Making Ripples: post-corporate adventures in Floyd County Virginia

Building/moving to a new home - day 123

Sunday reflections

It's Sunday morning and the fragrant smell of cooking bacon wafts through the house. I have finished the first phase of my regular morning chores and am hoping to get in a few words before breakfast.

I look out the expanse of back windows through the trees, across the meadows, to the mountains in the distance, and I am at peace.

All of the effort we have expended has been worth it. Gretchen and I have made many great changes in our lifestyle in the past 13 years and each change has brought us to new friends and new adventures.

Since adventure consists of overcoming challenges, we have also had a continuing series of new challenges to meet and overcome. We have many more on the road ahead, but we have a strong partnership which sustains us in moments of difficulty and we enjoy the tasks we have set for ourselves.

Not all tasks are fun. Some are pure drudgery but they must be done as required to keep the household functioning.

I know we have made the right choices when I catch Gretchen's eye as we handle our chores and I get an answering smile. We enjoy doing things together and sharing household tasks as well as project tasks. This gives us the ability to co-create in many areas without conflict.

As some of you may know, it is a lot more fun to work together creating something than doing it alone. Shared creation builds a strong bond and when a couple can share in this way, it adds a great deal to their life together.

One last point, when I said I was at peace I meant that life with all of its confusions and excitement is satisfying in the extreme. There is no rest point, no plateau, no "happy ever after" as far as we are concerned. There is only more opportunity to enjoy good friends and to create new business relationships. As long as we can make more right decisions than wrong decisions, we will be able to continue this adventure indefinitely.

I need to break for breakfast. Will continue later...

Four months and counting - how is it all going?

The house is a warm and comfortable oasis in the midst of continuing construction.

We now have a wide front porch with a fine, broad step that welcomes visitors.

Our new side porch provides a sturdy place to shuck off muddy boots before coming into the utility/mud room.

The pillars, beams and joists of our back deck stand strong against the wintry sky. The Windy Hollow Construction team have been erecting this fine deck against the odds of wind and severe weather. We, and our cats, should be able to walk out on this broad expanse and survey our wilderness domain by the end of next week.

Occasionally I have been able to help Bob and Kari in their construction work by holding a heavy beam in place while they secure it, but my contribution has been more in the area of planning and fetching of supplies.  They are so competent in their teamwork that I would only slow them down.

I have my hands full handling the many details that make up a properly functioning house. Putting up shelves and towel racks, installing computer networks, unpacking boxes, and figuring out how to keep the mud outside keeps me busy from dawn to dark. I need to work more efficiently, because my work load is actually beginning to pick up.

The Reverse Osmosis water purification system arrived Friday and I need to get that installed as soon as possible.
We have another medicine cabinet to install.
I am working on building replacement handles for the wood stove.
The office needs to be set up and a computer network put in place.

Most important of all, I am renting a truck this week to pick up the rest of my tools and bring them down here from Charlottesville so I can start work on client projects in my workshop. I have not had a functioning workshop since late October so this must be handled soon.

Building/moving to a new home - day 115

Obligatory Friday the 13th story

On Friday the 13th, you can expect anything to happen. Our little disaster was having a flock of painters descend on us unexpectedly at 9:30 in the morning!

We were in the midst of unpacking boxes and arranging furniture when three smiling men in white overalls knocked on the door and announced they were here to touch up the wall and ceiling repairs left by the drywall crew. Gretchen was not amused. This was the second time that workmen dropped in without notice after Gretchen had asked for an arrival schedule.

She had been asking our contact at Southern Homes when the painters were going to arrive and had been told repeatedly that they would let her know before they showed up. As a result, she had proceeded to arrange pictures and furniture in almost every room in the house.

The arrival of the painters meant that we had to immediately undo everything she had done because touch painting was required on both walls and ceilings in every room. For more than two hours we scrambled around moving fragile items and valuable objects off tables and bookcases so the painters could throw drop cloths on everything in sight.

In some cases, the painters sanded areas on the ceiling before they put down drop cloths. The ensuing shower of plaster dust was then covered up by a drop cloth and wasn't discovered until much later.

The painters were pleasant and efficient and said they were not informed that anyone was in the house yet. This was a gross example of miscommunication because we were in daily contact with the people at Southern Heritage Homes almost every day.

The painters were skilled in their work but I quickly realized that they were missing some of the areas on the ceiling because the earlier repair work did not stand out in ordinary room light. I used my halogen construction lights to illuminate the ceilings and this uncovered all of the ceiling repairs that needed painting.

I followed them from room to room, lighting the areas that needed painting. This almost doubled the amount of touch up work, but it made the entire job go faster because we could all could be certain that everything was caught the first time.

The painters took their leave of us after three busy hours and we were finally able to get back to our regular plans.

Careful planning does not prevent confusion - it prevents insanity

In any major project, there are unplanned events caused by outside factors. The unannounced arrival of painters is a typical example. Bad weather and non-arrival of contractors is another. These events will throw a carefully planned day into confusion, but they will not derail the project for long if daily project plans are used and followed.

We have found that a project board helps up keep track of longer term objectives in this house building effort, but a daily list of targets is required to keep our heads above water during the constant hurly-burly of life at a construction site.

We had just finished making up the day's list of activities when the painters arrived unannounced. Everything we had planned was put on hold until the painting session was done and the painters had left. When the dust cleared, we picked up our daily list and carried on as planned. We had lost three hours due to the interruption, but we were able to get back on course without a lot of hand wringing because we still had a list of targets to meet.

Effective project management is the science of anticipating and handling interruptions as well as planned activities. This applies to the householder doing weekend chores as well as someone who is immersed in a larger project.

Any means you can employ to keep track of your daily goals will help you recover from unexpected distractions. It will go a long way toward helping you maintain your composure while you meet your targets. When you lose track of where you are, it is easy to get frustrated and lash out at others. Having a plan and a recovery plan makes it easier to tolerate the uncertainties of life and deal with them effectively.

Building/moving to a new home - day 113

What doesn't kill you makes you stronger...

A few days ago I described the problems we were encountering in our new home. I said that we would handle them and that seems to be the case. We are working long hours and are bone-weary at night, but the exercise seems to be good for us and we certainly have no trouble sleeping.

Yesterday, many of the problems were efficiently handled by our builder, Southern Heritage Homes of Rocky Mount, VA. They are proving to be quite responsive in dealing with these post-installation equipment failures.

They sent out a plumber named Dan who was a pleasure to work with. He replaced the dishwasher, fixed the kitchen exhaust fan, reset the toilets so they don't rock, and fixed some crossed wires in the Master bathroom. When he left, Gretchen was the happy owner of a kitchen that worked the way she wanted it to.

Our well water still smells of chlorine and metal, but I purchased a test kit from Lowes and it showed nothing out of the ordinary for this location. Our results showed our well water to be slightly hard with a ph of 6.5. Chlorine was less than 0.5 ppm, hardness was 50 ppm, alkalinity less than 80 ppm, nitrate/nitrite 0 ppm, iron approx 0.3 ppm, copper less than 1.3 ppm, and total dissolved solids 38 ppm.

To give us the drinking water quality we want, I have ordered the same 6 stage Reverse Osmosis system we used in our previous home at Lake Monticello. It should arrive in a few days and I will describe the installation.

The water produced by this equipment has to be experienced to be believed. Until I used this system, I never realized that pure water tastes sweet. When all of the goop and chemicals are removed from drinking water, it tastes wet, and the absence of stuff in the water makes it taste exactly like the glacier water we were able to buy a few years ago. Wet and sweet, an unbelievable experience!

More finishing touches

The house is now surrounded by new holes containing concrete footings. These footings will support front and side porches and a deck in the very near future. We will soon be able to enjoy outdoor views from a vantage point high above our muddy surroundings.

The Smart Vaults in our front yard will soon be history. We emptied the last of them a few days ago and they will be picked up today. They provided us with flexible storage of our furnishings at both ends of the move. I would recommend anyone contemplating moving should look into Smart Move, especially if you are hoping to do the packing yourself or if you need storage during the move.

Living with cats - always something new

We and our cats are now on our own after staying three weeks with Doug and Amy Thompson and their cats. We have a warm spot in our hearts for Doug and Amy because they made what could have been a period of extreme hardship into a wonderful living experience.

Take a look at your own lives and consider what it would be like if two people you didn't know well came to stay with you and brought their cats as well! For most people, it would be a strain at best. Doug and Amy treated us as family and our cats as family and we all had a great time.

Now that we and our cats are apart from the Thompson's, I read in Doug's blog that the four Thompson cats are suffering withdrawal symptoms.

Strangely enough, our cats seem to be doing something similar. After a day of cheerfully exploring their spacious new home, they began yowling and would sit and stare at us as if asking for answers.

New home behavior for our cats is unpredictable at best. Usually Sherman will try to escape. Buffy seems to settle in after a period of exploration. This time, Sherman explored the entire house and ended up hiding under the covers for about 8 hours of blessed unconsciousness.

It is now 4:00 am and Sherman seems to have realized that he is really stuck in a new place with no cat doors! Bummer! There aren't even other cats to interact with!

He has been howling intermittently for some time, pausing only to dig furiously in his new litter box. He alternates this with leaping up on counters and furniture and venting his displeasure by pushing things off onto the floor.

Now he has joined me for some close-up grumbling. He paces across the back of the couch looking for a solution I cannot provide. When I return to writing, he drops heavily off the back of the couch and wanders off yowling different phrases, none of them complimentary, I'm sure.

Experience has taught me that this will pass and he will return to his normal habits in a few days. In the meantime, he is not helping...

Building/moving to a new home - day 111

Country living is a new experience

Long days of hard physical work leave little energy for blogging, but there is so much to do and learn as we prepare the house for occupancy, that I feel I must capture these moments before they fade from view.

There is a vast difference between our lives here in Floyd and our lives in Lake Monticello even though the house designs are quite comparable. The big difference, of course, is that here we are still building the house and there we moved into a completed house that had been lived in for six months and almost fully debugged.

We are dealing with the raw stuff of nature here and are fully engaged in keeping the weather at bay and the house clean and heated while shlepping heavy boxes and ungainly articles into the house while contractors sand walls, fix doors and appliances, and generally make themselves useful.

The other big difference is that country living is mostly manual where living in the suburbs is almost entirely automatic. By this I mean that suburban living is almost entirely a matter of throwing switches and setting dials. In the suburbs, when you want heat you push a button or dial a temperature you want and it happens smoothly and reliably, almost all of the time.

In the country, you may have automatic systems in your car and in your kitchen, but you probably use wood for fuel and this takes a lot of attention to do it right. It works well and is quite economical, but a well-fired stove just doesn't happen by accident. A whole series of actions go into making that cheerfully glowing fire burn at the right rate through the day and night.

I am learning fast, but I still have more to learn before I can confidently set up a wood stove to burn through the night, so we don't wake to a cold hearth.

The house will not get cold, even if the fire goes out, because our baseboard heaters will cut in and keep the temperature at whatever temperature we set. Electric heat is increasingly expensive, so it is better to keep the wood stove burning whenever possible. You might say we have chosen to heat with wood for the superior ambiance and economy, but we keep a backup system ready if our wood heat fails.

Some folks have suggested we install backup heating with propane for those times when electrical power goes out for days. We are still considering that as an option because we see how severe the weather can be in this part of Virginia.

Meanwhile we have our hands full debugging the problems that continue to show up in our new home.

There is no light at the end of the tunnel - only more tunnel

A fully equipped house with appliances is a truly complex system. Those of us who have designed complex systems which have to operate in the field know how difficult it can be to achieve reliable operation in a distant installation. This house is better than many, but there are still problems.

When you buy a house where the appliances are part of the purchase, you must not assume that they work. Every single feature and appliance of your new home should be tested before you need to use them.

We discovered some problems in the last two days that we must add to our list of things to handle:

The dishwasher doesn't. Somehow, water is not turning on inside the dishwasher even though there is water pressure in the line leading to the dishwasher. Gretchen discovered this after loading the dishwasher with a full load of glassware.

The kitchen exhaust fan inhales. When Gretchen turned the fan in the microwave stove on, it deposited a load of sawdust on her fry pan. Although we paid a good deal of money to ensure that the fan exhausted outside, it appears that the microwave fan assembly has been given other orders. Air is being drawn in through the exhaust grill at the top of the microwave stove and it blows out through the intake grill.

One of the bathroom fans is dead.

The pellet stove we purchased is still not working right. After being coaxed into normal operation, it ran for several hours and then quit. Either there is some arcane secret I need to learn about this stove, or the installation was done improperly. Blue Ridge Heating and Air has not delivered a satisfying customer experience yet.

The well water still smells of chlorine and metal. The well-diggers may have put chlorine into the system to clean it, but it should have dissipated by now. We need more information and possibly a Reverse Osmosis water purification system like we had in the old house.

All of these problems will be handled eventually, but they certainly add to the workload we face in getting this house ready to use as a continuing base of operations.

Meanwhile, we enjoy the incomparable joys of living in the country, sunsets that stun the senses and vignettes of nature like the hawk sitting on a fencepost watching his next meal scampering in the field before him.

I also got to spend an hour at a blogger's luncheon at the incomparable Cafe Del Sol.  Doug Thompson did such a good job describing the lunch meeting that I gave him the picture I took to accompany his article. Check out his post if you haven't done so already.

Building/moving to a new home - day 108

A vision of the promised land

Yesterday, we paused for a brief moment and looked out of our back windows at rolling wooded hillsides that fall away to the Little River in the distance. To our west, we have a view of open forest, lush fields where cattle graze, and distant mountains. We stood transfixed by the abundance of natural beauty that filled the world before us.

We had a promise of this beauty when we first walked in these woods last Fall, but we now look out from a point twelve feet above our earlier vantage point. When our back deck is completed, we will have a 180 degree view of this peaceful vista.

The beat goes on...

We are getting closer to the magic moment when we will live here in our new home. The LG refrigerator, looking like something out of a Sci-Fi movie, is already stocked with some food for on-site lunches. We no longer have to make the long run into Floyd for a midday meal.

Bob and Kari, of Windy Hollow Construction, have begun building a back porch and it should be complete today. Michael Shortt will excavate holes for front porch and back deck pilings today, which will open the way for Bob and Kari to finish the front porch. This is our last barrier to getting a Certificate of Occupancy!

Excavation is required to put the porch and deck foundations below the frost line. This is the only way to construct a porch and deck that will not sag when the ground thaws. We are seeing graphic evidence of the effects of thawing in the trenches that were dug and refilled when the ground was frozen. Each of these trenches now show deep holes where the frozen earth collapsed in the few warm days that have occurred.

Our driveway and even the street we live on have post-thaw trench depressions which are a shock to drive over. It may take several more passes before the trenches are stably filled.

Meanwhile, our 36 sheets of 4x8 plywood provide relatively clean pathways through the mud for our contractors. Work goes on and the house interior remains relatively clean. I will try to capture the scene in a photo.

Building/moving to a new home - day 106

Next step - getting a Certificate of Occupancy

We enjoyed our visit this morning with Jimmy Whitten, Floyd County Building Inspector. Our plumbing and electrical work passed with only a few minor changes required to meet the new 2006 building code.

We have heat, hot and cold running water, and working toilets and showers. Our new LG refrigerator is installed and working, as is our new electric range.

The attic insulation was blown in this afternoon and the crawl space insulation will be installed tomorow. Phones are working and the Barista Expresso machine will be unpacked tomorrow. We are beginning to look like a first-class operation, instead of a refugee camp.

The only thing preventing us from moving in is a missing Certificate of Occupancy and that is a relatively simple matter. We need some sort of porch for the front door and a landing with handrails for the back door. We designed both this afternoon and the materials will start showing up tomorrow also.

We expect to satisfy all requirements and receive a CO by early next week.

Incidently, the installers from Blue Ridge Heating and Air showed up early this morning and came up with an elegantly simple solution for the faulty stove pipe installation. Tonight the stove pipe is completely vertical and satisfies all building code requirements. Our Floyd County Building Inspector was on hand and approved the solution they came up with. All's well that ends well. This stove installation taught us a few good lessons and the most important was to trust our instincts. We should have also insisted on references.

By the way, for those who wonder if a medium-sized woodstove and a few electric heaters can heat a 1650 sq ft house satisfactorily and evenly, we were so warm today that we left the stove off. And that was before the insulation was blown in!

Building/moving to a new home - day 105

Finally seeing the light at the end of the tunnel

We now have water and hot water in the house, even though we don't have working toilets yet and one of the showers will not turn off. We have three bedrooms with lush, thick carpets, although the house is not fully insulated yet. The outside lights and the closet doors are yet to be installed.

These discrepancies will vanish in the next few days as a final wave of Southern Heritage Homes contractors descend on the house to finish their contractual obligations. The Southern Heritage people build a good house and they respond quickly when a problem is pointed out to them.

The faulty stovepipe installation

I had a conversation with our county Building Inspector, Jimmy Whitten, and he agreed that we have an out-of-code installation. I called Bob Martin of Blue Ridge Heating and Air and I received a promise within minutes from the installer that he would come tomorrow and would remedy the problem.

Being the trusting soul that I am, I plan to watch every step of the repair while it is being done. Moving/enlarging a hole in a roof is not a project to be undertaken lightly. I may even photograph the process... :)

We are really settling in

I installed the mailbox today. Because of our online buying habits, we selected the largest freestanding mailbox available for residences. It has already aroused the envy of one of our contractors. This person had never seen a mailbox big enough for a dog kennel before.

It's not over until they haul away the dumpster

I have been insisting on ordering a dumpster and one finally arrived. It is about the size of a WWII LST and is the largest available locally. It will easily hold all of our construction trash and I have invited friends to use it to dispose of those pesky appliances that can't be handled by the normal trash disposal methods.

When I first mentioned getting a dumpster to my local contractors, they looked at me like I was a few beers short of a six-pack. They intimated that anyone with sense would simply burn whatever was left over after the house was built.

Since most of the trash is wet and covered with ice, I couldn't see how I could burn it without using Napalm or something similar. I know dumpsters work well and are amazingly cheap. The decision was a no-brainer.

We plan to party when the dumpster leaves.

Building/moving to a new home - day 104

Building a house is a lot like making sausage

Unless you have a strong stomach, you are better off not knowing what goes into it. The final product can be amazing, but the the details of construction are better left to those with a spirit of adventure.

We are enjoying this house building project as it is much like the projects we did as high-tech marketing project managers without the complications of corporate life. There is some white-knuckle tension and gut-churning apprehension, but we have no layers of management to deal with. When a problem arises, we assess the risks and we fix it.

I am sharing this saga in the hopes that it might entertain you and save you from making the same mistakes as I have. If you have a spirit of adventure, you might entertain the idea of using some of this information.

We will overcome this...

This two-wheeled dolly was used to haul a water heater around the house and into the 6 foot crawlspace a few days ago. On the return trip, the wheels were so encrusted with mud and gravel that they locked up and refused to turn. I took this picture to show you some of the difficulties we and our contractors encounter every day.

When the clay hardens, I will clean the dolly by whacking the clay off with a hammer.

Meanwhile, I have found some doormats like the one we bought last year. These work very well for scraping mud off the bottom of shoes. I don't know why we didn't think of them before. I have ordered a dozen of these from a dealer on ebay and will use four of them at each entrance, along with various bootscraper/brushes. Performance evaluations will follow.

We will overcome this also...

You are looking at a non-vertical stovepipe installed by Blue Ridge Heating and Air. You may think that the installer had a poor sense of balance and couldn't tell what direction was straight up. That would be the charitable viewpoint and it gives this installer too much credit.

The stove installer from Blue Ridge Heating and Air had made a major goof and was trying to cover it up by installing the stovepipe at an angle so he wouldn't have to fix the mistake he made on the roof.

Here is a closeup of the hot chimney vent where it penetrates the roof. The stove manufacturer makes it quite clear that the vent must be at least two inches from any flammable material. The Blue Ridge installer did not locate the hole properly and the hot vent pipe passes within 1/2 inch of the roof sheathing and shingles. If the stovepipe had been left vertical, the vent pipe would have been pressed against the roof sheathing, so the installer shifted the stove slightly.

This is contrary to the stove manufacturer's instructions and is a violation of our local building code. We plan to have the Floyd Building Inspector look at this tomorrow and give us his recommendation.

Meanwhile, I am composing a letter to Vermont Castings, which manufactures the Dutchwest Stove, and will strongly suggest that they re-educate this dealer or get rid of him.

And now for some good news...

We purchased plug-in baseboard heaters made by Honeywell yesterday and they worked like a charm! They heated the house so well last night that the house was warm even with the stove off. This was a prerequisite for today's installation of vinyl flooring.

We had a contractor install vinyl floors in three rooms today. The results were terrific! They will complete the installation of carpets in three more rooms tomorrow and the house will begin to resemble a home.

We have laid down rosin paper throughout the house and have constructed boardwalks around the house, out to the woodpile, and across to the workshop. As a result, it is now possible to do errands outside the house without bringing clay into the house.

We have also invested in many pairs of slippers for guests to wear inside the house. We will follow the example of many friends and family members who leave their shoes and boots outside in bad weather. For years, as a casual visitor, I have marvelled at the shoes stacked neatly outside homes in Hawaii and in California, but I never fully appreciated the need until I built a new home in wet weather. No amount of scrubbing will clean clay-covered shoes to the point where they can be worn into a clean house. The best approach is to put a bench at each entrance where one can sit and exchange the outside boots for inside shoes.

We still need the benches, but we are making progress. The interior of the house has stayed clean and comfortable all day today, even with contractors hard at work. Incidentally, these contractors brought clean shoes to wear inside the house while they installed the new floor coverings.

Building/moving to a new home - day 102

Another milestone achieved - lights in the darkness

It was dark last night when I drove down the winding country lane that leads to our new home. In the headlights I could see that the melting snow was beginning to freeze again and the puddles in the roadway were beginning to ice over. The snowy darkness was punctuated only by lights shining from houses spread out along the road.

I was making a late run to deliver construction supplies and was thinking how nice it will be when we are living under our new roof. I was even feeling a bit wistful that we have not been able to make it happen sooner.

As I approached the last of the neighboring homes, I was startled to see the gleam of lights from our construction site. I anxiously wondered why our contractors were working so late.

As I rounded the last turn, I saw that the driveway was empty, but light was streaming from our new home and workshop! These were not construction spotlights used by our contractors, these lights meant the electricity was on and we finally had power!

Our on-site contractor had pushed himself to the limit to get everything wired up so we could have power for the long weekend. He left the lights on so we would know he had met his target!

Thanks to Bob Eich of Windy Hollow Construction, we will start the New Year with a home that we can work in at all hours. We are still surrounded by freezing mud and more work is needed before we have running water, but we have power and an Internet connection. Our dream of a quiet home in the country is one step closer to realization.

Today, we will install a mailbox and an extension on our wood stove chimney vent. Stay tuned for some important facts we learned about operating wood stoves at higher altitudes.

As we near the end of 2005, we thank you all for your support and encouragement. And, for those  of you who are still struggling to put, or keep, a roof over your heads in these uncertain times, we wish you the strength to persevere and achieve success, wherever you are.