Odds and Ends 2010

Happy holidays, everyone! (Or Merry Christmas/Happy New Year, if you prefer; I'm a practicing Buddhist, so I don't have a dog in the 'Christmas Wars' fight.) The holiday festivities in the Vermonster household began with a day trip to Shangri-La to make sure the cabin was still standing and that the crawlspace wasn't flooded. It was and wasn't, respectively. I drained the pressure tank last time we were up and shut off the pump, so there was nothing to freeze. I'm new to this game, though, so it seemed prudent to check.
 

Someday that Tyvek will finally be completely covered. Probably on the same day I finally haul away those pallets...

There was just a dusting of snow on the ground, and - with the exception of some new mouse droppings - everything was just as we left it. I took detailed measurements of the kitchen and bath for cabinets and fittings, and then an inventoried the remaining materials before locking up. It seemed a shame to drive all that way for 30 minutes' work, though, so I walked the perimeter of the property to stretch the time. Turns out I have parts from an old car on one end of the property, and some old cans and buckets on the other. Everything I found looked to be from the 30's or 40's, so at least it was 'historic' garbage. CVPS also cut a lot of hardwood installing the new poles in the right-of-way this year; I'll have to cut and stack it in the spring in preparation for the wood stove.

Looking over the posts to date, I found a few 'holes' in my documentation of this cabin-building journey. Here's a modest attempt to fill them:

Q: You spent a lot of time talking about prefab and kit options - any regrets not going that route?
A: Not really. During the research stage, they all seemed to be at least 1/3 more than framing the place myself. In the end, this was mitigated somewhat by paying a contractor to do the roof sheathing/shingles, and the additional time it took to do it all 'from scratch'. In the end, thought, I got valuable experience in framing that I can use for outbuildings and additions, the pride of saying we did it ourselves, and a little extra money to put toward finishing. As we're doing everything with cash, spending more up front to get the structure in place wouldn't have bought any time, as we would have just run out of money quicker and spent more time staring at the place rather than working on it.

Q: You neglected the blog through almost the entire framing process. What gives?
A: The framing work was intense and exhausting, and it was hard to spend time writing about it after 3-4 days of working. With the exception of the hipped porch roof, however, it really wasn't all that hard. Building the walls was relatively easy, and the sheathing was only difficult in that it was awkward to work with on ladders on the South side. The hardest thing about framing the roof was the sheathing and shingling - something that I would have done myself anyway had I not opted for a 45-degree angle. I knew very little about framing when I started, but two books gave me everything I needed:

• The Ultimate Guide to House Framing by John D. Wagner
• Working Alone: Tips and Techniques for Solo Building by John Carroll.

Q: When you were planning the electrical, did you consider going solar and staying 'off the grid'?
A: I did, but the fact that I had a CVPS pole less than 100' from the cabin made it just too easy to go conventional. Again - we're doing everything with cash, so a big outlay for solar now would just mean that the rest of the work gets done much later in the future, preventing us from actually using the place. My current plan is to add solar panels after we've finished to feed power back to CVPS. Vermont does net metering, so this should offset the cost of electrical significantly. Not quite 'off the grid', but arguably the next best thing. The other thing that worked against solar was the fact that it seemed to require a different well setup - low flow pump and underground storage reservoir - that would also make the well installation more expensive.

Q: No that the market has recovered, any regrets about cashing out the 401(k) during the panic?
A: Ah, yeah, well...you have to be philosophical about this kind of thing. The story I tell myself these days is that I converted a stock investment into a real estate investment. Yes, the cost of land and materials dropped in the same time frame, but the truth is that I still lost more by cashing out than I gained in lower prices. No one was sure what was going to happen in those dark, post-crash days, though, so I rolled my dice and moved my mice. And now I own a place outright that I was forced to build myself to save money; I'm proud of both, and that's worth something.

Q: What's next?
A: Our goal for 2011 is to get the place to a point where we can use it. That will mean insulation, the primary heat (as opposed to the woodstove, which will come later), plumbing, and the bathroom. Stay tuned.

I predict a gypsy caravan in our future

LSW here. I saw this book, "Shed Chic" by Sally Coulthard, at the library the other day and thought it looked kind of cool. Funny how one person's definition of "shed" is another person's dream house.
When I think of "shed," I think of a small, dark box that smells of oil and gas and fertilizer and is inhabited by spiders and their nasty, disgusting cottony egg sacs. A shed is a place where you keep your lawn mower, your collection of broken and dirty clay pots, your gardening tools and miscellaneous cans of bug spray, paint and other toxic liquids that hopefully the neighbor's cats (or kids) won't get into.
That's not the kind of shed this book is about.
Obviously these are funky out-buildings used for writing, painting, woodworking, relaxing and entertaining Thurston and Lovey Howell. There are some very cool ideas in here, but one that really takes the cake: gypsy caravans.

Yeah, you heard me right. You know, those funky wagon-type things that are painted in crazy colors and designs. Well, apparently there's a whole subculture of caravan makers, restorers and painters. How could we have overlooked this as a possibility for housing at Shangri-La? As I have gypsy blood in me (my great-grandfather was a gypsy in Bohemia), I'm feeling like we definitely need to have one of these on the property. Maybe I can do tarot readings and tea parties out of it for some extra income. Or sell chocolates. I can see it now: "Gypsy Chocolates & Tarot Readings."
In any case, this discovery had us searching the web last night for more info and we found Tiny House Blog, which is a really cool resource. They had a page dedicated to caravans.
Needless to say, the Vermonster has been reading more and more about these and has mentioned a couple of times now that there are classes offered in building gypsy caravans. Yeah, um, just putting it out there right here and now: Not. Going. To. Happen. Unless I'm the one who gets to take the class.

On Foxes and Porches

Last week the excavator asked me whether or not I wanted him to seal the foundation. With my dwindling bank account in mind, I decided it was time to get some skin in the game. Apparently I would need to break of the form ties with a hammer, fill in the holes with roofing tar, and cover the exterior with sealant up to ground level. Easy enough.

And so it was that I pulled onto the site Sunday morning and was struck by the fact that construction had, in fact, begun. The presence of the foundation transformed the lot and made it, for the first time, very easy to see how our little cabin (and we) would actually inhabit the land. Over the next couple of hours, I found myself again rethinking the design.

We originally wanted the cabin to ‘face’ south, into the land, with a full-width porch that would look down the slope toward the leech field. This presented a couple of problems, though:

1) There would be no ‘face’ to present to the road and driveway. It doesn’t sound like a big deal, but houses always seem more welcoming when they face you as you approach them. A house presenting its back seems to say ‘go away’. (I’m curmudgeonly enough to prefer that most people actually stay away, but it would be nice if the house would welcome me when I arrive.)
2) Given that the south side would not be on a gable end, I had (for a number of reasons), decided that I would need 10’ walls on which to secure the porch roof. It was now apparent, however, that that the foundation would rise 4’ about the ground on the south side given the slope of the land. This would mean 14’ to the cap plates, which was higher than I’d prefer to work, given the 12/12 roof pitch and the fact that I myself am well short of 6’. Furthermore, building the deck would be more complicated as it would range from 4 – 6’ off the ground as the land sloped away.

It occurred to me that I could solve both problems and simplify construction by opting instead for two 12’ porches, one on the east side facing the driveway, and one on the west side letting out from the kitchen. Using the gable ends of the house meant that I could revert to 8’ walls, and both porches would give us better access to the leveled portion of the property that wraps around the north and west of the cabin.

When I look back at my sketches over the last few months, it’s interesting to see that what began as a simple 14x24 box kept growing and becoming more complicated, eventually bulking up to 20x30 and sporting a tower facing the road. Once the actual work began, however, the sketches get smaller and simpler as I begin working out the logistics of actually building the thing.

“We only need something like a hotel room with a kitchenette,” the LSW kept saying. “We can add to it later. And she’s right. The simpler it is, the better chance for success.

I hammered off most of the form ties, which – true to form – took longer than expected, and decided to wait until next weekend on the roofing tar. I still needed to check out 3 local campgrounds, and I wanted to get home in time to relax a little before the work week began again. Just before I left, however, a fox emerged from the woods and we stood for a few minutes looking at each other before he casually trotted back into the underbrush. Probably a common site to the residents of Shangri-La, but rare enough to feel a bit magical to those of us trapped in the ‘burbs. I wonder how the Boy would have reacted?

PS: Interim bill for the foundation work - $1967.50 with the rat slab still to go.

The Incredible Shrinking Cabin

Once upon a time, restoring old British cars – usually MGBs – was my diversion of choice. The LSW endured a parade of clunkers for which I tried to combine concourse-quality restoration plans and a shoe-string budget. While almost 50% of these projects resulted in something that could be safely driven, all of them reinforced something I grew up hearing about projects in general:

It will take twice as long as expected, and cost 3 times as much.
And so I’m finding as the estimates begin rolling in:

• 16 x 28 frost-line crawl-space foundation with a ‘rat-slab’: $5,000 (rats and excavating not included)
• Power: Needs to be estimated, but I’ve heard stories of $2,000 - $4,000
• Septic (as currently proposed): $10,000 - $13,000
• Well: $5,000 - $7,500
• Land Clearing: $2,000 - $3,000 per acre

With each new piece of information, the cabin in my imagination gets a little more modest. The kit becomes DIY stick-framing, 20x30 shrinks to 16x28, the full-size kitchen becomes a stove, sink and under-counter refrigerator, CVSC power becomes a solar panel, and indoor plumbing becomes (at least at first) a mulching toilet and 5-gallon water containers. In short, the “cabin” really does become a cabin. *sigh*

I have mixed feelings about this process of ‘right-sizing’ my expectations. To be brutally honest, I like the idea of having the kind of ‘camp’ that makes friends, relations, and neighbors envious. It’s a side of me I don’t care for, but can’t deny. There’s another side, though, that is attracted to the idea of a small, off-the-grid, minimal maintenance getaway that provides the experience of being mostly outdoors and close to nature. And one that bucks most to the materialistic pretensions we’ve been awash in over the last decade.

The interesting thing is that, while many of our friends were upgrading locations and square footage over the last decade, we’ve willingly (even enthusiastically) embraced smaller, older homes. Our current house - built in 1940 and clocking in at just less than 1,800 square feet - is the biggest – and newest – we’ve ever had. With its original kitchen, windows and [lack of] insulation, I’m confident that it inspires very little envy in our friends, relations and neighbors. So why would I care what they think of our little shack in the woods? Not that they’ll have an opportunity to form an opinion; it’s now grown too small for visitors.

I still occasionally surf the real estate adds for Vermont for ‘turn-key’ properties, wondering if I shouldn’t use the project budget as a down payment. But here’s what keeps me on the straight-and-narrow: I want to own the property and anything on it outright. And if that means a shipping container with a window, at least we’ll never have to worry about seeing ‘foreclosed on it’.

Adventures in Building

Now that we’re no longer waiting for an additional septic test, I've been agonizing over cabin options: I want something that will go up quickly and easily, but I know that I could do it the hard way for about half the price. And with a budget of less than $30k, that 50% differential will likely determine whether our water will come from a well or rain barrel.

I'm confident that I can build the place myself. From car engines rebuilding to Windsor chairs making, custom trim work to guitar playing, I haven’t yet found a project that I couldn’t tackle if I set my mind to it. But how can I convince the LSW that my optimism isn’t misplaced? And – to be honest – prove to myself that I’m not underestimating the work?

The answer came to me as I passed thought the only tunnel in New England (so I'm told) on my way home from work last Friday: Build a gardening shed in the back yard. Armed with this one construction stone, I could kill the following birds:

• The LSW gets a modicum of assurance
• I get practice in framing
• We get a gardening shed
• The current gardening shed (the garage) can be liberated for cabin supply storage
• I can gauge current lumber prices to refine my budget
• I can get an idea of what is likely to be tricky, and where help will be needed

I hated to take the money out of the cabin fund, but the LSW agreed that it seemed a prudent investment.

And so it was that I spent the weekend buying materials, leveling the site, and constructing the floor framing for an 8 x 10 gable-ended shed. Materials included:

(6) Cinder blocks
(4) 2 x 10 x 12 PT (10’ lengths weren’t available)
(30) 2 x 4 x 8
(8) 2 x 6 x 8
(4) 2 x 4 x 10
(3) 5/8 floor sheathing
(3) ½ roof sheathing
(10) T-111 siding
(2) Packages of roofing shingle
(1) Package of 6 mil poly film
(1) Roll roofing felt
Galvanized Nails and deck screws, various sizes
(2) Saw blades

The total cost was $1,100, which didn’t include window and door (both of which I will build myself) and trim (which will come from leftover white pine 1x stock I have in the basement). I consoled myself with the fact that a manufactured shed of the same size would cost at least a third more.

And what did I learn from day 1?

1. Purchasing materials can easily take an entire day
2. No matter how carefully you plan, there will be return trips to the lumber yard and/or the local home warehouse
3. White pine shiplap isn’t always available, and cedar shiplap is a very, very expensive alternative
4. T-111 siding becomes more attractive when you understand how (relatively) cheap it is
5. Leveling and preparing the site will take at least another half-day
6. Sandwiched beams of 2x10 PT can get heavy very quickly
7. Computer work does not adequately prepare your hands (or muscles) for a day of hammering and lifting
8. Slicing your thumb open on a joist hanger is infinitely more distracting when you discover that your wife has locked you out of the house while running errands
9. Thinking you can have the floor AND walls framed in a single day is wildly optimistic
10. Dogfish Head IPA tastes best when enjoyed after 10 hours of manual labor
11. If you think you’re sore at the end of day 1, wait until the morning of day 2

The lesson of day 2 was that multiple blisters on your hammering hand combined with very stiff muscles will necessitate taking the day off.
Stay tuned.

Options, options...

Two more interesting options for a prefab cabin:

Panel Concepts has a number of 'panelized' cabin kits from 12' x 12' bare-bones shells to 20' x 40' insulated and partitioned units. Pro: Whatever you think of the faux log cabin siding, the reported assembly time is one of the lowest I've seen. Con: The nearest distributor with an assembled sample is 5 hours away in upstate New York.

Zook Cabins builds and delivers completed cabins from 12' x 18' to 22' x 48' to your [future] doorstep, taking the 'you' out of DIY. Throw a little more money at them and they'll install a bathroom and custom kitchen for you. Pro: Very competitively priced, can combine trip to the factory with a weekend at Sesame Place for The Boy. Con: I'm always suspicious when a manufacturer claims 'Amish Craftsmanship' on a product that no Amish would ever buy.

Another interesting option came at the suggestion of the LSW: Craig's List. Sure enough, there were a number of barns and antique post-and-beam frames for sale, and even a listing for historic Appalachian log cabins ready to be reassembled on your site (banjo not included).

March Madness

The LSW was surfing the web the other day and discovered that the Saxton’s River Inn was having a ‘buy 1 get 1 free’ offer on bookings through the end of March. We hadn’t planned to go back up until late April, but this was too good to pass up. A quick call later we were booked into a 2nd floor suite with private porch for 2 nights for $160. Nice!



Now I dare not believe the snow will be gone by then, so spending the day walking the property is probably out. Instead, we’re going to drive 2 hours East to pay a visit to Shelter-Kit (see Options, Options).

Back in November, we had visions of a very small camp – a kit house less than 500 square feet that we could add on to later. As the months wore on, however, 500 square feet became 600, then 800, and then the kit house morphed into a small cape that I would build myself with help from foolish willing friends. My desire for a small getaway, well, got away from me as concerns about resale crowded my thoughts. All the while the LSW was becoming increasingly concerned that I was getting in over my head, setting us up for endless headaches and cost overruns.

And then a few days ago I suddenly – and unexpectedly – found that I agreed with her. I woke up on a Sunday morning and immediately thought “I’d rather have 250 square feet completed in a month than 1,000 square feet that we’ll be working on for 2-3 years and continually feel broke because of.”

So I’ve come full circle to my original plan: A Shelter-Kit Unit One with one enclosed and one open porch, built on piers by me and the LSW. I’ve been assured the basic structure will go up in about 7 days, and it’s modular, so we can expand it in $5 – 10k increments as the spirit moves.

Downside: It will be tight and we won’t be able to have guests until we expand. Also, at $16k it’s about 60% more expensive than stick-framing an equivalent-sized structure ourselves.

Upside: It will go quickly with minimal hassle, no power tools, no construction waste and minimal land clearing. It will also – and this is important – be a simple structure that will require minimal maintenance vis-à-vis “a real house”.

So we’re going up to the factory to take a first-hand look, and I’m sure a number of discussions will follow about how we could (or perhaps won’t) enjoy such a small space. Essentially, we’re talking a 9x5 bath, 9x6 kitchen, 12x12 common space (living AND sleeping), and a 9x12 covered porch. Small, but better than your average hotel room, so there’s that.

But I’ve changed my mind before, and both my annual bonus (or lack thereof in this economy) and the stock market will strongly impact the final decision. Still, it should be a fun weekend.

A Response from the Blogosphere

Huzzah!! I have a comment on this modest little endeavor!

The astute reader (all 3 of you) may have noticed that the owner of Shelter Kit commented on my 'Options, Options...' post last time. So, in the spirit of taping my first $1 bill to the wall, I'm going to reply in a post:

Dave, I haven't ruled Shelter-Kit out, and I have recently taken a closer look at the barn-house options. You should also be aware that your staff has been exemplary in keeping friendly - though professional and unobtrusive - contact with me since my first inquiry. I plan a visit you in March or April to get a first-hand look at the product. Thanks for reading!

Now, before anyone starts to think I'm a Shelter-Kit plant, let me state for the record that I had no idea these guys existed before I started researching by options for the cabin. What impressed me is that they went beyond the other manufacturers I contacted in keeping my name on file and occasionally reaching out to me about my plans and how their product might suit my needs. Not like used car salesmen would, but more in the spirit of 'hey, we're here and hoping you'll take a look at our product - we're sure you'll like it'; not pushy, but taking every potential sale seriously. I can respect that.

And in this economy, I'm surprised my inbox is otherwise empty.

Efforts to realize The Dream are otherwise on hold until the snow melts in April (May?) and I can hire the Environmental Engineer to further assess whether or not we can fall back from a mound to a conventional septic system (and recoup about $6,000 in the process). Around the same time, I'll determine how much land clearing will be required and start talking seriously to well-drillers. In the meantime, I'm teaching myself guitar to pass the time...

Options, Options...

While waiting for the closing, I began looking into my options for homes. My initial preference was for kits, and Shelter Kit was the front-runner. I was thinking I could do a Unit One with both an enclosed and open porch, and add on additional modules later. This was particularly attractive as they give you all the tools you need to build the thing and bundle all the materials in 100-pound units so two people can carry them to the site. Everything is cut and drilled, so there is no construction waste, and very little guess-work. I loved this option until I saw just how small 12 x 21 really is. Initial cost: About 17,000 plus foundation.

But I also looked at First Day Cottage. They essentially deliver material and instructions to the site, relying on me to have power tools and a basic level of know-how. They were willing to do something in roughly the same square footage as Shelter-Kit, for about the same price.

And then I discovered Country Plans, which provides plans and a forum support community to people who want to build their own homes. I did quite a bit of research on framing and material costs, and it turns out that (as you would expect) building it myself is at least 1/3 less expensive than a kit option. I'm fairly handy, so the thought of building myself isn't that intimidating to me, although my LSW is a little leary of this option.

Log cabin kits are more expensive than any of these options, and panelized kits were at least 1/4 more expensive than building it myself. The annoying thing about Log Cabin kits, by the way, is few of them posts prices on the web. Everyone wants to rope you into a marketing web before they say anything about costs. Bastards.

I'd love to do a true post-and-beam from the Shelter Institute, but at approximately 30,0000 for an lockable structure, it's beyond my budget.

Scenes from a Closing

January 23, 2009

9:30 AM

Late breakfast in our home town, hoping it will tide us over until dinner as the closing is at 1:30 and The Boy's nap time is usually noon. Weigh him down with carbs, the thinking goes, and maybe he’ll sleep on the way up. The last thing we want is an over-tired toddler creating chaos in the midst of dignified legal proceedings. The place is new to us, but recommended. Unfortunately, we know we’re in trouble the minute we walk in: It’s got one of those long breakfast counters.

The LSW and I have a history of being ignored at these places for reasons I can’t even begin to fathom; we usually sit patiently, trying to make eye contact with the staff, but they work around us as if we’re invisible. They also tend to be wily, avoiding coming close enough to us to hear our pleas for service.

True to form, I practically have to chase the waitress to get her to give us menus, and then she seats herself next to a customer and proceeds to tuck into friendly conversation and a plate of her own breakfast. The other waitress must be new – she accidentally glances in my directly long enough for me to give her the ‘get over here now’ signal. The food is nothing special, and I expect we won’t be back.

12:30 PM

We jump off the highway early to take back roads to the attorney’s office. I’ve chosen a route we’ve not traveled before though the two ‘large’ towns closest to the property. On paper our property is 2 hours from home, but we’ve never been able to verify it because we always find a reason to take the long way there as soon as we cross the Vermont border. The LSW points this out, but I defend myself by arguing that I’m still exploring the neighborhood. The boy hasn’t slept a wink, but he’s in the pre-sleep mode of talking a mile a minute. Great. He should conk out just as we pull in.

The towns, by the way: ‘Large’ is generous by half, but we do find the diner friends have gushed about for their supposedly sublime pies.

1:30 PM

Of course the attorney’s office is in an antique home at the center of a Norman Rockwell painting. I feel like I’m going to visit grandma. And, lo and behold, the attorney is a grandma, and the office is very ‘homey’. Within minutes our realtor turns up with the seller and her lawyer. The property was in probate, and the seller is the estate’s executrix. She was also the late owner’s sister, so there is a sort of gravity to the closing that discourages casual conversation. Thankfully, the boy plants himself in a corner and becomes engrossed in figuring out how the randomly shaped pieces he has comes together to form a picture of Mickey an Minnie.

With visions of closings we’ve experienced in the past, I feel like my pen is just getting warmed up when suddenly it’s over. We’ve signed a total of 5 documents and watched checks get handed to everyone except us. (Next time I’m going to overpay so we get one, too.) I’m stunned to realize that this means the other 30 pieces of paper we inked at our last closing were all related to the mortgage, and it becomes clear: The economy has collapsed because of all of the filing that needed to take place after the tsunami of home buying! Bank employees are too busy filing to make new loans, and no one can find anything anymore – it all makes sense.

Less than a half hour after we entered, we step back into to sunshine as newly minted ‘vacation property’ owners. I’d finally feel like a yuppie if I owned a BMW, but fortunately I drive a pickup. It doesn’t feel real, somehow, and I keep looking at the copy of the deed and the septic site plan blueprints to convince myself it is.

Intermission: The astute reader would ask if perhaps it didn’t feel real because I didn’t really own the property. After all, didn’t I say a few posts back that I was borrowing the money from my generous father to avoid cashing money out of my 401(k) while the market is in free-fall? Well, I do, and I didn’t. My father came through with the check, but I couldn’t bring myself to cash it. Part of The Dream, after all, was to own the property outright, and, in the end, I believed enough in The Dream to take the hit. Besides, who knows? Maybe we’re in this economic funk for the long run, and it could be years before my per share price stops bouncing around at 60% of its prior value. If you defer The Dream long enough, after all, you’re dead.

2:30 PM

We pull into the parking lot of a 201-year-old 18-room Saxtons River Inn and check ourselves in. The place has a family air to it, but not so much that you feel like you’re in someone’s house. We love it, and the woman who welcomes us loves the boy, so she wins us over instantly. We have the place largely to ourselves, so I spend a little time exploring the open rooms while the LSW and the boy attempt a nap. My intention is to sit downstairs at the bar with a pint of something locally brewed and my blueprints, but somehow I end up in the car heading to the property.

3:00 PM

I’m walking the length of the property on the two sides bordered by roads, taking a fresh look at my new domain. I have fantasies of walking the property, but the 4 foot snow bank standing guard is unforgivingly uniform. Undaunted, I pick a spot at random spot venture in. Everything goes well with foot number one, but it all goes to hell when I lift the other foot to join it. 3 feet deep, turns out, and I’m up to my waist and clearly not going any further. I spend some time looking for a better spot, and the land stares back at me silently, wrapped everywhere in the same white sheet. It occurs to me that I finally have a practical application for snowshoes.

I end up standing in the road like an idiot, reveling in the sound of the light breeze through the stark treescape and imagining what we'll build, and do, come spring. If the market goes up. And maybe even if it doesn’t.

Then I get in the car, take a wrong turn, and am reminded afresh of how far you can go on a Vermont road without a cross street or even a place to turn around.

6:00 PM

We go back downstairs for an early dinner, planning on sitting in the emptier of the two dining rooms in hopes that we won’t bother anyone if the boy has a meltdown. The small bar has taken on the festive atmosphere of an English pub in the last hour however, with guests and townspeople sitting around chatting amicably and Counting Crows playing in the background. We take a table by the wood stove and order up a celebratory dinner: Clams for an appetizer, a burger plate for the LSW, fish and chips for me, and a grilled cheese for the boy. Everything – including the wine this time – is delicious. We toast the big occasion, and I bask in one of those rare ‘everything is right with the world’ glows until the boy decides he can’t sit still any longer and we head up to bed.

Postlude: The following day.

Before heading home, we swing by the Jamaica Cottage Shop to take a look at their 16x20 cabin that is on sale as a kit for $9,000. This is one of a number of kits I’ve been eyeing for a small cabin, but I’ve been anxious to see what 240 square feet with a loft really feels like. We stand inside for a few minutes, the feelings of victory from the prior day rapidly dissipating. The LSW and I are in immediate agreement that it is way too small, and this throws our current plans for a cabin in disarray. I spend the rest of the trip home reviewing our options, and slowly conclude that I’m going to have to build the place myself.