Notes from the past month …
4/15/08 - I was watching my new favorite reality television program tonight – CNN’s “Little Polygamist on the Prairie” – and I must give CNN credit. As members of the Democratic Party gnaw off their own limbs to extricate themselves from their own rhetorical excrement, CNN has chosen to cover the bigger story: some Americans live in sin. This Mormon scandal dealing with the FLDS sect in Texas has shone a spotlight on all those fornicating polygamists. Is it religious persecution, or is it a felony … and what about the children?! Egads! Look for the spinoffs: “Desperate Sister Housewives”, “Cheaper by the Village”, and “Swapping Multiple Wives”.
4/28/08 – Up here in the Great White North, the recent warm weather caused the Magnetawan River to overflow her banks, flooding much of the surrounding land. The water level on Little Doe Lake (where our house is being built) rose several feet and the subsequent movement of ice in the lake took out our retractable dock. Indeed Nature can be a mother, just ask the residents of New Brunswick, who were recently plagued by devastating floods. Luckily, our new home is on high ground, but there has been significant water erosion and damage in the near vicinity. To rub salt into the wound, as Shauna and I returned from Toronto last Wednesday, we encountered a whiteout snowstorm on Hwy 11 north of Gravenhurst. I thought April Fool’s Day was at the beginning of the month.
5/5/08 – Watching “Market Call” this morning as we got ready to drive over to the construction site, I noticed a little blurb in the lower right corner of that too-much-news-to-digest channel, and it read “4000 killed in typhoon, 3000 more missing”. I didn’t catch the location, but it’s somewhere in Burma.Yikes! By the end of the day, the death toll was up to 20,000. That little tragedy probably won’t even make the front page of the papers in America, but I guarantee you this … if Reverend Wright puts forth any more of his creative opinions on racial division in America, we will hear about those ad nauseam.
Our house is progressing, slowly but surely, and many of the major decisions have now been made. We passed the one year point a week or two ago, but I’m not disappointed or surprised that the house has taken longer than anticipated to construct. As a custom build, this house has provided many surprises along the way, but we feel that the builder has been more than cooperative and successful in achieving the vision of our (largely Shauna’s) design. There were several last minute alterations to the floor plan which, of course, gives any builder fits. In all cases, we’ve made alterations before frame walls were constructed, and, while mildly inconvenient, our changes have been relatively minor. In the original plan, there was an entire log truss which was to be covered by a frame wall, and that seemed absurd. We went to great pains to reveal as much log as we could in this house, keeping in mind that wiring and plumbing must be hidden in some kind of frame structure. Our objective has always been to show as much of the architectural beauty of the log structure as possible. To that end, I think we have succeeded. Pictures cannot adequately describe the emotional lift we feel every time we walk into this house. It offers lake views from almost any vantage point, it captures the western lodge look we so strove to achieve, and it may very well be the best built house in the entire area. There is absolutely no drywall in this house. It has always seemed odd to Shauna and me that so many round log homes incorporate drywall, because, not only does that look incongruous, but when the building shrinks, as all log houses invariably do, the walls separate from the log, leaving clearly visible gaps. While this problem can be addressed with moldings, after the movement has occurred, we felt it was much less apparent when wood wall coverings are used. While there may be a thing or two we’d have changed in the original conception of the house, I don’t think either of us are the least bit disappointed in the way our home is shaping up. Quite the contrary, we are delighted that so much has turned out exactly as we had hoped.
If Shauna ever lets me near the computer, I’ll resume my duties as your twisted correspondent. As of today, there are still plenty of loose ends to be tied up and, in many cases, our mode of communication is email. Thank heavens for high speed … when we move in to the new house, we’ll be back to the molasses of dial up.
Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c 2008 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
4/15/08 - I was watching my new favorite reality television program tonight – CNN’s “Little Polygamist on the Prairie” – and I must give CNN credit. As members of the Democratic Party gnaw off their own limbs to extricate themselves from their own rhetorical excrement, CNN has chosen to cover the bigger story: some Americans live in sin. This Mormon scandal dealing with the FLDS sect in Texas has shone a spotlight on all those fornicating polygamists. Is it religious persecution, or is it a felony … and what about the children?! Egads! Look for the spinoffs: “Desperate Sister Housewives”, “Cheaper by the Village”, and “Swapping Multiple Wives”.
4/28/08 – Up here in the Great White North, the recent warm weather caused the Magnetawan River to overflow her banks, flooding much of the surrounding land. The water level on Little Doe Lake (where our house is being built) rose several feet and the subsequent movement of ice in the lake took out our retractable dock. Indeed Nature can be a mother, just ask the residents of New Brunswick, who were recently plagued by devastating floods. Luckily, our new home is on high ground, but there has been significant water erosion and damage in the near vicinity. To rub salt into the wound, as Shauna and I returned from Toronto last Wednesday, we encountered a whiteout snowstorm on Hwy 11 north of Gravenhurst. I thought April Fool’s Day was at the beginning of the month.
5/5/08 – Watching “Market Call” this morning as we got ready to drive over to the construction site, I noticed a little blurb in the lower right corner of that too-much-news-to-digest channel, and it read “4000 killed in typhoon, 3000 more missing”. I didn’t catch the location, but it’s somewhere in Burma.Yikes! By the end of the day, the death toll was up to 20,000. That little tragedy probably won’t even make the front page of the papers in America, but I guarantee you this … if Reverend Wright puts forth any more of his creative opinions on racial division in America, we will hear about those ad nauseam.
Our house is progressing, slowly but surely, and many of the major decisions have now been made. We passed the one year point a week or two ago, but I’m not disappointed or surprised that the house has taken longer than anticipated to construct. As a custom build, this house has provided many surprises along the way, but we feel that the builder has been more than cooperative and successful in achieving the vision of our (largely Shauna’s) design. There were several last minute alterations to the floor plan which, of course, gives any builder fits. In all cases, we’ve made alterations before frame walls were constructed, and, while mildly inconvenient, our changes have been relatively minor. In the original plan, there was an entire log truss which was to be covered by a frame wall, and that seemed absurd. We went to great pains to reveal as much log as we could in this house, keeping in mind that wiring and plumbing must be hidden in some kind of frame structure. Our objective has always been to show as much of the architectural beauty of the log structure as possible. To that end, I think we have succeeded. Pictures cannot adequately describe the emotional lift we feel every time we walk into this house. It offers lake views from almost any vantage point, it captures the western lodge look we so strove to achieve, and it may very well be the best built house in the entire area. There is absolutely no drywall in this house. It has always seemed odd to Shauna and me that so many round log homes incorporate drywall, because, not only does that look incongruous, but when the building shrinks, as all log houses invariably do, the walls separate from the log, leaving clearly visible gaps. While this problem can be addressed with moldings, after the movement has occurred, we felt it was much less apparent when wood wall coverings are used. While there may be a thing or two we’d have changed in the original conception of the house, I don’t think either of us are the least bit disappointed in the way our home is shaping up. Quite the contrary, we are delighted that so much has turned out exactly as we had hoped.
If Shauna ever lets me near the computer, I’ll resume my duties as your twisted correspondent. As of today, there are still plenty of loose ends to be tied up and, in many cases, our mode of communication is email. Thank heavens for high speed … when we move in to the new house, we’ll be back to the molasses of dial up.
Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c 2008 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
No comments:
Post a Comment