Between Pete and I, we took some pretty good photos the
other day of the recent bit of crawling towards buttoning up Barney’s
cabin. Now that winter is nearly over. Ahem. Progress
here is like a cheerful but clunky infant, in no hurry to develop along with
his peers . . . two steps on the carpet and then bam! on his butt on the floor
where he sits, contented, for three weeks, happy to not move another inch.
So the actual addition of things, at Barney’s cabin, is
hard to document, unless Ev is right there pointing and explaining and whipping
out the micrometer --it seems that since the house tilts downhill towards the
pond, and since the roof is now level, Ev decided he would have to frame the new windows
and doors also level, which makes sense, but that threw him into an absolute
froth because the Beam, which now rather sadly will take the place of Maurice’s
chain in the hold-the-house-together department, is like 5/40000 of an inch
listing to port.
“Don’t worry,” he
assures me, “when the walls and finish trim is on you won’t see a thing.” I gotta tell ya . . . I don’t see a thing
now, but it’s this type of OCD builders’ trauma that has turned the shack into
the smallest structure ever to be able to withstand a hydrogen smart bomb being
thrown down the chimney.
And speaking of
chimney, Ev’s decision to make it appear square from the outside has lent
itself to a custom-fabricated steel contraption (part of which you see above at the top) that also sits on top of the roof,
anchors the chimney to . . . .what I don’t know—the underworld? and allows for fieldstone to be placed on the
roof. Good for Santa. Bad, I have figured out, for the timeline.
But apart from the fact that I’d be homeless if this were my
only option, I guess I can be thankful that
no one but no one will ever be able to say of this dear thing that it
was not restored, as my friend Linda would say, “to a fare-thee-well.”
(the side door will be in the left hand corner)
(the extension will extend 8' out from the window (which will be above the sink)
Pete as usual gets the prize for art shots—the stream widens
just before the sluiceway and on the other side I put a wood duck box last fall—let’s
hope someone rents this spring.
Also you get a nice idea of the proportions now of the
inside, minus the addition, which will be to the left of the window and be 8x8,
housing 3 feet of the kitchen and a 5x8’ bathroom at the end—that is why the
window seems so close to the end of the house—it is not really the end---the
window is placed in what will be the middle of the sink, which I should take a
photo of—it is from the Library (former home of the outhouse) and is an ancient
36” white ceramic number with a
backsplash and wall faucets that would be far too big for the cabin if it weren’t
so cute, and besides, I can drop it into a cabinet and it’ll be fine. With a piece of metal on the side to protect it from the woodstove. If I hang in there that long.
