House Building
From the start it was our intention to build just the house we wanted. Now that we
were living on our own land it was only a matter deciding what that house would be. Mark
spent a lot of time and a few dollars on books and magazines of house plans. ("Who
lives in these things? Don't they own any clothes?") Twelve hundred square feet and
six bedrooms. Bay window on the dining room that looks out over the guest bathtub.
Finally we wound up drawing the plan ourselves. Or rather, Mark did. William can
barely print.
At any rate, Mark drew the floor plan and the four elevations and we took them to a
service that turned them into a set of plans that a builder could use.
We carried that set around to a few local builders, and while they decided how much
to charge we looked at what they had done and talked to people who knew them. We settled
on the one who had the houses that looked the most like the way we wanted ours built, and
of whom we found no one to say bad things. We decided not to worry too much about who
charged the most.
Once we had that settled, it was quick work to find the most generous banker and
get started.(It was one of the candidate financiers who pointed out that we would be
foolish not to increase the resale value by putting in a full basement. Being
thin-skinned, we didn't do business with him, but we did get the builder to add in the
basement and garage.)
And so to work.
We wanted to lose no more than the minimum possible number of trees and to use
everything cut either as firewood or chipped into mulch, so we decided to clear the house
site ourselves. That wasn't really a bad decision; we did a good job and we didn't die.
But we did put in gas logs and the pile of chips did get loaded up with the construction
debris when the house was finished.
Once we got it down to bare ground, George and his guys took over. There are
pictures of their work on some following pages.
Construction Photos I
Construction Photos II
Construction Photos III
Construction Photos IV