February 2011, Turret taking form

Something ominous is creeping into my thoughts. There is a seed of futility growing in my mind regarding this house sculpture. What am I doing? What is this monstrosity supposed to be? As I move along, the impractical elements of the project weigh heavily on my mind. As February's weather makes the work all the more grueling and dangerous I am feeling lost and stupid.

There is a noisy argument going on inside of me. I can see two distinct sides of my psyche rising amidst a sea of mental hamster wheels. A struggle is emerging between the adult in me and the kid in me.

It took the naivete of the kid in me to take on the project of the house sculpture in the first place as though it would be as simple as building a fort out of couch cushions. This aspect of my personality has gotten me into trouble before. The kid just wants to do something fun. The adult in me says I am in over my head, irresponsibly playing foolish games with what little money I have, while in the meantime real responsibilities mount. The adult says this house must be finished quickly and simply. It must be a normal, proper house so that it may have good resale value.

The kid in me says "hey, I'm going to build a cool lookout tower with lots of ladders!"

The kid seems to come up with a lot of my "big" ideas, but the adult must contend with the implementation of such ideas. In that realm of living between the two, I am usually lost in a spiral of adult concerns of money and practicality.

This latest bout of work in February of about 5 days saw some manifestation of what the finished house will look like; or rather, how this half of the house will look. The other half will come years later...

My current "life situation" allows so little time to work on the house (with much less to come) that I find myself discouraged. I think sometimes about selling the property so that I can pay my taxes and other adult expenses. From an adult perspective this project is ridiculous. I have spent the precious few days at my disposal in February working on a completely frivolous project. Frivolous, because it's a damn silly turret, but at the same time necessary in that it must be finished before I can move on to more practical concerns like a functional kitchen and entryway because they will all share a roof.

I arrived at the base of my driveway on the chilly afternoon of February 16. I parked off the side of Rt.139 as the driveway to my house was filled with three feet of snow. I donned the snowshoes I had been given last Christmas by my father-in-law, Jim Hutto and hiked in to the house, flipping on the electricity at the pole on the way. I found the back door wide open but there was no snow inside or evidence of any other disturbance. Odd. Had I left it open in my haste to leave last time I was here or had the wind somehow blown it open?

After building a fire in the stove, I grabbed the snow shovel from the porch and trudged out to the tractor. The tarp that was covering it had split down the middle and the operator's compartment was full of snow. I dug it out the best I could and removed what was left of the tarp. I turned the ignition key with a prayer and the little three cylinder Diesel rattled to life. Good tractor!

The snow was so deep that it took a series of many short back and forth maneuvers to clear enough space to move in any particular direction. I had trouble finding a place to put all the snow as the piles I made quickly became as high as the tractor's bucket could extend. Little by little I made a road for myself. I got stuck a couple of times on the steep incline behind the house and had to dig the tractor out by hand. By the time darkness was settling in I had finished digging out about one third of the drive to the road. I was already freezing and now the temperature was dipping even further into single digits. I went inside and warmed up next to the fire for a few minutes before going back to work. In time I discovered a pattern of maneuvers that saved time as I steadily dug my way to the plowed road where my truck was waiting. Just after 8pm that evening I was able to drive the truck with its load of salvaged lumber, tools, clean clothes and bedding up to the house.

The next morning I did more work with the tractor, widening the driveway and clearing a parking area for my truck as well as from the side of the house where I planned to continue construction of the tower. I cleared enough so that I could layout all of the lumber I had available to me on the ground and organized it into rows according to thickness and width. I then took a drive into Monroe to pickup my mail at the post office.

One of the things I had noticed out of place since my return was the disappearance of my mailbox. I thought that perhaps it had been buried by the plows. After a bit of digging with the tractor I did find the box, but it had been decapitated from its post. It was crushed and the door was hanging off of it. I bashed out the dents and reattached the door and mounted it to an old 55 gallon oil barrel which I stuck at the end of the driveway. There ya go, mail-lady! Now I could turn my attention back to the house.

Before leaving the Cape I had picked up some miscellaneous scrap lumber from Eric Millett who is remaking the old Good Times Pub in Provincetown. He also gave me an enclosure of small paned windows, exactly what I had been searching for to line the upper, south facing wall of my tower. I spent the remainder of my second day fitting that set of windows into the framework of the tower.

Since deciding to build a tower, I have spent a considerable amount of time wondering what function it could serve. It has become a rather small "fort-like" enclosure and access will be limited to ladders until the second half of the house is built. If I put in a loft bed as the upper level, the space could be used as a kid's room or perhaps a sort of solitary refuge/writing room. The loft would be a beautiful place for a nap or reading or bird watching with views from windows lining all four walls.

The next day I built in the upper level loft platform. With the platform in place, the construction of the roof was made much easier and eventually I had a header beam and rafters in place. The going was slow, however. The days were clear but very cold, rarely getting above single digit temperatures with freezing gusts of wind that required I hold fast to the frame of my tower from fear of being blown off. Also, working solo as I was, I spent a great deal of time and energy just ascending and descending the ladders between cuts. At the end of each day I would tire of climbing up and down the ladders and switch jobs. It was getting dark early so I set up lights to work on the entryway and mudroom to the kitchen. I could usually get an hour or two in on that job each evening before I would become too cold and tired to continue.

On my last day I finished putting up most of the exterior sheathing and installed the large front window, the eye of the tower. At that point, as the sun set, I was able to step back and see my ideas taking form. The kid in me laughed with delight while the adult in me took a swig of beer and said, "what the hell! That'll do!"

January 2011, Notions of Identity Shift

The beginning of 2011 met me with a bombardment of costly obstacles. In mid-January I planned a trip to Maine and was getting ready for it when a final hurdle threw me on my face and required that I delay my trip indefinitely. As I was pulling out a parking space one Friday evening after work, the rusty front suspension of my little Toyota pickup gave way. One of the control arms separated from the chassis and left the truck only three wheels the stand upon. The front end sunk to one side and the wheel splayed itself out sideways. It was grotesque, like a dog trying to stand on a fractured front paw. I managed to get it back into a parking space on the Cabral pier in Provincetown and set a jack under the frame so that it would sit level. It would be an incredible pain in the ass to fix but a bigger problem began to reveal itself as I probed around with a flashlight at the rest of the suspension and steering components. The undercarriage was a mass of rust. More of the same kind of problem would plague me from here on out if I chose to hold onto the little truck. It was not safe to drive anymore. I had been lucky that it broke when and where it did. Had it happened two days later while flying down the freeway on my trip to Maine I may have been killed.

Such a shame. I had grown fond of the scrappy little Toyota but I would need a new truck before I could resume my work on the house sculpture.

I have always had strong emotional connections to cars. I felt a sense of tragic loss in relation to my little Toyota pickup. The damage was too extensive for me to fix myself with my meager set of tools and lack of any sort of garage space in which to work. I would also need welding equipment for a job this extensive.

For now, I would just replace the broken control arm where it sat on the pier. I've done this sort of work on other vehicles before and it is usually an easy job in itself, but this time it was extremely difficult. All of the bolts were frozen with rust. During the time between it's breaking down and my beginning to take it apart, there had been a heavy snow and the plows had pushed all the snow from that section of the lot against my truck. I had to dig out an opening just to get started. Working outside in the snow and icy wind of the pier was not so pleasant, but with patience, perseverance and long underwear I finally removed the old control arm (in two pieces) from the chassis. The replacement part was still on it's way from California so I couldn't put it all back together right away. Even once I did, I could not drive it safely.

My only real option here was to trade it in on something newer. Over this option I ruminated with conflict and prejudice over the market of used pickup trucks. I wanted an older truck but in this part of the country that would mean simply replacing one rust bucket with another. I hated the idea of driving around in a late model vehicle and wondered how I would even afford such a thing.

Reality persisted, however and I could only borrow Sarah's Saturn for so long. On one of our mutual days off we took a drive into Hyannis to look at what was available. We soon came across a 2003 Toyota Tundra with low mileage and little rust. It drove like a dream. All in all it was like a brand new vehicle and I could just barely afford to buy it by financing a chunk of it. We looked around at some other dealers but could not find an equivalent. For some reason I was hoping to buy a domestic make but everything in my price range seemed like junk. In the end we went back and bought the Tundra. I could not take it home then as I still needed to fix my little truck (for trade) and was still waiting for a replacement control arm to arrive in the mail. During the period of days before I could take home the Tundra I was filled with regret and self reproach for making such a purchase. Aside from worries of it costing too much and having the gas mileage of a V-8, my greatest internal crisis concerned the hit to my identity. I'm a loner, a rebel who drives old jalopies that no one else has the courage to drive; usually beat up old cars built in the 60's or 70's. That is who I am...or rather, that is who I was... Too many external factors seemed to be conspiring to change me, and yet they are not external. I made this stuff happen. I am not anymore the loner I aspired to be. I am no longer a single guy, I am now married and must think of the "unit" before myself. Now this truck has come along (which is exactly what I need, it even has a wood rack) to continue building the house in Maine, but it is not me... even as I now drive it around I feel like I am driving someone else's vehicle. And I can't help but wonder, am I living someone else's life?

Now it may seem that I have gone off-topic. This account is supposed to be about a nitwit and his attempts to build a house sculpture. Not about some nitwit who bought a new pickup. But as the endeavor of building this house is concerned, with all of the traveling and salvage operations involved, a pickup truck as a tool is of primary importance. It is essential to this project and how I identify with that tool is just as important.

From the beginning of this undertaking my goal has been to build a house; not to have a house. My point is to experience the process as a work of art is experienced. The vastness of essential tools and duration of the project itself allows me a rare opportunity and one that to me is of highest importance in the experience of creating art. I am using this project as a sort of measuring stick against my own identity. Every piece of art that an artist creates should in some small way change him or her. There is an outlet of energy in the creation process. The artist is changed from the time he/she began the work to the time of completion. Usually, that change is practically unnoticeable. In my experience of painting a picture or making a tattoo, the time and resources expended are relatively small. I do not feel like a different person from beginning to end. Also, my usual executions of visual art are small in scale to my own physical being. Until the house sculpture I have never had the experience of being encapsulated in my own creation as I am creating it. The feeling is sublime; an unexpected stroking of my ego but beside the point. This particular piece of art has all the usual characteristics of a piece of art plus one more that many do not. It is of use. Its use is part of it's identity and therefore part of my identity as the creator. To me a house is a nest, a place in which to raise a family. A great deal of the thought involved in building this thing concerns how a small family might use it.

I am now about three years and three months on this project and I estimate the house is about one third of the way finished. I have worked steadily spending an average of about 5 days (70hrs.) each month working on or around the house. I have spent far more time than that thinking about the house. In fact, since the conception of this project I have thought about little else. Each interval between visits is a mental winding-up of thought and intention. The constant visualization of assemblage and function is shifting my brain chemistry. I am watching this thing change me.

It is mentally and physically painful to spend long periods of time away from it as I have not found a suitable outlet on which to unleash my pent up energy where I live on the Cape. When I do finally have my chance to work on the house I pour everything I have into it, working without pause sometimes 12-14 hours a day until I am too exhausted and sore to move. I always start out jubilant and full of energy but finish the last day of each trip lonely and depressed. Upon arriving back at my home on the Cape I am weary but happy to be greeted by my wife and a hot shower. The next day, however I always awake with a feeling of regret, like I could have squeezed in one last day of work and I long to go back. I feel mentally pushed around in all directions by this project of my own creation. It owns me. In the process of building the house to accommadate it's purpose, I am personally changing to fulfill the role of accommodation; or in other words I am becoming what the house needs for it to live up to its purpose.

My identity has shifted from that of a single, self sufficient guy (with no aspirations to be anything else) to that of "Husband"; which is cool. I like being a husband, but from there my personage has recently taken another promotion to that of "expectant father". How cool is that?

This latest news is at present too big for me to fully comprehend. It's good that I have several months to prepare. I just know that more excitement and change is on the way. My identity as I have known it, is shifting such that I am not even so much "me" anymore as a unit of me, her and "it": a family. I am becoming just what the house sculpture needs before it can be complete... for it to live and be part of the family. So what begat what?

I expect that being a supportive father will require much of my resources and is sure to bring many surprises. Among other things I wonder, how will I find the time and money to continue construction? I don't know. But it must continue. It is of absolute importance to bring this around full circle by finishing construction and living in it, thereby bringing the house to full completion; the very dream that hatched this new reality!

April 2008

When I arrived on the property in April 2008 I found a barren place. The snow had recently melted away revealing only sparse vegetation and a lot of mud. The area around the house was littered with building materials and bits of wood scraps that had been buried by the snow falls over the winter. The house in it's surroundings looked bleak, but the warmer weather was a welcome thing especially in light of my next project: installing a metal roof.

Some of the metal came from Buxton's Building Supply nearby, but most came from my neighbor, Peter, who had a surplus of blue metal that he had left over from a previous job. He sold it to me at a good price and even delivered it to me.

I spent the next several days on the roof. Before putting down the metal I attached firing strips to the sheathing and rafters. It was important for a metal roof to have these strips of wood underneath to account for air flow and expansion and contraction. After that it was all about laying down and lining up sheets of metal and screwing them down. During some of that time I had company on the ground; a couple of electricians from Mac Electric.

Since the Fall of '07 I had been going through the motions required to bring electricity to the house. At first it involved making some phone calls and getting permits. There were power lines along rt.139 (also known as Main St. or the Monroe Highway) so there was not a considerable distance to run the line. My first step early in the Fall was to have a pole sunk roughly 125 ft. in from the pole at the road. I contacted an older fellow by the name of Gene Bonnie to set the pole. Gene was well liked and well known to the folks at the power company and the local electricians. Apparently Gene had worked for the Central Maine Power Co. inventing some of the devices used to set poles in areas with difficult access. He was reliable and quick to sink a pole for me. I would have liked to see how he did it but he ended up putting it in when I was between trips.

I contacted a handful of local electricians starting in the Fall of '07 and all had proved to be either very elusive or drunk, perhaps a little of both. The first guy to come by was nice enough but struck me as strange with very spastic mannerisms. I thought I caught a whiff of whiskey on his breath as he bounced out of his van. He actually jumped into my camper when I mentioned my plans to build off of it. He talked endlessly about his family troubles and his dismal living situation (he lived in a trailer next to his mother-in-law). His ideas for how the cable would run to the house and how the meter would be mounted seemed overly complicated and redundant. When I told him I wanted to bury the cable he suggested I employ his friend to dig the trench (at that time I did not yet have a tractor). The guy made me uneasy with his weird suggestions and stories of personal misfortune. When he asked for a consulting fee at the end of his visit I knew he was not to be trusted.

I asked the few folks I knew locally for recommendations for a good electrician. I came up with two names. I called them both over and over again. Eventually one of them returned my calls; I think his name was Eric. He lived nearby and said he would come out to assess my situation the next morning. It was getting close to Winter at this point, maybe it was November. By that time I had purchased a small John Deere tractor and had used it to dig a trench between the pole and the house. He arrived in a white van with his teenage son in tow. He was a morbidly obese man in coveralls and prominent whiskers. He looked like a walrus standing upright. He seemed knowledgeable in his trade but as I found out later, some of his information was erroneous. He was slow to move, he was so fat. He instructed his son to measure the length of the trench. The boy ran the length of the trench, hopping in and out as he made his way to the house with his measuring tape. He came back with a measurement of about 130 ft.. We made tenative plans for them to come back and do the job of running the cable with a meter box. After that I did not hear from him again even after leaving several follow-up messages. A couple of times I ran into him at the local market/gas station in Brooks during the Winter and each time he assured me that he would get to it in the spring, just give him a call. But as Spring rolled around all new messages I left remained unanswered. So I decided to give someone else a try.

At the beginning of my April visit I called on my neighbor Walter who was qualified to write me a fire permit to burn a large brush pile. Walter owned a small dairy farm and had recently had his power upgraded to 200amps. He recommended Mac electric in Belfast. So I gave them a call and talked to Mark the owner. He came by the next day to check out my situation. He was a young guy for a master electrician, maybe about my age and was quick and knowledgeable. I told him of the recommendations made by the first guy and he politely confirmed my suspicions that the guy was an idiot. A couple days later two guys from Mac showed up in the morning in a white van and got to work. One of them immediately scaled the pole while the other began laying out conduit beside the trench for the underground cable. Mark came by shortly to make sure his guys knew what to do and had all they needed.

In the meantime I worked on my roof.

After only a few hours, the guys from Mac Electric had finished the job of running the electric line from the top of the pole to a meter box at the bottom of the pole and from there to the breaker box inside the house. The breaker box was salvage from a demolition on the Cape. They had also installed a power outlet just below the box; a very professional, efficient job. Now all I had to do was call the power company and wait for them to link me to the grid. That part took a little longer. It was at some point during the summer while I was away working that they hooked me up.

March 2008

March of 2008 was a milestone in the progress of my house. At the end of my last visit I was able to get about three quarters of the roof covered in sheathing which, as a roofs go, made it about as useless as nipples on a man. It was, however, during this visit that it became an enclosed space and began to resemble a house. But first I was due another not-so-pleasant safety lesson on the first evening of my arrival.

There was plenty of snow and ice outside and inside the house. Whatever had happened in my absence had left a thick sheet of ice on the first floor and the landing at the camper's entrance. Everything that had been sitting on the floor including my sleeping couch was embedded in an inch of ice. On the upside, it was clear to see that the floor was still perfectly level.

I started a fire in the stove but knew that it would be a long time before all the ice melted if the roof was not closed up soon. I immediately went to work that evening with by usual impatience even though there was little I could do before morning without electric lighting. I quickly set up my short extension ladder on the ice at the edge of the landing where the camper poked in, climbed up and began fussing with the window frames above it. I don't remember exactly what I was up to, but I do remember the futility of the act passing through my mind as the ladder slipped out from under me. It didn't come down in one great crash which was perhaps lucky. One of the upper legs of the ladder caught the trim of the camper flipping it sideways before throwing me to the icy floor.

I laid crumpled on my back, momentarily dazed. I'm such an idiot. Who sets up a ladder on a sheet of ice?

On my trip to the floor I had taken the tarp down that separated the landing from the lower floor of the house and had somehow gotten tangled in it. One of my legs was caught between the lower rungs of the ladder which left me in a partially upside down position with my legs still up on the landing and the rest of my body wedged between the lower floor and the couple of stairs ascending the landing. I prayed nothing was broken. I assessed the state of my body, first without moving, just to see where it hurt, and then little by little, wiggling all my fingers and toes up to the major joints. Everything seemed intact, though cut, battered and bruised with my right leg and hip being the most beat up. I would be limping around for the rest of the visit.

The next morning I climbed upstairs via a wooden ladder I had anchored to the wall and floor. No more ice skating for me. I began the work of framing the rest of the NE roof and the overhang. Most of the work required that I stand on one of three ladders. I set them all up very carefully with each move, but I still noticed a new phobia of standing high up on them. Due to the combination of fear and pain, I ascended and descended one careful foot at a time as though it were my first time on a ladder. Climbing the long 30ft. extension to work on the overhang and eves left me especially frightened as I drove nails in upside down. My will to finish the roof, however was stronger than my new found fear of flying.

After a couple of days, all the sheathing was covering the roof and the envelope of the house began to hold heat and melt the ice from the floor. The overall atmosphere inside the house changed remarkably. It finally was beginning to feel like a house. It was truly a happy day!

During the remaining few days, I finished off the eves and made exterior frames for the windows out of strips of rough cut hemlock.

At this point I wasn't ready to do much interior work, but the little that I did usually called for cutting lumber which made me very aware of now being indoors. As usual, I made my cuts with the chainsaw. The echo and exhaust of it's two-cycle engine was maddening. To accomplish the enormous task of finishing the interior I would need do the rest by handsaw or bring in electricity.

I kept a hot fire going for the remainder of my visit and left the house dry and ice-free. I would no longer come home to a skating rink in my living room!

Dec. 2010

During this particular visit there was much that I hoped to accomplish. Wife and father-in-law would soon be joining me for Christmas. Sarah's father, Jim Hutto was in for a long trip as he was driving up all the way from South Carolina. He was interested to see my progress in building a house for his daughter. With such an unnecessarily complicated structure, I feared he would suspect the man his daughter had married was a few screws short of having enough screws. On the another hand, I was curious to see how the house would handle multiple guests, which included Jim's dog, Porter and Sarah's two cats, Jerzy and Vincent. There were many interior components to finish for the place to be completely functional, many of which I would not have time to install before their visit during the following week. At the top of the list of interior projects to accomplish was to separate the bathroom from the bedroom with an enclosure of shelving that would serve both rooms. In the bedroom this would create a shelf for a small TV to sit just beyond the foot of the bed with an additional shelf for DVDs and whatever else. On the bathroom side, the shelves would serve as storage and the lower shelf would wrap around to become a sitting bench across from the shower stall. The entire enclosure would hug the chimney pipe. An exhaust fan, electrical outlets and a bathroom door were also in order to create a truly private place to poop.

These would be my "after dark" projects when it was too dark and cold to work outside. There were many other things I hoped to finish, and though I averaged about 12 hrs. of work a day, I was only able to meet a small fraction of my goals. In the general sense of this project I usually find that I set my sights too high and fall short. My pace is frantic and slow. Until I can improve on my approach I will always be disappointed with the results.

Throughout this entire project I continually return to one most important concern: sealing up the walls from the cold outside air. On especially cold evenings I can feel a rush of cold air coming off the landing from the kitchen even when my wood stove is burning hot. The reason for this is obvious as one entire wall of the kitchen is uninsulated and only roughly closed up. The other walls are only lightly insulated with no interior wall board. There are a series of steps that I must take in order to fix this tear in my envelope. First and foremost, it is absolutely essential that the kitchen have a new entryway. My plans include shifting the point of entry to the center of the camper, which I have already cut away, and pushing it out about eight feet to include a small mud room. Doing so will allow me to remove the current door which is warped and leaks like an incontinent old man and put an insulated wall in it's place, thus opening up the kitchen to more room and smoother ergonomics. For the new entryway to serve it's purpose, however, there must first be a roof over it. If you recall from earlier posts the plan for my house sculpture includes a sort of tower to be located next to the kitchen and directly above my proposed entryway. So as I see it, I must frame and sheath the tower and it's roof before I can even begin to construct the entry as it is all one unit sharing one roof. Time to don my snow pants do some work outside!

The weather was cold but sunny for several days as I slowly framed out the tower. I had already built the floor of the second level on my previous visit in November so I began there. My daylight was very limited so close to the Winter solstice. At such a northern latitude, the sun sets at about 3:30pm. At the end of the first day I set up lights to work in the dark but the cold became so uncomfortable after the sun had gone down that I elected to go inside and do interior work instead. Of that there was no shortage. So in the evenings I would start or continue a separate project indoors. To stay on task I began work on a passageway between the kitchen and the tower. There was a large opening that I had blocked temporarily with plywood on the high end of the kitchen wall where the top of the roof began it's downward slope. It was here that the kitchen shared a wall with the tower and I began to build an unusual looking doorway. The opening measured about 8' X 5' and was split into two squares by a vertical support. Roughly, I had two 32" squares to fill. I wanted to install a paned window in each, one of which could open and close from either side like a door. A built-in ladder would provide tree house-like access to the tower. Until the other half of the house was built (with doorway access) this would be the only entrance to the tower.

For more than a year now the kitchen has had an unfinished roof. It was my plan that this roof would connect with the northwestern wall of the tower. The tower however would be about four feet wider than the existing kitchen roof to encompass the extra space of the new entryway which would end up behind the kitchen. That meant that a section of about the size and shape of a dog house would need to be built to extend the roof and fill the remaining space. After that was taken care of, the foot-print of the tower would match the shape of the lower floor and every part of the first floor would be covered, albeit in an odd fashion. After framing and roofing the "dog house" I took a look at it from the ground. The addition thickened the look of the building but it needed a window to give it significance. It would serve no function but as house sculptures go it would be an interesting feature. It would look as though there was a floor between floors and it might be a really cool "secret room" for a kid. I had recently picked up an assortment of old fashioned paned windows at the Truro dump and picked one that would match the windows with which I planned to line the uppermost level of the tower.

I began framing out the walls of the tower in sections. During previous months I had done many drawings of the tower but as of yet had not arrived upon a finished plan. So I began with what I did know. An eight foot section of the southeastern wall would be a divider between the tower and the second floor of the future garage. I wanted there to be access between the two so I framed an opening for a doorway. The remaining four feet of that wall would stretch beyond the garage where a large double paned window would sit. The wall would also have a built-in supportive beam that would extend 16" beyond the frame at a height equal to the overhang of the kitchen's southwestern facing roof. The width between the beams would be about 6' where a large casement window would be the "eye" of the tower. The extensions would support the "brow" and the overhang of the tower's roof. To determine the height of the walls I climbed up onto the other roof (that housed the bedroom and bathroom) and tied a string to the peak. I then ran the string with a line-level attached over to the (future) tower and stood on a step ladder until the little bubble found it's place between the lines. From the string I ran my tape measure down to the floor and found that I would need at least an 8' wall for the top of it to meet the peak of the adjacent roof. When the other half of the house was complete, all of the wall heights would match up and an additional second floor roof could begin it's downward slope from above the peak of the existing one without looking forced into place.

I spent a lot of my time considering the overall look of the house with the tower in three dimensions. There really is a big difference between the drawing board in which the house is viewed dead on and the actual structure as it is seen by the observer from a variety of positions. As I assembled the frame I incorporated ideas from about 6 months worth of sketches. I thought I had fleshed out a good solid plan in my drawings but in the process of construction found that some ideas would not look good in real space or that previously rejected notions made sense when I considered the observer's point of view from all the different elevations of the surrounding property. The approach by car up the driveway was an unforeseen angle, as well as the all encompassing view from the tower's interior. The trees that stood nearby the house also affected my design. So as I built I made adjustments to my original plan.

On the short, south facing end of the tower, there protruded the overhang of the kitchen roof and the corresponding beam I had built into the opposite wall. The space in between was only wide enough to accommodate one full size window. Here is where I wanted to do something special because this section would be the focal point of the buildings exterior. The single elevated window would look out over the treetops like a great eye. This feature would give my house a sort of expression all it's own! It would live!

The eyes of a thing give a glimpse of the personality beyond. As a kid I loved the children's books of Bill Peet. I liked that the inanimate objects in his illustrations had life to them. Houses and buildings, cars and locomotives all had "eyes" that looked out into the world around them. As a kid it made sense to me but now I wonder: must a thing contain flesh and blood to be alive? Must it think and move of it's own accord?

As a lover of cars I have owned many older vehicles, mostly built in the sixties or early seventies before I was born. From each of these vehicles I could discern distinct personalities. The older the car, the more developed it's personality seemed. The mood of the car could be seen visually in the teeth of it's grill or the gaze of it's headlights and it could somehow be felt behind the wheel in the way it rambled down the road. The more time I spent with the vehicle the better I got to know it's idiosyncrasies. Under the circumstances of long cross country drives, when I spent every day for weeks with these cars, I could discern changes in their moods.

I want my House Sculpture to have a life of it's own. When an observer looks at it, I want it to look back at them.. and wink. The infusion of sentience maybe a universal goal in the work of every artist, whatever the medium. A great work of art must have life!

So what does that mean, to have life? Is it a success in creating the illusion of life or does it live on it's own? What constitutes life? Is it possible for a thing to have life but no soul?

They are age old questions that have long been under debate in the realms of philosophy and religion. The answers vary widely and exist only in the deep murky pools of abstraction. There are many systems of belief which claim to answer these questions with absolute confidence (a trait I am loathe to trust). Some religions claim to have every answer. The religion I grew up within taught that plants and animals had life but no soul. The soul was a privilege bestowed upon mankind by God. My parent's religion was a very hard lined Christian faith whose answers to everything was either black or white. Other sects of Christian faith do not have such inclusive ideas and do not claim to have every answer but there is still a general consensus that only humans and perhaps animals have souls. I suppose anyone who has been friends with an animal can come to their own conclusions about whether or not their friend has a soul.

Eastern religions have more open concepts of what is alive around us. Some believe that there is a spark of soul (or God) in all things from the lowliest pebble to the greatest of kings. It is the stage of the soul's development that determines it's stature of position, awareness, thought and movement.

To come to any conclusion or to even embark upon a path of understanding in this realm of thought one must be carefully observant of themselves and how they relate to the world around them. An arborist, for example, might have a few things to say about the souls of trees.

As all of this stuff concerns my House Sculpture, how am I to give this arrangement of lumber and nails a "life"? Honestly, I don't know. In terms of a piece of art, I believe I can give this structure an illusion of life or personality, but it will not have a soul until it is fulfilling it's purpose and housing a family. Hopefully, with a little help from the house, it will be a happy family.

Over the course of the week I was only able to finish the frame of the tower, not including it's roof. I had hoped to at least have a roof over it but that would have to wait. I turned my attention to the interior where much work had to be done to prepare for guests. The biggest job was cleaning and reorganizing. With several jobs going simultaneously, the interior of the house had become a maze of lumber, tools, salvaged parts and debris. After a few weeks of working in this fashion, my "bedroom" becomes smaller and smaller until I am sleeping on a mattress in a corner surrounded by junk that I need to climb over to get into bed. Every so often I must take some time to make an overall sweep of the house to make it a place where I can live and work again. The house was such a mess at this stage it took me two full days to clean and reorganize it.

By the time Sarah and her Dad arrived the place was ready to accommodate them. I had arranged the camper's decrepit old appliances into positions relative to where the appliances of the finished kitchen would sit which made it easier to use. I made the bedroom more comfortable by finishing the shelving unit that separated it from the bathroom and making a platform for the mattress which also created a little more storage space. In the bathroom I created more shelving and put in an exhaust fan. I rearranged the living room which I had been using as a tool shed and wood shop into a relatively uncluttered space where we could all hang out, and at the end of the day Jim could fold out the hid-a-bed.

We had a little trouble keeping the dog and cats separate, but for the most part the house worked out well. We spent Christmas Eve warm and comfortable while we opened presents. On Christmas Day we left the house to return to our home on Cape Cod.

A Book Review of A Place Of My Own by Michael Pollan

A Place of my Own by Michael Pollan is told by a guy who wants to build a small house. His reasons for doing so were his own but I found myself identifying very strongly with his thought process. He's good about putting his thoughts into words and his intentions are carefully planned and researched. He certainly put more forethought into his project that I put into my own. My plans have been rather scattered and most of my practical realizations have tended to come up during the building process itself rather than in planning. Pollan's goal was to create a sort of fortress of solitude; a small writing house separate from his regular house but located on the same property. He refers to the remarks of several different writers, scholars and historians to complement his thoughts. Gaston Blanelard sums up his idea of what he deems the chief benefits of a house: "..the house shelters day dreaming, the house protects the dreamer, the house allows one to dream in peace." To those not inclined towards the arts, "dreaming" may be low on their list concerning the importance of houses. But there is a lot in this notion if you believe that "life is but a dream". Art requires a great deal of dreaming. No work of art could ever be created without the artist dreaming it and making it a tangible thing.

Pollan makes many interesting observations and references concerning the philosophy of pioneers of the designing process. Also included is a rich history of architecture. It was in this area that I found out how little I knew about the art of architecture. It's evolution is fueled by revolution and "out of the box" thinking. The most famous architects seemed more interested in the art of the profession than in the basic functions of the houses they created. Frank Lloyd Wright once made a comment that if a house's roof did not leak, the architect had not been creative enough. Wright's buildings were notorious for their leaky roofs, but he is revered as one of the greatest modern architects. In fact many of the greatest architectural achievements were never even built. The merits of these creations were judged upon their plans and models as art, not their practical use. For many "high minded" architects the arrival of occupants to a newly built structure spoiled their "dream".

Pollan makes it clear that he is a writer and has no business building a house, even a small one by himself. He decides to employ an architect (who lets him sit in on the drawing process) and a contractor with whom he works along side. It was interesting to see the natural animosity between designer and builder and Pollan's relationship to the both of them as client. It makes sense too that there would be some form of contempt especially on the side of the builder. The architect is continually referred to as "sitting in his ivory tower" far away from the practicalities of the construction process. There are almost always going to be aspects of a building plan that will not work in real space. It is up to the builder to make it work in practical terms. In my own designs there have been many variables that I did not know with certainty, so I would simply leave them open to interpretation until the actual building process. Under my own unique circumstances, as architect, client and builder, the conflict is always circular and I work it out however I need to. It's not so easy when these three components are separate entities. Such design discrepancies include measurements, joints and engineering requirements. It could be anything. It is up to the architect to formulate the entire design in which all measurements add up to mathematical truth in a way that looks harmonious. Practical truth is different however, and the job of making the actual structure work within the limits of all the given variables and codes can at times require a compromise. It also seems to be the case that many architects have little "hands-on" experience with building. Hence it is not uncommon to hear contractors refer to the architect's plans with contempt as "cartoons" as it is up to the builder to bridge the divide between theoretical plans and practicality.

In defense of the architect there seems to be little appreciation for the artistry involved in creating a building that looks good both inside and out in it's elemental surroundings. There is a mountain of theory and history that contributes to the aesthetic form and function of a house. In practical terms, the idea itself must be put to parchment so that a common visual reference can be made between the designer, builder and client.

The great amount of information concerning the art of architecture left me feeling quite clueless. I can't help but wonder,"what the hell is the thing that I am building?" Whatever it is and wherever it fits in terms of the art of architecture, will when it's finished, look like no other house. For something of a glorified shack I have done a great amount of drawing and sketching concerning it's development. Practicality plays a major part but is always second fiddle to the overall aesthetic form. I still don't know how my house will look when it's finished or how it will evolve but that is part of the fun and freedom in my own approach as architect, contractor and owner.

I really enjoyed reading A Place of my Own. It is well written and thoughtful. It encompasses a great deal of the building process without reading like a "how-to" manual. Even though it is a very small house lacking many of the modern conveniences of a conventional home, Pollan presents a well rounded account of building that is interesting and entertaining. The house he creates is uniquely his own.

February 2008

I was greeted with lots of snow when I arrived in Monroe in February of 2008. I plowed the driveway again with my John Deere taking care to leave a nice clear wide pathway up to the house.

It was time to begin construction of the roof. I bought several rough cut 2X8s from my neighbor Peter Cormier, some measuring 14 feet to accommodate a long overhang. I used 2X6 rafters for the short south facing side of the roof and the 2X8s for the long spans. In each of the rafters I made dove-tail cuts so that the frame of the walls would meet the rafters with a flush surface for strong support. I made all my cuts with the Stihl chainsaw. I would usually gather and mark several pieces of lumber together to make many cuts at once while the saw was running. I got pretty good at making clean square cuts with the chainsaw by using the bar as a strait-edge.
In order to build supportive overhangs on the sloped sides of the roof, I built the corner sections together each as one piece that when dropped into place locked together with the overhanging 2X8 rafters along the northern edge. I reinforced them with 2X4 frames all the way around.

Meanwhile the snow fell gently around me as I worked. Sometimes the snow fell hard enough to bury my tools as soon as I put them down! I finished framing the roof at the point where I wanted to have a large 3'X3' skylight that opened and closed. This came courtesy of the Truro dump. I was still unsure how I would install it so that it didn't leak.
Another thing I did was install a proper metalbestos chimney. It mounted to the rafters with steel brackets that swiveled so that it could adjust to any roof pitch. Metalbestos is insulated pipe that feels only warm to the touch when exhausting smoke from the stove. This way it can exit the roof without being a fire hazard.

Now I could lay the OSB sheathing on top of the rafters. I was getting close to having a roof but I was running out of time with only one day left of my trip. I was only able to cover roughly three quarters of the rafters with sheathing and waterproof felt paper before my time was up. The snow fell so continuously at this stage that I kept loosing track of where I had stapled or nailed because of the ever present layer of snow that I could not wipe away fast enough. I wanted so badly to finish. I worked up until the last moment on my last day. A big section on the northeast corner where I planned to put the skylight and an opening over the dormer were still left unfinished. This left the house still open to the elements and that's how it would have to stay for now.

Though I was sleeping on a mildewed couch huddled next to a wood stove with no electricity or running water and shitting in an outhouse at 10 degrees F, the greatest struggle has always been with my impatience. I would eat soup from the can because I could not waste the precious little time I had to prepare meals or wash dishes. There is so much to do! At times I feel overwhelmed at the extraordinary amount of work there is to accomplish in such limited amounts of time. If I had the capacity to completely realize just how much work was involved before I started, I may never have begun. I guess in some cases it's good to be short sighted.