Tuesday, April 12th 2005
Everything is coming out of the deep freeze. The roads are barely passable because of the mud and the Chemin des Escargots is slowly emerging from its snowy mantle. We should be able to drive to our construction site in the next couple of weeks.
Luckily for us, I'm keeping an eye on things. The publication of the notices and the announcement for the information meeting of April 11th paper wasn't done. Last week when asking for details on how to prepare for that evening, I mentioned that I had not seen anything in the papers. After checking things out, they realized their mistake and had to change the date. It will happen just before the regular town meeting on Monday the 18th instead. According to the town planner, in 95% of similar cases there are no questions. Since nobody has called so far to inquire about the changes to the by-laws, he thinks we'll be alone at the meeting. That means no convincing to do!
Also last week, I spoke to Marco, the assistant to architect Martin Liefhebber and I sent them the latest drawing we did. I have to admit it was a shock to discuss our real house plan! It was the first time it all seemed real to me. It felt strange for a few days, like someone had pinched me and I had just awaken. We've moved to a new stage: from politics, we're getting into the planning and organisational phase. We now have a lot of homework to do.
I have to provide the architect with as many details as possible about the material we've gathered so far and about the choices we'd like included in the design. Sunday we measured all the logs that are just barely out of the snow. I hope we'll find a noble use for them considering the amount of work it took to get them out of the woods in one piece and to debark them all.
Alain will reduce his working hours so we can start hunting for building material in scrap yards. Since Christmas, he was working full time in order to fill the gap that a year's delay in our project had made in our finances. We'll try to time our jobs so we can scavenge together, it's so romantic. Believe me I'm really looking forward to it and I know Alain will have a blast.
He will also have to opportunity to play and learn through a workshop on lime plasters given by Archibio in May. It's all very nice to read tons of books but there's nothing like getting your hands dirty. While he's doing that, I'll be drawing plans for the shelter we'll live in this summer. We're thinking of a very simple timber frame structure with a platform and walls on three sides to sleep and stash our belongings. The other section will have only a roof and bug netting for food preparation and taking breaks from the black flies (very important).
It's also time to get ready for moving day, our lease ends July 1st. We're thinking June 25th will be the big day. It should be the first opportunity to celebrate the opening of the work-site and for our friends to give us a helping hand. An idea is sprouting in my brain that would turn this into a memorable week-end but I'll tell you more when the concept actually blossoms… in the meantime, you can write down the date in you calendar.