Up and Away

Well, too much has been happening of late to even blog about. I can feel the funnel constricting and the centripetal force strengthening as we move into the last month before Matawaska (as we've named the first site, after the local Native American name for 'where two rivers meet') is rented.

Here's my best, photo-centered cursory recap:
Above is the kitchen bath unit ready to be whisked over to the site. Friday morning, the lift day, Stig and I took off at 6:20 to beat any morning traffic. It went smoothly, minus a few scrapes and bangs on a leaning birch on our road.

Here are the platforms we built for the tree houses to sit on: 6 by 6 pressure treated lumber down to ledge and attached with 3/4" pins drilled 12" into the posts and 8" into the ledge. Strong! Of course, there will also be significant bracing coming off of the tree themselves added later.

The view from atop the tree houses when we were rigging it up for liftoff. Herbie Freeman, the man of the hour, brought down his crane truck, a four by four beauty just strong enough for the task.

It was a six hours blitz, a continual game of inches, as this and that always seemed to be just in the way, or barely manageable. But Friday's evening cigar tasted sweet, as we kicked back and let the tension melt away at the warmth of accomplishment.

Here's the connecting porch with some fun carpentry, tree cut outs.

And the railings and screened in porch taking shape.
More to come.

Placement

Progress happens, at varying rates somehow, though the twelve hour days don't change. A big point of forward momentum came when the building permits were issued and we could drop off the tree house close to its final resting place. We used jack stands from my father's boatyard to take it off the trailer. Notice Ida lying on the ground taking promo photos for the website.

The kitchen bath unit is coming along nicely as well. Here my brother Stig and our bro Matt are sealing up the roof with Grace 'felt' paper and architectural shingles.  Nice smile.

The most exciting happening of the week was breaking out the old climbing gear, clipping the chainsaw on the harness and climbing a huge white oak to nip off a branch.

The dream is taking shape! I have to remind myself that I'm living the dream during these long working days--that I'm not (as I often act like) on my way to something else; that this is it. Warming Spring days help.

Next week: laying power and water lines, delivering the second unit, and hopefully lifting them up into the trees!

Fast and Slow

I've tried time and again to capture the double-sidedness with which time presents itself to me, with sayings like: "life is short, but life is wide--" feeble attempts to get into communicable form the speed with which events links arms and fly by (just like this project is). And yet, looking back over the whirlwind it seems as if so much has happened. This year has been that for me: renovating a boat yard shop, restoring a vintage camper, getting married, buying a piece of land, and now the tree houses...oh yeah, and creating a baby. It's mid April. To keep myself centered and present I try to think of a flamboyant new york barista saying, "Jeees, steep it don't boil it."

Here are a few of the whirling events in photo form, the modern way of capturing moments--so we don't have to pay attention to them as they happen.

The Clear

 

I love that my wife Ida showed up to life in Maine with her own fluorescent hunter's cap. Whether or not she realized the ubiquity or the sincerity of it's employment here is another matter, but it sure helps her fit in and get along with the neighbors. Here she is sighting down the swath that running power to our land unfortunately necessitated. Luckily most of the trees were inconsequential, and by some maneuvering and re-planning we were able to save two gorgeous, large white oaks. We also found a beautiful Chaga growth at the base of one of the birches we had to drop, and were able to see its inner workings as we cut it up. It'll be tea in my cup in a matter of days.

By the end of yesterday day, the power poles were installed, three of them drilled five feet into ledge, and spaced at 250'.

 

Lyndon Babkirk, our new neighbor, has been a saint to work with, not raising a stink about us clearing for power access, and quick to loan us one of his many tools. Here he is with his new hobby: carving replicas of Maine's fresh water fish. They're beautiful.

Stig and I back at the Boat Yard were prepping out for the kitchen bath unit. I did all the framing calculations on Sketchup, a wonderful free program that's easy enough for this non-millennial to use. Thanks to Philip and Marsha, we were alerted that we'd have to install the 36" shower as we built, otherwise it wouldn't fit. And Stig was smelling particularly ripe that day anyway, so he tested it out at lunch break.

 

 This is a great example of how simple things can get complicated, of the three-quarters and inch and a halves that bounce around in my head on a given day in the shop.

To close out with a bang, here's a Time Lapse of us rafting the tree house:

The Move

I can tell you now from experience that it is challenging and strange driving a 12' wide, 13.5' tall house around behind you. It being Sunday, I normally relax in the tradition of the world's religions (like the secularist Sweden which has more religious work holidays than any country, I take the best and leave the rest:)). But noticing how there were so few cars passing by on our way to yoga in the morning I thought this might be the day to go for the move.

I hatched a plan whereby my mother was stationed one mile to the east and Ida my wife was stationed one mile to the west. On a three way call we were able to determine when the coast was clear enough on both sides for me to pull out on to the main road for the quarter mile, nervous jaunt. Ida and mom, at the time of the 'go for it' moment, pulled out of their perches and started towards the destination, slowly. That way if any cars came up behind them they could delay them with granny driving, or, if I had some unexpected trouble, stop their cars and pop on the flashers to alert approaching drivers. No troubles though!...at least on the main road. What a relief. Getting in our 500' driveway was another matter. I had to stop and reverse course several times to wind the eaves between bending birches. The big hold up ended up being a 100' birch I had to cut down, but who's will towards upward growth and sunlight was so innately stubborn that she mingled limbs with another birch and refused to fall, even under the persuadings of two come-alongs and all my willfulness, not an inconsiderable force.

But in the end, a few felled trees later, we got her more or less into place, a triumphant end to the beginning of a week, one that called for pizza, like a weekend well-lived should. One more step along the way to a dream realized, and a big one! Of course, I still have to do this three more times, but knowing that it's possible makes all the difference, and gives confidence moving into the next phase. I had deliberately been slow to start building the next unit before I was sure the delivery would work. Check.

Of course, the biggest challenge still lies ahead, that of hoisting them into their final places among the trees, but like a good challenge, this one unfolds incrementally, each upward step preparing one for the next.

From here on out the world is a big green antique pain-in-the-ass to hang open door

To The Earth

In Michael Pollan's second book, A Place of My Own, he talks about two different schools of architecture in the 20th century, and their opposing thoughts on groundedness, foundations: the Le Corbusier school, with their elaborate and light foundations, defying the need, seemingly, for strong attachment to the earth, elevating their designs in Babel delicateness; and the Frank Loyd Wright camp, where pinning, planting and posting the structure into the earth was the key to a design's success.

I've been thinking about these schools in terms of our tree house project. Ours will be on posts of course, rather delicate at 6 by 6, and of course, floating 8' off the ground, but these posts will be pinned with re bar to ledge that's endlessly thick, and our dwellings will be built around the trees, massive, with roots that crack that ledge and spread vastly through the dark earth. Maybe these tree houses are a nice blend of the Le Corbusier and Wright camps.

Above is my father getting the spring docks out. That time of year!

 While the shop was empty we cut and organized every single piece of wood needed to build the next three tree houses, which just makes me want to say "booyeah!". Above are the studs. There's also forty something rafters and forty something joists around the corner.

Every self respecting shop needs a bench dog and a re-purposed set of Ikea drawers

The Practice Lift

Things are much heavier when you're underneath them; it's best to be on top of it, mastering and owning, rather than cowering and hawing below.
There are three challenging phases to my plan of building a structure of this size inside of our boat shop. First is to get it onto a trailer and out of the shop. Check. The second is to get it over and dropped off on site. The thrid is to actually lift it into place. I'm nervous about this second one, and seem to keep delaying it as long as possible. The structure is technically too large to be legally driven over the road by me, and I have nightmare scenarios of power lines and trees and clogged traffic...or a tree house turned roadhouse, mangled on the pavement.

In the meantime then, our good friend Herbie Freeman brought over his new crane truck to have some fun. The structure adds up to about 4000lbs, not crazy heavy but none too light...and chunky! The truck lifted it though, and seems capable of the full 8' lift needed to get it in place among the trees.

 There is something surreal and unsettling about seeing a building teetering in the air like this.

The other progress building-wise, was to hang and install the antique door. Hanging doors is the biggest pain in the ass, and, as a word of warning, an exterior door slab on it's own, almost no matter how cool the door, is worth zero dollars. The work needed to hang and install an exterior door with seals, mortised hinges etc, outweighs the costs of new ones. I have eight hours in this door and it's not sealing perfectly as it is. I could nearly frame this whole building in that same time span.

And yesterday was the well drilling. Around here, being hemmed in on all sides by marsh and brackish water, getting the good stuff out of your well can be a real, and expensive, challenge. But we struck gold, thanks to my beginners luck divining and dousing skills. The well guy said it was one of his top ten wells in his fifty years of drilling: more than 100 gallons per minute of fresh water, enough to run twenty houses! the ladies offered some nice puns in our group texts exchanges: "Well done!"
"We're really pumped about this."