Rebuilding, part 4

Construction? What construction?

If, like Qubit, you are equally at home everywhere (or, to be more precise, equally at home everywhere Talia is) then living in a construction site is no big deal. Likewise if you are Felix or Gid, both of whom have only limited attention to spare for their non-digital living spaces. But for the adults managing things the experience is...trying. There is the hassle of running a household when the house itself is continuously changing around you, the disruption to your work-at-home schedule, and, most annoying, the frequent and not entirely predictable presence of unwelcome construction workers on a Saturday morning. The price of progress, I suppose.

Progressive

And much progress there has been. When we moved back in mid-August the boys had bedrooms and that was about it. Talia and I slept in the barn. Without functioning bathrooms we relied on the public toilets at the nearby Town Hall and showered at the pool. Our kitchen was a camp stove and dorm fridge out behind the garage. There was electricity in a few spots in the house, and some overhead lights, but all of that was turned on or off via a single switch in the excitingly unfinished fuse box.

Bath to be

Since then, almost every day has brought some new element of normal domesticity--another working toilet, a real bed, proper flooring--with it. It took a couple of months, but we now have mostly complete bathrooms, fully functional lighting and electricity, and, as of yesterday, heating. The front doors have been delivered and are nearly ready to be installed, the kitchen is in progress with major appliances scheduled to arrive on Tuesday, and all of the exterior and most of the interior has been given its final coat of paint. Closet doors, window dressing, kitchen countertops, and doorknobs are all needed, and there is much work to do outside the house (a rebuilt pergola, a restored yard, and whatever we are going to do about our disaster of a driveway), but the end is in sight.

Early signs of normality

Are we happy with the results, such as they are? Oh yes. The boys' bathroom, and in particular their shower stall, is great, and ours, nearly done, will be too. The wood finishes are all lovely, not least the domestic hickory that now covers our floors. Our reduced bedroom feels somehow larger than our old one and, to our surprise, accommodates our king bed quite nicely. The house passed through the late-summer heatwaves comfortably even without airco, and we face the winter with confidence thanks to demonstrably excellent insulation and what we trust will be functional gutters.

Finalizing exterior paint selections

More pictures to come in what should be the closing post of this series (part 1, part 2, part 3).

Mayor for a day

When you live on Court Lane I guess ruling comes naturally. Felix, while not a king, has recently become the mayor, or rather a mayor, for the day, the first such Fairfax has had. He applied, he was selected, and, after some coaching, he was handed the gavel and told to run the show. And what a show it was! In typical Fairfax fashion, and very much for better and for worse, the Town Council, together with many of our neighbors, inducted policemen, celebrated a variety of initiatives and people, got an earful about our current homeless crisis, and on and on for over four hours. Despite a lot of mayor-directed (regular mayor, not mayor-for-a-day) sniping and what I'm sorry to report is a typical level of participant animosity, Felix maintained his trademark poise and kept things moving. Fans online and off, delighted by his pro-clapping platform, are calling for him to return, and certainly he enjoyed the experience, but whereas there's no time to get a new candidate on the November ballot and whereas he has upcoming college applications and whereas he isn't ready for his Calculus test and whereas he should walk the dog, it is hereby proclaimed that four hours of mayoring is enough for now.

Rebuilding, part 3

Dining in

We're back! Yes, as of this past week we have returned to our old-now-new home, or, more precisely, to the barn behind it, the house itself not yet having a kitchen, bathrooms, electricity, or, in most places, a floor. That makes it sound worse than it is: all that will come in rapid order and the barn, already reasonably comfortable, has been updated with a handy new workspace.

New use for old kitchen parts

The boys are both away this weekend, but will return to their old bedrooms, now with fresh coats of paint for them to dirty. On Monday the tiler comes and by the end of the week they will even have a fully functioning bathroom. Floors go in the week after, with further painting, trim, tiles in the back bathroom, and all the rest to follow. By September I expect we will all be living in the house, which should by then be fully functional...barring the kitchen. Originally not in scope, we are now slated to rebuild that most expensive of rooms entirely. The plan is 99% complete, the appliances almost nearly very sure to having been chosen, the cabinet boxes laid out, the carpenter reserved...October?

A small time capsule for future renovators

It is lovely being here, even amidst the on-going construction, and very satisfying to be entering the end phase of this project. We left in December and work has been going on with hardly a pause since then. There have been a few wrong turns, but for the most part we've made our decisions on time, coordinated well, sailed through all the many inspections, and kept our finances in order, strained though they may be. At the same time we have seen more than a couple of similar projects around us get red-tagged, and have heard any number of construction horror stories from our subcontractors and neighbors. Thank you, Talia, for keeping us safe from all that.

Excited to turn this on!

The site today looks very much like this, and the rains will come before too long. New fences and fields are needed, and we're still debating the exterior color scheme and how best to rebuild the back pergola. There's a patio that needs refinishing and some drainage still to be dug. Talia wants a garden and I want a grapefruit tree. There's a small world outside the house and that needs rebuilding, too. Let's hope the money and the energy hold out just a little while longer.

Rebuilding, part 2

The project manager

In part 1 we explained how we came to make the mess shown above. Since then that pile of former foundation has been carted away, and probably half a dozen similar loads as well--there's no getting around the fact that construction generates a huge amount of garbage. Nor that it consumes a lot of material. But to what end?

Brand new back half

Our original plan was to rebuild the back of the house, the front porch, and the roof, leaving the middle of the house (kitchen, living room, two bedrooms, bathroom) largely untouched. Along the way, however, we realized a few things:

• That moving into a new house with an old kitchen (we had planned to upgrade the equipment but not the layout) would make Talia sad.
  
• That having a new bathroom that we continued to share with the two boys (because their bathroom doesn't have a shower) would make both of us sad.
• That having our chimney collapse would make everyone sad especially if it killed someone.
  

So now every room is involved in reconstruction to some degree, if only because we've also decided to replace all the windows, all the siding, all the wiring, and now all the plumbing even in the old part of the house.

Taking down the chimney

I haven't the courage to look at the budgeting spreadsheet so am free to fantasize about the outcome. My fantasies are these:

• That I will not hear the coffee grinder in the morning (though coffee will be waiting for me when I do get up), nor the kids roistering off to school.
• That our bedclothes will now and then be aired on a deck conveniently adjacent to my bedroom.
  
• That my bathroom will be warm and lovely and mostly available when I want it, with my towel where I left it.
  
• That I will not experience a wave of panic when a guest asks if they can use the facilities.
• That when cooking we will not be poisoned by noxious gasses and particulates.
• That when the air outside is full of noxious gasses and particulates we will be safe from them inside. And that regardless of the air outside, the air inside will not be freezing cold nor sweatingly hot.
  
• That should I leave a record on the turntable it will not melt in the hot sun.

That the house will now be unlikely to catch fire (and sprinklered if it does), will stop subsisting into the earth, will run with relatively low operational carbon, and will not offend the neighbors are all good things, too.

Bye bye fireplace, hello big windows

I am also excited for Talia, who will have something more like the kitchen she deserves, a proper office, a luxurious bath, and more closet space to use in that very special way she uses closet space.

In part 3 I hope to share pictures of a largely complete project, and I hope to do so soon.

No, you may not have a mouse in the house

Adorable disease vector?

Some months ago Gideon began making repeated requests for a pet of his own, specifically of the rodent variety. We have a lot going on, so turned him down flat. There may have been off-hand talk of "once we move back into the old house we might consider it," but Gideon would be a fool to take that as any kind of promise and Gideon is no fool. Nor, of course, is he obedient or easily stymied, so we should not have been surprised when he showed up one day not with a pet but with a pet home, a gnaw-proof acrylic container he'd purchased from a store. We took it from him, along with the receipt, and got his/our money back, a clear, so to speak, restatement of our no-rodent policy.

Not clear enough: we are eating dinner one day last week when Gideon calmly mentions that he found a baby mouse and has arranged for it to live at our house-under-construction. At first I think he's joking, but it's an odd joke even for Gid and I'm simply not that lucky. So after dinner we walk over to the construction site where we find, as described, a mouse living in a shoebox. A tiny thing, it's eyes not yet open, utterly helpless...I feel a little bad telling Gid that it really doesn't have a chance: at this age, a pup needs the warmth and feeding that only a mama mouse can provide. But Gideon is certain, with that certainty of his, that it will live. Fine, Gid, here's the deal: we'll put it in the shed and if it survives the cold, cold night we'll figure out what to do in the morning.

Growing up

It survives. And so begins a week of days--and what feels like many more nights--of feeding, via paint brush and eyedropper and pool in the palm of your hand, warmed goat's milk to this tiny, frantically hungry thing, which, from one day to another opens its eyes, unfolds its ears, and, by the end of the week, is giving Qubit a run for her money in the cute department. So now we have a mouse living in our laundry sink, feasting on sesame seeds and cream cheese. It recognizes its hosts, comes out of its hay pile when clucked at, climbs your hand, and finds dark safety in a fold of your shirt while you are watching TV. Some of us--Talia, Qubit--are pointedly ignoring it, but for my own part, despite the sleep deprivation, I'm charmed.

Who's cuter?

Among Brekkie's more popular posts are the occasional stories of Gideon vs. Alec (ice cream, laptop destruction, curtain destruction). They all take the same form: Gideon wants what Alec does not and guess who wins. This story is, seemingly, in that rich tradition: Gideon triumphs again, employing focus and force of will, and by playing the long game. But this time that's only part of the story. Because this time I ended up wanting Gid to win. And because this time he lost.

Back where you belong

Store-bought mice typically live only a couple of years, and a wild mouse in the wild is lucky to live even that long. However, wild mice in captivity can live seven years or more. This raises an interesting philosophical dilemma: is it better to live your natural life, foraging and mating and fighting and mating and wandering and mating, for a single year, or to have seven years in jail not doing much of anything? I know the right answer, and Gid did too. Farewell sweet mouse, and thank you, Gideon, for arranging this very special experience for both of us.