.These photos taken between 2002 and 2003..
A kitchen with fridge! microwave! electricity!
Of course electricity via the orange extension cord
running from inside the house and tying
into the power pole outside.
Top: Chandler and her friend Jordan setting up camp on the back upper deck.
Right: Looking down on the sleep site from the loft. At least we had a plywood (dry) floor.
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If you click on the BLUEPRINTS tab you can see that we made some significant modifications to the cabin from the original plans. The one night we all spent in sleeping bags on the back deck turned out to be serendipitous. It started raining in the middle of the night and we awoke with water dripping into our faces from the uncaulked area of the porch roof. We dragged everyone inside, and threw ourselves down on the plywood floor in the kitchen area. The next morning we were awoken by glorious sunshine streaming in through the windows... and right then we decided that we were going to nix one of the ideas we had of turning the now dining area into a bedroom. And we needed to replace the standard windows with french doors to capture the beautiful view and light. So, alll it took to change those plans for the better? A little night rain.
Cots in the loft.
All the comforts of home: a TV! and a toilet!
That round glass-topped patio table in the future kitchen
eventually made it to Okinawa in Alex's military household shipment...
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Top: the Suburban car TV/video player we would bring inside. Resting on top of a tool box. That's the future staircase wall behind the TV. Up to the loft and down to the basement.
Bottom: The green portapotty in all its lonely usefulness. Doesn't it appear to be standing guard on the property? Right next to the all-important power pole. Oh, how we rejoiced when we were able to
call the company to remove the portajohn because that meant real indoor plumbing!
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The younger you are the more fun you find in mundane things like washing dishes outside. Note the amber glass lidded candy dish. The dish was discovered in a box of other miscellaneous dishware...half buried in the dirt near the site of the portapotty...don't know for sure but I have suspicions of the box being residual flotsam and jetsam from a broken homeand marriage... which is what originally precipitated the sale of this property to us.
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The cabin naked, without chinking. I kinda like this bottom photo for the contrast of light and dark. You can really appreciate the primitive beauty of the hand hewn logs. You can also imagine Abraham Lincoln living in a house like this. And reading and doing his sums by firelight.
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One day a headline from a NYTimes article
(Escapes, Friday, November 23, 2011 by Joanne Kaufman)
took the words right out of my mouth:
For You, a Dream.
For Them, Bo-ring.
The weekend home is fun for the family, until the kids hit adolescence. Then the groaning years begin.
How true we found that to be. Completely forgot to take into consideration the massive time commitment required of school sports (forget about parents having a life of their own on weekends), calendars chock-full of all kinds of other activities, and worst of all, remembering that the last thing adolescent kids want to do is family activities and hanging with their parents. Ouch.
For teenagers, friends back home are much more interesting than your dumb house
This is going to be one long project.
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