Details

I have posted a number of times about various topics related to the construction of our home on our retirement homestead.  The house is a log home, pictured at the banner of this blog at various seasons.  The site work, log erection, and rough carpentry were performed by a contractor we hired and later banned from our site. The interior carpentry and stone masonry were performed by our eldest son, his wife and an assortment of “helpers” from grad students at the nearby university to neighbors to me.  The finish site work was contracted by us after we had lived here for a couple of years to a neighbor who finally got the drainage around the house right, repaired/constructed a driveway that didn’t threaten the oilpans on our vehicles, and smoothed the septic field so that it could be mowed without feeling that you were about to be bucked off the tractor.

Our son visualized many of the problems that had been wrought by the contractor, some where he blindly followed the blueprints from the log home company without seeing the issues those plans would have caused.  Some of these issues were corrected by our son after the contractor was off the site, some are still issues that we can not deal with such as the water pipes in the utility room (last week’s post entitled Deep Freeze and the Thaw) and the water that somehow seeps below the metal roof to run down the logs on the front of the house where the 8 foot deep porch joins the house.  Eldest son was a stickler for detail.  Several times work that others did was redone by him later.

One of the issues he caught and fixed was that the hall wall made the kitchen so narrow that the stove and the refrigerator would have touched.

He deconstructed the contractor’s wall and moved it over far enough to put a narrow drawer cabinet between the appliances.  This also gave us a narrow upper cabinet that is perfect for the storage of oils and vinegars used in cooking.

All of the upper cabinets were hand built by him.  My vision was open shelves on which to store the pottery dishes, glass jars of colorful beans and grains, cookbooks and space above for seldom used large objects such as the roaster, wok and some larger pottery pieces.  He took my vision and built the cabinets, lined them with cedar, trimmed them with oak and hand oiled them all.  The only upper cabinet that is commercial is the one over the microwave that hides the ductwork and provides storage for cleaners that I want to keep out of the reach of grandkids.

Two of his challenges were the dormers and the doors.  The house has 3 dormers on the front.  The right hand one as you face the house is in our master bedroom, but the other two are off the heavy timber cathedral ceiling in the living room.  After all the work had been done installing cedar, pine and log siding on interior walls, we couldn’t bring ourselves to install cheap commercial doors, so he hand built each of the interior bedroom and bathroom doors from a sandwich of yellow poplar, aromatic cedar siding and local red cedar trim.  I helped him with the last of these doors and realize what a labor of love they are.

Son is not formally trained in the construction field.  He finished high school with honors, entered The College of William and Mary and was graduated in 5 semesters in English, again with honors.  He spent the next several years learning construction as a helper then independent contractor and learned the stone mason skills the same way.  After finishing most of the house, he enrolled back in college and earned his master’s degree in English and he now working on his PhD working as a Graduate Teaching Assistant.  He still comes home for parts of summers and holidays to do projects, such as the stone fireplace in the basement prior to the finishing of that area as a recreation room.

And to change out a light fixture over the dining table and installing a fan with light as recently as the past holidays.  We wouldn’t have this beautiful retirement home if it wasn’t for his effort and his attention to detail.

Life is good on our mountain farm.