It’s been a fairly hectic few days balancing family, house building, and life in general. If I were to take a piece of paper and list all the good things on one side and all the bad on another I know which side would win. Let me preface this by saying, in the grand scheme it’s all good. No one’s died, yet. No war or famine has broken out, yet again. No over hyped hurricane came crashing down upon us. But holy smokes building a house has taken ALL of the fun out of “building a house”. Between contractors, mother nature, selling our current house, etc. etc. enough is enough already. Death by a thousand little tiny paper cuts.
So what have I been up to. I leveled out the gravel in studio. I used a rake and got most of it down to about level. Upon that stone I put a 6 mil vapor barrier down and 4″ of rigid insulation and soon it’ll get 4″ of cement, just like the basement. I rimmed the outer perimeter with 2″ of rigid to create a thermal break between the cement floor and foundation walls.
A few highlights of the day:
Our oldest son, seems to like the house and is excited (even if his parents aren’t excited at least he is).
There’s an interesting thing about the two square master bed windows. One faces east and one west and they each perfectly frame a tree in their view. After weeks of my a-hole neighbor telling me about sight lines, mother nature serves me up an ironic little goodie. Now each day I’ll have morning tree to the east to say “hi” to and an evening tree to the west to say “goodnight” to. The nice thing is it was a totally random occurence, I don’t think anyone can take credit for it (I certainly won’t). The east tree is a cherry tree I was able to save near the drive. The west tree is in the preservation area (the one I’m hoping doesn’t die).
As we were leaving we saw a really nice 8-point buck feasting in the east meadow. He seemed totally at ease with us and with all the destruction we brought to his back yard. I can’t wait for the brush to grow back in and turn the land emerald again. Maybe that buck will come visit us after we move in.
He probably doesn’t care if my rafters are off by 8″ or not. Or if there’s a draft at the top of my walls. He’s happy eating and running around the yard with the other deer. And that’s the kick in the butt that our land gives me every time I get down on this god forsaken project.
I’m guessing maybe I shouldn’t care so much either.