long day...

       I really like the feel of the house with everything opened up.    I would love to keep it this way and I've been considering some options.  In order to make it work I would have to remove the entire roof structure and rebuild it with a steeper pitch and some dormers to make room for an upstairs.  Would it be worth it?  It would be a hell of a lot of extra work, but it would make for a really open and roomy main level. 

       The ceiling joists are 2x6s, 16 inches apart.  To meet code for second story living space I would probably have to remove them and replace with 2x8s or larger.  

I'll need to talk to the building department to find out exactly what they'll require for a second story addition.

It may not be in the cards for this house....we'll see. 

good finds and dumpster dives...

I've always wanted a urinal.  My dreams came true when I got this one from a church that's being torn down in St. Albans.    It makes me happy to know that countless churchgoers have used the urinal that will be in our house and while I'll never know if they found redemption in all those Sunday mornings, I can be certain they at least found relief.  

I'm also receiving, for free, about 2,000 square feet of tongue and groove oak hardwood flooring.  I started pulling it up a few days ago.  I have no idea where I will store it all. 

Last night at a construction dumpster I found this great bike rack that we can lock our bikes to...

And today I found some little pencil drawings on the underside of a piece of old pine flooring that I pulled up from the old kitchen.

the river...

       We lay in our tent by the Williams River.   Stars by the thousands above us in the sky, the locust wood fire burning hot nearby, and the song of the river flowing.   I listened to that river song and thought of how long that sound has filled this river valley.   I thought of the thousands of years this clear water has coursed over and through the boulders here and of the many people before me who listened to this same beautiful song.    Long before the timber companies came through to clearcut the ancient hemlock, chestnut, oak, hickory; Long before the road builders came with their dozers and backhoes to grade and blast the steep rocky riverbank;  Before all that, someone lay here on this riverbank, looking at those same thousands of stars in the sky through a wintergreen canopy of rhododendron and hemlock and listened to this river's song as we did.    I hope that thousands of years from now, when the ancient trees have grown back, and the road has long since disappeared, that someone will lay here, in this spot, listening to this same river's song, and give thanks. 

       I got out the bow drill and began cutting a new notch in the fireboard.   U* asked what I was doing and I told her that I was preparing to make a fire.  She watched as I cut the notch deeper into the board, then placed the cedar spindle on the notch's point and began to burn it in.  The notch filled with the dark brown wood dust and began to smoke as I worked the bow.   I carefully removed the spindle and let our tiny coal burn while I told U* how the coal was like a fragile egg that needed a nest so that it could grow.  We made a nest for it, our tinder bundle, by shredding up some toilet paper that was close at hand and then carefully tapped out the coal.  I gently enveloped the coal in the tinder and we took turns blowing life into it, watching the coal grow and glow red in the center of it's nest.   
Every stick holds a fire, each twig carries the stored energy of the sun. 

       This is freedom.  A wild river, a cold morning, chasing the long rays of the sun for warmth.   I was told the other day that if we stopped using electricity we would be living in the dark ages again.   I think the opposite is true.   If we turn off our lights, our appliances, all the screens that fill our collective nightly vision - TV, computer - imagine what we might begin to see, to hear, to experience.   The world is out here, waiting, if we don't destroy it first.    The happiest times of my life have taken place in the absence of electricity - a  month walking the high mountains of New Mexico;  Sharing songs and stories around a campfire in the cascades, defending a tiny piece of the forest I love;  Dark nights in deep Utah canyons, singing with coyotes under more stars than I knew existed.   It isn't the lights and gadgets that give us happiness.   Electricity is irrelevant to our happiness, inconsequential as a measure of our well-being.   Happiness for me in those times was found in community - in shared purpose, shared song. 

weekend at the williams river...

earth creature. a parable.

       I was in Gabriel Brothers awhile back. I picked out a couple of t-shits and took them up to the checkout counter.  The cashier rang them in and I said (as I do at every store) "I don't need a bag, I'll just carry them out".   She stopped.   She looked at me with astonishment.   There was a moment of silence before she slowly formed the words "Are you one of them...earth.....creatures?"     That's what stumbled out.  The Gabriel Bros. cashier asked me if I was an earth creature.     I gave it a moment to sink in, then I smiled, and said "Aren't we all?"     She looked at me and said very seriously that Gabriel Brothers policy is that every purchase leaves the store in a bag, and that I did, in fact, need one. 
       I said, "Okay, but I'm bringing it back to you."
Then I took my bagged t-shits to the car, removed them from the bag, and returned the bag to the cashier.   I didn't stay to see, but I'll bet she threw it straight in the trash.

the bathroom comes down...

This was originally a porch.  Later the floor was raised, the walls closed in, and it became the bathroom.   In our plan this bathroom is being moved to the middle of the house and this space will become a part of the bedroom next to it.   I pulled the floor up because I'll need to rebuild it to the exact level of the floor it will be joining (left side of photo) and because I wanted to check the condition of the main drain/sewer line out of the house.   I'm glad I did because it's in rough shape.   The sink drain had rotted away from the main drain line and for who knows how long has been draining directly into the crawl space.  The T joint in the main sewer where that sink connected is also broken and will have to be dug up and replaced.    I don't know of any way to check the condition of the sewer line between the house and the street except for having a plumber send a little pipe camera down there.  I really hope I don't have to dig up and repace the sewer all the way out to the main line at the street.  It's a long way from the house to the road. 

layers upon layers upon layers...

       I decided this morning that it was time to get down into the floor of the past-kitchen-future-bathroom to find out what's going on down there since it's one of only two spots in the house that were topped in linoleum over plywood rather than the original hardwood flooring.  I had pulled out the linoleum sheet last week and today I assumed that I would pull up the plywood and find the pine strip subfloor underneath.  So, up came the first corner piece of plywood, and underneath?  Another floor.    Another linoleum floor, this time tiles in a quaint blue-white checkerboard pattern.  And under that?  Another layer of plywood.  Under the second layer of plywood, A third layer of maroon linoleum sheet flooring.  Finally, under three layers of linoleum and two layers of plywood I found the original subfloor.
       In between each layer of flooring were shims that had been put in to level the particular layer being added.  I found as I removed layers of flooring and shims that the center of the room got lower and lower.  Now, with nothing left but the subfloor there's a major dip running down the middle.  It's probably two inches lower than the floor at the perimeter wall.  Also, In the upper right of the pictures below you can see the one spot of rot in the house.  It's below where the sink was and it's the only water damage I've found.   Since this room is going to be a tiled bathroom I need the floor under the tile to be rock solid and perfectly level.  So, I'll be ripping out this entire floor, re-leveling the joists, and moving the joists closer together so they're 12 inches on center rather than 24.  That, in addition to blocking between the joists, will make for a fine tiling substrate!

 

 

 

the plaster is gone!

       After many delays and much much work, the house is finally free of it's plaster cast.  All said, I hauled just shy of 15,000 pounds of plaster to the landfill (14,940 to be exact according to my landfill receipts).  I'm quite happy to be relieved of that heavy burden.   My next major landfill contribution will be the three layers of asphalt shingles on the roof and the 2000-or-so square feet of asbestos cement siding.   I feel okay about this because, as I read on the side of the Waste Management (WM) refuse truck this morning - "WM's landfills provide over 17,000 acres of wildlife habitat".  So, I'm actually helping the planet by throwing things away!    
        Actually, there's really just no other choice.  I find it fascinating that in such a supposedly "advanced" society we still have not come up with a better solution that just throwing billions of tons of (often hazardous) waste in enormous holes in the ground and covering it back up.   Recycling is a good start but ultimately industrial society should not produce anything that has to be disposed of in a hole in the ground (unless it's safe enough to eat).   On second thought, we ought to only be producing and using products that can be safely thrown in a hole in the ground without permanently contaminating the water and soil.
       The century-old plaster itself is fairly inert (consisting mainly of lime, horsehair, and sand) and could have been used as fill in the backyard (saving me countless hours of hauling and hundreds of dollars) but for the many layers of lead paint on it's surface.  Come to think of it, with the notable exception of large quantities of lead paint on the interior walls and exterior clapboards, this house, as it was originally built, was a very healthy house - the foundation is local sandstone, and the rest of the house was built entirely of real wood (as opposed to modern particle boards and plywoods which contain toxic glues, binders, and preservatives) fastened with square cut steel nails. Even the original roof was cedar shingles over 1 by 8 pine sheathing (no asphalt underlayment).    If the home's creators had chosen instead to use non-toxic milk (casein) paint rather than lead paint my experience now, a hundred years thence, would be vastly improved. 
       I'm making every effort as I rebuild this house to minimize it's future landfill burden.  I'm planning for the roof to be steel since it's made with recycled metal, lasts a long time, and is 100% recyclable when it's eventually removed.   I'm leaning toward cedar shingles for the siding if I can find a manufacturer that sources their wood from genuinely sustainable forestry operations (this will be tough).  Untreated cedar shingles are non-toxic, and at the end of their useful life can be burned for firewood or just left in a heap to decompose without contaminating the soil and water (as long as no-one applies toxic stain to them).    I would love to re-plaster the interior using clay/lime/straw plaster rather than the now ubiquitous standardized industrial modern wall-covering of choice - drywall.   If so I can even re-use the wood lath that held the original plaster in place. 
       In any case, I hope to rebuild this house as a structure that can give many more years of comforting shelter and when the time comes, either gracefully decompose to nourish the surrounding soil or be be deconstructed and laid to rest without causing harm to either those working to disassemble it or to the land that will be it's final resting place.