Minimum Viable Cabin

  Finally, after TEN THOUSAND YEARS (a couple months) the foundation is being poured. These are forms and atop those go frost walls and atop that goes the cement floor.

Now the hole has gravel and a drain pipe to keep the water away from the foundation!

  The tree clearing actually happened before the camper, but it's taken me a while to work up to writing about it, because I feel pretty terrible about it. The lot I purchased was heavily wooded, and I wanted to keep most of the forest intact, just clearing what was necessary. But this is a somewhat uncommon request, and it's a bit inconvenient for construction because there isn't as much space to maneuver the vehicles. Well, my long-distance request wasn't followed very well. The logger went in with instructions to clear a particular area, and then take out a few huge old pines that would be likely to fall in a storm. Because of equipment issues (and maybe a desire to add a little more hardwood to his lumberyard load?), instead of pulling out the individual large/old pines, he clear-cut up to each pine he needed to take out and took everything in front of it. This resulted in about twice as much clearing as needed. The day I saw it, the lot was a complete mess of torn ...

My neighbors are amazing. I won the benevolent & hilarious neighbor lottery. Kevin and Darlene have eclipsed my previous neighbor expectations. You know that quote about "Good fences make good neighbors" from Robert Frost? No? If you're not a Robert Frost nut, do you even New England, bro? Please at least go read this poem, "Mending Wall"   so you can superciliously "well actually" someone the next time they mis-represent the quote about good fences and good neighbors. A pedantic aside, please humor me here. We'll get back to Kevin & Darlene in a minute. Like many Frost quotes, people often quote this in complete misunderstanding of the actual point of his poem. In "Mending Wall," Frost describes the annual repair of the stone walls separating his land from that of his neighbor, and how he sometimes questions his neighbor about whether the wall is even needed. "My apple trees will never get across And eat the cones under his ...

  We hammered some stakes in the ground to show where the house roughly will be.

  Uncommunicative camper guy eventually came through! A friend of the original friend (friend-2-removed) found a friend (3-removed) who had a camper and wanted to sell it. So after a few shady handshakes and payoffs and other transactions I'd rather not get into, I have a camper. I've named her Babe and parked her in a partially-cleared trail at the back of the property. Her former family took great care of her, so though she's a turn-of-the-century model, there's very little wrong with her and lots of thoughtful little touches (command hooks, pots'n'pans, spare parts of various sorts). And so just in time for Independence Day, Babe is in the woods and has a fridge fulla beer. Bring on the fireworks and let's dig a foundation!

Campers are hard to find like whoa! Getting close to panic mode less than 2 months to Minimum Viable Campout and none to be found. I chase my camper guy every couple days, but he's not much of an email creature and I'm too busy to follow up on phone frequently, so we'll see how it goes... But meanwhile I remind my GC I'm coming in about a month and it's his turn to freak out! Contractors are hard to find - the excavator is completely booked up, and the tree guy is running several months behind. There's no way this is going to be ready in June. THINGS ARE LOOKING DICEY. I light the beacons across the northeast and a friend comes through with a cat-sitting situation that may provide me with accommodation until the site work can move forward enough for a camper. Fingers crossed, but the schedule is already shot. ✅ Fun Lessons-Learned Takeaway Corner Even if you've found a great builder, they are probably managing a lot of other projects. If you think they'r...