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.