some nice looking grass where the house is now standing. The loan process was quite stressful and required some extended effort to move the pieces along to get to closing.

While I'm responsible for the the execution of the project, Nancy is sort of the organizer overseer, checking in, making lists, asking "Have you thought about what's coming next once the walls are up?" or "Do you have everything you need for tomorrow when Joe gets here?" We check in frequently, both formally and informally about how things are going and what needs to be done.

Lastly, she's paying the bills and keeping track of our budget and expenditures. We make a great team.

In 2003, we built the yurt together and had a great time. It was a small project compared to the house, but it was a harbinger of things to come. Our realities are a little different now; we've structured things so that the house is essentially my "job" while she's out there earning the bucks to keep the engine running.

Last but not least, she is the best come-home-and-check-out-the-day's-progress cheerleader!

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.)

The countdown starts

We have scheduled the earth work to begin a week from tomorrow. Who hoo! In a sense, it feels like the project has already begun with all the prep work we've been doing in the last few weeks, especially with moving the yurt last weekend.

We've got the concrete company lined up as well, and if the weather works in our favor and there are no major hic-ups, Joe and I should be able to start on the first floor deck right about August 1. Its way later then we had hoped, but it still works for us and we'll make the best of it. I envision running the woodstove once the real cold sets in in order to do the wiring and plumbing with a measure of comfort.

(If you look closely in the photo, you'll notice that the gable end overhang has been cut off the end of the garage. That was done to make way for the bucket arm of the digger, since the new foundation will be very close to the existing building. The cut off parts were part of the fire.)

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.