A Constructive Year

Photo:  Kevin Lyons

Appeared in Pioneer Press newspapers
November 4, 2010

We bought the farm – in the literal sense, though it’s sometimes felt that we might get the figurative, as well – just about one year ago.  It has been a highly instructive and memorable twelve-month.  That is not to be confused with, say, “fun”.

A few times, in the period between signing the purchase contract in mid-October and closing one month later, we not infrequently asked one another if we really wanted to go through with it, noting that now was the time to change minds, and that that would be fine, because we had it good right where we were.  And there have been plenty of times in the year since that we’ve had occasion to think that letting this particular dream go might have proved the better part of valor.

But light is beginning to appear at the end of the tunnel – maybe even closer. It’s looking like a real, by-god house now, with a roof, windows, and doors. And, as with other forms of labor, the pain is largely forgotten when the good part arrives.    

Jefferson, our designer/builder said construction would take eight months, and, thanks to the great work of his team and a run of unreasonably good weather straight through October, we’re looking to be a bit ahead of that schedule. 

When we first announced our plans, a friend of Lis gave us a copy of the old Cary Grant chestnut, “Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House,” an ironic primer on everything that can go wrong in this process. And we fully expected to endure Blandings’ fate.  But, so far, things have gone quite well (clearly, I should not be saying this out loud). 

There’ve been a few surprises, of the kind that are inevitable with a house this old. But Jefferson and crew have taken them in stride, devised good fixes, and knocked ‘em down without much ado.  I’m delighted to report that our experience thus far has been entirely unworthy of cinematic treatment.

It’s actually been a pretty enjoyable process to observe and document – from paper, to hole in the ground; then a frame, then filling it in. It’s a well-established drill, with an extraordinary number of parts and interlocking systems.  And seeing them come together from scratch actually makes the previously mysterious workings of the whole organism that is the house reasonably understandable, even to me. 

And it’s cool to watch this well-drilled team do its thing.  The framing was pretty much done by just two guys:  garrulous Dave and quiet Brian. There’s Kent, the project manager, a historian of housecraft and construction sage.  There’s Mitch, who manages the million details of scheduling, ordering, keeping everything organized and moving. There’s the cast of a thousand subcontractors:  plumbers, electricians, roofers.  And then, of course, there’s Jefferson, the dynamo, generating enough new ideas to fill his monster truck every time we talk.  If he were still wielding the tools instead of running the operation, we’d be living there by now.

It’s a good crew, highly skilled and a pleasure to work with. And, it seems to us, the guys have all had a real feel for the place and taken pride in their contributions.  As Dave told us, when we were getting in his way, marveling over the second floor he’d just created, “This is my view until you move in!”

We’d originally hoped that would be by Christmas.  And it would have been, dammit, had we not lost two good months to the invention of credit default swaps. We’re tantalizingly close.  But the stuff that looks the biggest – the making of the box -- actually goes the fastest; it’s the fine, painstaking, finishing stuff that lies ahead and will keep us visiting the farm, rather than living there, for a while to come.

But we can pretty much see it all now, and begin to feel what it will be like to live there. So, it’s felt like a long year.  But the evidence is beginning to show it’s been a year pretty well spent.