And through the seasons our house has become a place of peace, beauty, sanctuary.

The Porch Progresses

It ain't over till...

..the porch is finished! And other stuff, but we'll get to it eventually! This has been a summer of much more laid-back building than last year. By this time last summer, we were frantically wondering if we would be able to live in the house before it got too cold to live in the storage shed! This year, happily enjoying running water, electricity, and a roof over our heads, we are savoring the privilege of all this and soon we'll have a porch and wood shed, too!
When you look at the house, the end of the porch nearest the front will eventually have walls. This end will be the woodshed. The far end, nearest the back of the house, will be screened in. The woodshed will block the western sun, creating a shady haven on the porch for the hot summer days. Stay tuned!








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WIP- but it's ours!

I've learned from various knitting blogs that WIP means "work in progress"- that's where we stand, and the progress will continue for some time to come.
BUT (drum roll, please)- we now have a mortgage! We rolled the building loan into a mortgage on March 19, so in the eyes of the world and the bank, this is now our house, not a construction site! There's still lots to be done, inside and out, but the weather is breaking and we will be happily spending the rest of our lives fixing it up.
I'll still post here from time to time, but if you come here and see no progress, feel free to visit my new blog, Life at Tam Lin, where I will ruminate on the various mysteries of life, love, the universe, and everything else!

Virtually finished!

Yes, friends, we're winding down to the finish line! We now have two bedrooms upstairs, with a lovely "library" in between. The stairway opening on the upstairs landing is now surrounded with railing, for the protection of book browsers and other denizens of the upper regions. All that remains is major cleanup and book and furniture distribution.

The railing resembles nothing so much as a companion-way on a boat, and that's what we call it, more often than not. There's even a "map table" which will house our big reference books! It's funky, it's definitely different, and we love it!

Now there's just minor trim work, some shelves, and when the snow melts, the joy of gardening and landscaping!

We look forward to having a huge open house and inviting everyone we know, but that will have to wait for the snow to melt and mud season to end. Look for an invitation towards the middle-t0-end of May!

Another room!

The front bedroom is completely finished- except for the curtains (we shopped all over Keene for curtains and determined that Allison will be sewing much better ones that can be had for the money!). The first photo shows Hunt finishing a window sill the good old-fashined way, with a hand plane.

Hunt and Dan worked all through the past week and tonight our friends Michael and Lizbeth will test the room out!
All that's left is window trim in the other bedroom and the library, one more bedroom door, stair railings, and minor trim downstairs. And tomorrow a crew of Demolay boys will bring in the bookcases from the cabin where we stayed all summer- and the books!

Next week, finish, tidy, organize!

(I'm including a photo of the back of the house that the insurance co. requested!)

Crunchy granola earth mother (and father) house

So here I am in my Birkenstocks and hand-knitted wool socks, baking granola and listening to the sounds of the chop saw and compressor upstairs. This is heaven! It's been nearly 2 months since my last blog post, which tells how much has been done on the house. And even when work was progressing, I was too blissed-out to remember to take pictures!
The house is completely sided (although the corners still need to be trimmed). Jim and Luke Everard, champion builders that they are, gave us some of their winter down-time and did a beautiful, professional job.
Dan is back, helping upstairs. They are turning one big beautiful space into 3 rooms, which will soon become the Office (aka "The Bridge"), the guest room (aka "Maggie's Room") and the Library (aka "The Top of the Stairs"). Preparatory to this, Hunt built a trap door/pulley system to keep the winter heat downstairs when the upstairs is not in use. Pretty clever!
Now that the work is progressing, I'll try to return to my weekly posts. Stay tuned!