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Jo and I have been leaving little smiley faces for the builders, and now they've gotten into the act, leaving this one in Jo's room.

Today was a day for more scaffolding, this time to reach from the second floor to the third.

To put up this wall.

And this one, which . . .

. . . is still sitting on the third floor porch. They must not have had enough time to get it raised. That will go up tomorrow, as will, I'm guessing, both the interior walls that border the porch.

And then . . . the roof? It seems like the house is very close to being finished! (Well, at least the parts we're paying Marvin and his crew to build.)

Jo has the scoop on the latest Gratz Industries Headquaters Building update!

We're up among the treetops now.

Here Jo stands in what will one day be the master bathroom.

And here is what will be my writing office.

Jo enjoys the open air of what will become the third floor porch . . .

And stands robotically at the top of the stairs, where an unfinished wall hangs ominously into space.

You know, when the concrete slab was first poured, I thought the house was going to be way too small. Now I look at it and think--holy cow is that big!

See that space on the second floor wall where there are no windows? How cool would a huge Gratz Industries logo look right there!? We'll have to get on that. Right after we put in the plumbing.

Ready for another slew of pictures? Right. Here we go -

Both the first and second floor stairs have been built, which makes it much easier for us to snoop. Let Catgirl/Wonder Woman/Jo be your guide. (The face painting was from a birthday party we attended that afternoon.)

The stairs make a nice feature to the big wall in the dining room/library.

And check out how cool the two-story tall room looks!

Once Jo was upstairs, she wanted to go higher. There will eventually be a proper wall where she's standing--or at least a partial one. Just enough to keep us from tumbling over onto the concrete floor of the bottom level.

A neat view of the climbing stairs from below.

Upstairs, Wendi's work area and Jo's play area have gotten their roof.

But all Jo's interested in is getting upstairs to the third floor. I can't say I blame her.

Still, I made her stop and pose for a photo. When this wall is up, it will be as tall as the other wall with stairs--two stories tall, that is.

Upstairs the subfloor is already finished.

And one of the exterior walls is already built and ready for raising.

Jo stands in the window of what will be my office.

Did I mention that it's really high up here? It's a bit acrophobia-inspiring when there are no walls of any kind.

But the view down through the house is going to be really cool.

As is the spectacular view from the third floor porch, where I'm standing for this picture.

And where Jo is standing in this one.

One of the things I noticed is that, like the first floor porch, this one is graded slightly to allow water to run away from the house. A tricky bit of building, if I do say so myself. But it made me realize Wendi and I haven't thought of something--what are we going to use to floor this patio? It will have to be element-proof. Maybe Wendi has an idea, but I don't remember us ever discussing it. Oh well, we'll think of something.

And the usual long-shot. No significant changes to this view yet, but that is already changing. This morning the guys already have one of the third floor exterior walls up, and I suspect the others will go up very quickly. Josh has spent part of the morning scooping up the extra sand and loading it onto a truck for removal, which makes me think they see the end of the building in sight. After the third floor there is really just the roof to go . . .

More pics tonight!

Some heavy hitting has been going on the past two days.

First, the last of the second floor walls went up, even though the sheathing wasn't yet finished.


Much work was also finished on Jo's bedroom. She got the two interior walls and the beginnings of her bathroom walls.

Then came the scaffolding.

Why the scaffolding? To get to the third floor joists!

How cool is this? We're very close to being able to crawl up on the third floor.


The guys also finished the joists over Jo's room. She has the beginnings of a roof!

There won't be any updates tomorrow, or Monday for that matter. We're headed for Dragon*Con! We'll have lots of pictures of stormtroopers and Justice Leaguers, but pics of the progress on the house will have to wait. I don't know how much the guys will get done tomorrow anyway - half of them are going to be driving eleven hours north to Ann Arbor, Michigan Friday for Saturday's I-AA Appalachian State Mountaineers opener against the I-A Michigan Wolverines.

The ASU Mountaineers are the high country kings of football, with a following as rabid as Michigan's or Tennessee's just without the numbers to back it up. They're the two-time defending NCAA I-AA champs, and are working on a fourteen game win streak (dating back to their opening game loss last season against another I-A team - NC State.) I hate to say it, but I think the streak is about to end. Still, it'll be a heck of an ASU tailgate party up at the Big House, and I can't blame any of them for making the trip.

See you next week!

Two walls went up today before heavy rains shut things down.

First the guys made a homemade scaffold so they could raise the second half of the long wall that crosses the expanse of the two-story library/dining room.


Then they walked the big wall into place with much crying and squeaking. From the wall, that is:


And here it is from across the pit, from where Wendi's studio will be.

One open wall to go. They had already prepared to move their scaffold when the rains came.

Before that though, they also raised this short half-wall on the front of the house.

Et voila! One half-wall to go, and the second story exterior walls will be finished! Holy smokes. There are still interior walls on this floor to be built, so that will presumably have to be done before the third story work begins . . .

Much happy progress to report! See, even the scraps are smiling.

THREE second story walls went up today!

It started on Friday, when the guys built two walls but didn't raise them. Here Jo shows off one of the walls that will become her bedroom.

Monday morning, that wall went up. Jo and I spent the day in Boone where, among other errands, I checked out a bunch of books to research one of the stories I'm rewriting in The Brooklyn Nine. When we got back, the house looked, well, taller.

That wall went up along with a newly built one which will be half Jo's bedroom and half Jo's playroom. (THis will make sense later when some interior walls are built.) The larger window in the corner was going to be identical to the one on its left, but code forced us to make it big enough for a giant to escape in case there's a fire. One of the third floor windows will have to be changed too.

Jo looks lout the windows in Wendi's studio. Wait, how did Jo get up the ladder!? I hope somebody is watching her.

A closer look out the windows. The plastic wrap hasn't been removed from one of the windows, and those diagonal boards are of course only there to keep things up for right now.

It was a hazy day, but you could still see the mountains in the distance. We're still looking forward to the view from the third story, but this is nice.

It's kind of crazy to see this thing from a bit of a distance. Wendi asked today if it was going to be a bit ostentatious to have a three story home. Seriously, who has a three story home? Still, not counting the porches, we're just talking about a little more than 2,000 square feet. It just goes up, not out.

A peek inside that will soon be closed up . . .

. . . and a rare view of the BACK corner, the one pointed back toward the woods.

Tomorrow . . . the last of the second story walls? We shall see.

The second floor is almost finished! The actual floor itself, that is. Or the first story roof, whichever way you want to look at it. Above, you can see the cross braces they've installed that will help secure the joists. They're as yet unattached, of course.

Here it's clearly the first story roof, over our patio.

And here it's the second story floor.


The joists you see are all that is left to cover of the second story floor. Ah, does this remind me of the second floor addition Wendi and I built in Atlanta! The open space to the left is the quarter of the floor that will be open to the first story, making that section two stories tall.

Here's a view down into what will be the entranceway/library/dining room. Just pretend all those scrap pieces of wood are bookshelves climbing two stories up the wall and you'll get the picture.

And above, a view down into what will be the kitchen.

The floor was attached using a really cool drill that was as long as your leg. The guys loaded it with screws on plastic cartridges like the one above, and could then screw the floor to the joists without having to scoot around and do it with a regular power drill. They packed this gizmo up and took it with them when they left, so I couldn't get a picture of it. I suppose they were smart - I would have tried to play with it.

And now for what my friend Paul would perhaps call "the money shot":

Aha! Yes, Virginia, there is a view. And this is just the view from the second floor. I can't wait to see what it will look like from the third floor porch. That's where I plan to put a hammock, and then never come back inside.

And just for fun, a shot off the back side of the house, into the woods. Pretty as this is, we don't have a ton of windows facing it, since this will be the cold wind side of the house in the winter. We own another acre or so of land in this direction though, so once the house is finished and we're more established we plan on getting in there and tending to the forest a bit, perhaps creating some trails and a tree fort.

Yesterday's guess was good - we got floors! - so here's another bold prediction: tomorrow we'll get second story walls. Or the first floor stairs . . .

Not a great deal of obvious progress on the house today, but that won't stop me from posting a lot of pictures.

The day started early, as promised, with a 7:10 a.m. delivery of concrete by an Explosives Supply Company mixer. While I certainly heard this delivery, I chose not to roll out of bed to document it with photos. I apologize to all you completists out there. This is how things stood by 9:00 a.m. That's as good as you're going to get.

A little later in the day, and the short wall that will have both a regular door and a glass garage door was lifted into place. As you can see, the concrete has also been smoothed.

Another pic of the new wall, with the living room area now completely framed in.

And a good shot of the patio. The concrete comes right up to the floor level of the kitchen, at the back of this shot, but then angles down as the patio comes toward you, so that by the time you reach that yellow bucket there it is about an inch below the floor level in the living room. I'm assuming this is for water to run away from, rather than toward, our two garage doors. That's a nice detail I'm not sure I would have thought of, had I been building the house myself. See? There's a reason these guys are pros.

A view of the new wall and patio from just outside, where the cat will always be. (I kid. Jo's taken too much of a liking to it for me to banish it completely from the house.)

And another view of the new wall, from the library area. Again, that wall with the tall thin windows and the broad wall surface will eventually have a fireplace. From this vantage point, there should also be a nice view of the mountains--once that mobile home isn't in the way.

Tomorrow I leave for a writers' retreat in Chicagoland. Who oh who will be here to take pictures of our home's progress? No one! Though it pains us to no end, neither I nor Wendi will be here for the last two days of the week to see what happens. Does a house get built when no one is watching? Does a tree falling in the woods make a sound if there's no one there to hear it? Can something exist without being observed?

We better hope so. We're paying these guys by the hour.

All right, if I don't get these pictures up tonight, I think I'll have a small mutiny on my hands. Great progress on the house today, as you can see!

The morning began with the construction of the second long wall of the first floor--the one that holds our door and three windows.

Again, no action shots of it being raised--my Herculean strength was called upon again to help heft the thing into place. Despite having windows and a door, this one was actually heavier! I think it has something to do with all the reinforcement around them. But isn't that a thing of beauty? The door in the corner is going to be our main door.

Here the plastic coating has been cut away from the windows, giving the first view of, well, the big pile of sand in our front yard. You can also see that they've built the third wall--the one that will eventually hold our fireplace.

And up she goes! The windows on this wall are taller and thinner, to flank what will be the fireplace in the center.

After the guys were gone, I got outside and climbed around. With the walls up it's really beginning to feel homey.

The front door, seen from what will be the kitchen. The big windowless space is windowless on purpose--that's where the staircase is going to go.

A close up of the front door.

The living room, as seen from the porch.

The view of the sand pile from the living room.

Again, the living room--this the wall that will have the fireplace--as seen from what will be our library.

A lovely view of the auxiliary construction parking lot outside.

And back in through the window from outside.

A look at the outside with a bit more perspective . . .

And the big picture. The guys expected the concrete truck to be here today, but the Explosives Supply Company didn't make it. Word is the truck will come at 7:10 a.m. tomorrow--which means another early morning for me. Stay tuned for more pics tomorrow!

The builders arrived at 7:00 a.m. for the second morning in a row--which meant that I woke up at 7:00 a.m. for the second morning in a row. They're just trying to beat the heat, which I totally respect, but they're killing me here. Now what am I supposed to do? Work? Geez.

You can see from the black tarp that they've prepared the patio for concrete. Does that mean an Explosives Supply Company truck will be paying a visit today? Perhaps. That long board set across the black tarp is for them to slide their leveling board across, which means the patio isn't going to be nearly the drop we worried it would be. It'll still be a tad below the inside floor level, but not so much of a step down.

As I write this, the guys are prepping the sheathing. This one is going to be trickier, due to the door and windows cut into the wall. I watch what they're doing--and how easily they do it--and I think about our original plans to do all this work ourselves. In addition to our day jobs. We were insane. In the time it would have taken us to put up just one wall, these guys will be done with the whole first floor. It would have taken us years to do what they're going to do in a month.

Okay, I'm off to get some work done. Yesterday I made great progress on The Brooklyn Nine, finishing the new First Inning and then planning out in detail and actually starting the rewrite on the Second Inning. This is the one that takes place in the Civil War. The most tedious thing about this rewrite has been shifting from first person chapters to third person chapters. It's a simple thing to translate, really, but I catch myself slipping into the first person time and again because that's the way I first wrote it. The biggest challenge though has been to rethink the short stories as tales that can only be told about these particular kids. This was one of the suggestions from editors Liz and Brad, and it was a great one. Doesn't make it any easier to do, but it's going to make the stories way stronger if I can pull it off.

The idea is that a short story--I suppose any story, for that matter--will be much stronger if the plot can be only about your protagonist. In other words, there is no other person for whom this story would be the same. Now, you can argue that changing protagonists will change any story, but not always fundamentally. Yes, the dialog might change, the attitude might change, but has the story really changed? That's what they're getting at. If my protagonists in the short stories are interchangeable, the protagonists aren't unique. That's a problem.

In a few of the stories I got it right right off the bat. (So to speak.) Those will be much easier to handle. A few though, like the Civil War era inning, are taking some serious rethinking. I don't want to make all these kids "gifted" in some way--I resisted this early on because I don't want to create a fictional family in which every generation was unbelievably exceptional--but I do need to make sure each stands out as a unique character, with assets or flaws or tics that make that kid the only person who could star in their story. That's tougher than it sounds.

I'll be getting back to that now, unless the guys ask me to come out and raise another wall . . .

We have a wall!

Just one. But it was a lot of fun to see it go up. First the guys laid the 2x6s out in the rough shape of the wall.

Once they were nailed together, they added the plywood sheathing.

And after the sheathing, the wall got a protective plastic wrap. It's always good to have protection when you're about to get erect.

Which is what happens next. I had a grand plan to rush out the front door just as the guys were lifting the first wall into place. Great action shot, right? So I'd been working all day in my office, watching and waiting (and, um, writing) and just when they looked to be ready to lift it, I grabbed the camera, ran to the front door - being sure to hide, because I don't want to be the schmuck who works inside all day and then pops out to take pictures of the sweaty builders who've been doing the real work in the hot sun all day - and wait, where are they? Why aren't they lifting the wall into place? And why are they calling for me through the window where they see me sitting all day? Oh! They want me to come help! It seems the wall is pretty damn heavy, more than a three-person job. I happily put down the camera and run outside to help - missing my photo op but getting my hands dirty in the process. And MAN was that a heavy wall!

Once my work was through, I went back to sneaking pictures of them doing their jobs. Like here, a picture through my window of the guys laying out the second wall. This one has a door and three windows, which can be seen here.

Which was about when the workday ended. And I got to scamper out and take pictures.

The back wall, with its protective wrap. There will be windows on this wall - small ones, since it's the north-facing wall - but those will presumably be cut in later.

And that's where we stand after one day of framing. More to come tomorrow!

Saturday while we spent the afternoon in the air-conditioned comfort of the Asheville Mall, little elves (house elves?) delivered all the lumber it will take to build our new headquarters!

Yes, that's really all there is.

They'll start putting up walls on Monday! More pictures to come . . .

Exciting progress this past week: the concrete floor was poured!

Once again our friends at the Explosives Supply Company provided the cement. Dy-no-mite!

Shane and Kenny work the double wheel-barrows - the cement for the kitchen floor will have to be hand-delivered. But not far.

Once the block foundation is filled, they smooth the lump of wet stone with a long board that's worked slowly from one end to the other.

This was a job for not one, but TWO Explosives Supply trucks!

When the entire floor was finished and allowed to harden, they went to work on it with this strange contraption. It had fan blades on the bottom, which spun on the surface of the cement like a metal buffing machine.

The next day, we got outside to take a closer look.

Bolts were placed around the foundation, where we presume they'll attach the frame.

Next up - the lumber!

Once the sand was leveled out, it was time to lay down the Heatpex. Hot work on a day where the thermometer got up into the 90s. (And I'm sure working on top of that black plastic sheet didn't make it any cooler.)

Heatpex is a flexible, reinforced metallic/plastic pipe that will carry hot water through the concrete floor, giving us radiant heat. The technology has come along way, and we're told it's almost foolproof - which it better be, as it gets buried in a few inches of concrete.

The red and black are the same kind of pipe just, well, different colors. The red will be one zone, and the black another. The guys didn't have time to finish the last half zone, it looks like - the part that will heat the kitchen.

Next up - pouring the concrete slab!

Before the sand foundation could be finished, it was time to lay in the pluming stubs. This is what we'll attach everything to once the house is finished.

That corner will have a downstairs bathroom, and just beyond it in on the patio will be our utilities closet. The big fat pipe is the sewage line.

The black pipe is for the incoming water. The guys from Burleson Plumbing and Heating explained what everything was, and wrote the purpose of each piece of PVC on its cap. I think we're still going to need a book . . .

The cement blocks were laid, the rain stayed away, and it was time to fill the rest of the foundation with sand. For that, they brought a new toy!

Not only did the foundation have to be filled, it had to be leveled. That came later though.

No sand for the patio - we're guessing it's going to be a step down from the main house. We had wanted a level floor from inside to outside, but the more we've been thinking about it the better it might be to keep an outdoor surface lower down to keep out any potential raining or flooding.

Next up - the plumbing is stubbed in!

Time for your Gratz HQ construction update! Seriously, can I take a second here and just say that it blows my mind we're having a house built? It really staggers me when I stop and think about it, which, since it's being built outside the room I'm using for an office, is pretty much all the time.


Monday morning a BIG truck delivered palettes of cement block, and the crew got busy laying them out on the poured cement.

And of course Progress Energy chose that morning to come out and reroute the exposed power line! Which, um, the guys buried under the dirt beneath the poured cement foundation. Luckily Progress Energy didn't have to tear that up, but they did mess up some of the meticulously measured plumb lines the guys had set up Friday.

Then, with the bricklayers and Progress Energy already doing their respective things, the sand truck arrived! It was becoming a regular work site.

But of course, Monday afternoon, the rains came. Again. Progress had finished up, but work on the cement block foundation got interrupted. Check out that standing water!

Tuesday was a drying day, but Wednesday morning the guys were back before Jo and I were even up for her Penland art class. And, voila! A finished foundation.

It was interesting to me, as a person who vaguely understands what is required of a proper foundation, to see this progress. At first, when Jo and I returned from Spruce Pine, I thought the foundation wasn't finished. Soon I figured out that those indentations in the block wall are where the big garage doors will exit onto our little porch. Why those are lowered I don't know - we'll see!

It was a big day here yesterday at Gratz HQ, as ground was finally broken on our new live-work complex. We would have blogged about it that night, but, well . . . you'll see.

First those massive tree stumps needed to be uprooted. The backhoe made quick work of them.


There they are. I think it would be hysterical to make one of those chainsaw carvings out of these guys, keeping the tentacles and making the top look like the head of Cthulhu. Now THAT would be some scary chainsaw art.

The backhoe was also able to neatly stack up all the massive logs left over from the great felling. Hooray for pneumatics! Since these are both pines they're not good for fireplaces, so they shall not be burned. Instead, we plan to use them in our landscaping, turning the largest of them into benches. (Or, rather, logs you sit on like benches.) How we will move them again without the backhoe will remain a mystery not unlike how the ancient Egyptians built the Pyramids - even to us.

Once that work was finished, our septic tank had to be uncovered so the health inspector could verify that it will be in good working order for the new house. Finding the septic tank took a fair bit of digging however . . .

And five massive holes in the ground later, the guys finally found it. You can't even see it here - they've just found the beginning of it there in the corner of that crater. See? I knew there was a reason I never bothered to mow our yard.

After lunch, the guys got busy on the foundation. Today's mission: dig the trenches that will become the "footings" of the foundation. At each step of the way the trenches were measured to make sure they were level. What you can't see in this picture is Kenny off to the side with surveying equipment, measuring the grade. I took this picture from my office, where I was hard at work watching Marvin and his crew work writing two chapters of Something Wicked.

Here's what it looked like when they were finished:


You can see a smaller square cut into the larger one - this is where our bottom-floor screened-in porch will be. The exterior walls of the house form a hollow L shape behind this space, and I think they have to pour special footings any time they have load bearing walls. Hence the secondary digging.

Sparks flew - right beneath my window! - when the backhoe found our power lines. Luckily none of them got snapped. Our phone line, however, was not so lucky:

We lost our land line and our internet, of course, which was worse. BellSouth was thankfully prompt, and had us back up and running by mid-morning today. Our tech - Jamie, whom we're getting to know too well! - didn't bother repairing the underground line, and instead ran us a loooong phone line form the pole to the other side of the house, bypassing the work site entirely. When the new house is built we can shorten and hide the line again.

Progress Energy didn't prove to be as fast, so we're doubly lucky that line wasn't snapped. We got put on the work order list to have our line foundation bypassed by an underground splice, but we're told it won't be for another couple of weeks. Marvin tells us that won't pose too much of an impediment, but we'll see.

At the end of the day, this is what we had. That night we had a gullywasher of a rain storm, but the foundation trenches didn't seem to suffer too badly. The guys didn't work today due to the downpour overnight, but Josh and Kenny came out to make sure all was well and deliver some long pieces of rebar. We'll have to wait and see what they do with that tomorrow! I'll certainly enjoy watching from that window right there at the end of the house while I'm supposed to be working.

While all this construction was going on, Jo played with Marvin's two grandkids (both sons of Josh I think, the backhoe operator) by capturing a variety of bugs and small creatures around the yard. In addition to finding a very cool snake egg in the upturned dirt in the backyard, they managed to find - and snare - a pretty big black widow spider:

We always tell Jo that spiders are our friends, but, well, this one isn't.

Tune in tomorrow to see what new developments - and creatures - we have to report.

Today was a super-busy day. Jo woke me up at 6:30 and asked me to put Dog Train (most awesome children's CD ever) on her CD player for her. I did, but I think she was out again minutes later. I, unfortunately, was not. Grrrr. On the plus side, I got a few hours of uninterrupted work in before anyone in the house stirred again. Then we got to talk to the tree guy who's going to cut down a few trees next week so the builder can get started. We talked to the builder to approve the final blueprints. Yay! We got the oil changed on both cars. Boring. Jo made a handful of Artist Trading Cards to trade with Riley. Very cool - but I won't show them until after Riley gets them. I finished a project for Lark Books that's due next week. And I made Jo a new bag for her Disney Fairies action figures. The old (paper) bag disintegrated in a downpour last week, so here's a new ok-with-water replacement. Isn't it cute? I've had this fabric for a while and finally found the perfect project for it. The inside of the bag is lined in light pink.
The fairies are once again ready for transport and we can all sleep easy tonight.

Which might be why I've been up since 3am this morning. Must. Get. Sleep.

It's kind of exciting. And the best thing is - when I did the walk through this afternoon, I fell in love with the house and the neighborhood all over again.

I can't wait to walk into the place tomorrow when it's MINE, all MINE!!!

Took daughter to Bed Bath Beyond this evening to get some bedding for her new room. We picked up some funky pillows at the Pier 1 across the street.

We move in a week from today, after the bedrooms have been painted and the radon system, dog fence, burglar alarm etc have all been installed.

Tomorrow though, I'll be happy to empty out my car, which is packed to capacity with stuff that I didn't want to put in storage or forgot to pack or have bought in the meantime. I can barely see out the back window for all the curtain rods and vacuum cleaner and the Harry Potter robe that didn't sell in the tag sale but I didn't fancy throwing in the dumpster because it WILL come in handy one day.

Ok. Bed. Sleep. If I can. Because I'm excited. Exhausted. Excited. Exhausted.


Hmmm. Where's that Ambien?

As documented before, we've moved to the high country of Western North Carolina to successively take over both the publishing and crafting industries. To do that, we'll need a new Gratz Industries World Headquarters, and the mobile home in which we're temporarily stationed is not the answer.

After the chaos of moving in, we quickly assembled our New Headquarters Planning Committee, which is essentially the same as our Samurai Shortstop Marketing Committee, Website Redesign Committee, and Child-Rearing Committee. (What can we say? We're a small non-profit. We have to multi-task.) The New Headquarters Planning Committee put together a fabulous proposal with a building that featured large, two-story, screened-in patios, twenty-foot ceilings, a second-story catwalk library, double staircases, a fancy hanging fireplace, and separate space for guests and board game playing. But for all the unique things we planned in the house, we also designed it to be simply built. It was, essentially, a large rectangle, with a smallish second level (with that awesome library/catwalk) and a large, open floor plan. That was, we assumed, how we were going to be able to afford such a tricked-out place.

Excited about the prospects of a new corporate flagship building, we took our designs to a local builder and anxiously awaited the call that would tell us how close we were to being able to afford our new digs.

Wendi got the call while I was away.

"Guess how much the house would cost us to build?" she asked me.

I took what I thought was a liberal stab at it. "One hundred thousand dollars."

"More."

"One hundred and fifty thousand?" I asked - seeing our dreams of having this home built within the year evaporating before my eyes.

"More," said Wendi.

I frowned. "Two hundred thousand dollars?" That meant we weren't close to affording it.

"More," said Wendi.

I gave up the game, and Wendi laid the hammer down.

Three hundred and seventy thousand dollars. That's what our dream home would cost us to build. Now, that was with all the bells and whistles - the bathrooms installed, the kitchen cabinets and appliances installed, the drywall hung, the floors finished - everything. We had told the builder that we could do much of the finish work ourselves, but he just wanted to give us the pie-in-the-sky, all-told final cost of the project if we had him do everything. Take everything out but the floors and the walls, he told us - with no coverings on either one, just studs and supports - and the basic structure would still cost us $160,000. Worse, that price was about $50 per square foot - which, for those familiar with home-building prices, is extraordinarily reasonable.

But we don't have $370,000. And we don't have $160,000. Hell, we don't even have $100,000.

We felt very ill for a few days.

Then we called up the New Headquarters Planning Committee and told them to go back to the drawing board, and this time to use a smaller drawing board. So back to work they went, and we're happy to present the new version of the Gratz Industries World Headquarters today to our shareholders. Please note, the builder has yet to come back with numbers on this plan, so a similar crushing blow may yet be dealt. But we hope that we've been able to address some of the issues that led to the wacked out price above:


Here we see the new and improved first floor. One of the things that adds to a home's cost is the size of its "footprint," or the actual square-footage of the entire ground floor. The smaller the footprint, the lower the cost. It is always cheaper to go up than out, they say in the home-building trade. (Or at least I think they do.) So here now, rather than the somewhat insane 3,248 square foot original effort (not counting the significant patios on either end), this home has a footprint of 1,024 square feet - and that includes the first floor patio. (Total square footage, including the patios and all floors, is now just 2,560.)

As you can see (or we hope you can see - click the image above to see a larger view) the first floor is home to the kitchen, living room, and library. After getting outside and laying down stakes and trying to orient the house toward our view, we're rethinking the locations of the living room and library, with the thought of switching them around. We had originally placed the living room right next to the kitchen, as we like to have the TV on while cooking/eating is happening, but the back, northerly corner is more appropriate for the library, as that wall will have very few windows - accounting of course for the cold winds and lack of sunlight we'll get from that direction in the winter. Swapping the living room for the library in the plan will also put the view out the windows of the living room, which, admittedly, is where we spend most of our leisure time. (And it turns out that the living room isn't that far away from the kitchen after all now, considering how small the actual first floor will be.)

You can also see that we have a substantial chunk of the ground floor plotted out as a patio. Imagine each floor as four 16' x 16' quadrants. The idea here is to have one entire quadrant on the ground floor be a screened-in porch with attachable windows, so that space can be used year-round, in warm weather or cold. Both connecting walls to the house will have large glass garage doors, much like the big back door we loved so much on our Atlanta loft. Opening these two doors up will give us the full use of the "footprint" as living space almost year 'round.

Heading up the stairs to the second level . . .


We find the level that belongs mostly to Wendi's design studio and to Jo. The two bottom quadrants - the large space at the bottom of the image - are half crafting area for Wendi, half play area for Jo. Those two quadrants connect to a third, which is Jo's bedroom. Putting her bedroom on a different level from ours will give us all the privacy that we need now and that she will want later - like when Jo is a teenager. (Oh holy crap.) By then, her "play area" can become an extended area for teen pursuits like laying around on bean bags and watching Monty Python movies. (And that will of course be separate from the TV room downstairs where her totally uncool parents will be laying around on couches watching Monty Python movies.) The top left quadrant is open - creating a two-story ceiling for one quadrant of the first floor - what we think will now be the library/dining room. That means we get double-tall bookshelves with a ladder! Yay! Almost as good as the catwalk library. (But not quite.)

Okay, now we move on to our latest innovation - the THIRD floor . . .


Yes - a third floor. Genius! We have a good view, and getting one more story up on it will be delightful. (And, we hope, save the money the larger footprint of a two-story house would require.) The third floor houses Alan's office, the master bedroom, and a second porch - this one to be eventually outfitted with a hot tub. Oh yeah. (Hot tub in picture not shown to scale, by the way.) Both this porch and the lower porch will aim at our view, and we hope create a nice panorama from either the porches or inside the house - in this case, our bedroom. And there is no permanent wall between our bedroom and my office, but we plan on lining that with bookshelves/wardrobes to create a non-permanent walled space. I may even convince Wendi to let me build one of the moving walls I've been pitching to her - a wall with lockable wheels. The walls hold art on them, and can be moved to create new room spaces within the house as needed. My office won't take nearly that whole quadrant, allowing us room for bureaus and wardrobes in the master bedroom. (We detest the wasted space of built-in closets.)

One of the four quadrants - the one in the lower right - is empty, again creating another two-story ceiling - this one in Wendi's design studio. We're hoping that with a windowed patio upstairs and multiple windows throughout the house that we get both trickle-down ambient light, and can create a nice tunnel of breeze during the summer. Because no - we're NOT going to install air conditioning. Both for environmental/financial reasons, and because we think we can achieve a cool house using passive cooling strategies like channeling the wind and having strategically-planted trees outside. (Plus it's cooler up here in the high country - which is part of the reason we chose to move here.)

So there it is, all capped off with a "shed roof," which we understand is the term for a slanted roof that does not reach a peak, but instead runs from a higher wall to a lower wall. (Like half of a traditional peaked roof.) We've asked that this be pointed toward our most southerly exposure, with the dream of one day covering it with the new thin-film solar panel laminate we've read about.

I'm excited just writing about this. Now we just have to wait for the builder to burst our bubble . . .

At long last, our corporate offices have moved from Atlanta, Georgia to Bakersville, North Carolina, near Penland School of Crafts. It's been an exasperating experience to say the least - on TOP of the usual pressures of moving.

First, well, how to put it? We couldn't get everything we owned on the dang truck. If I hadn't been so mad and so completely dog-tired, I would have pulled out the camera to document it for you. But I was, and I didn't. We ended up stacking a bunch of our seasonal stuff and our four metal deck chairs outside under the cover of the metal roof that shields the deck on our old home, and now I'm going to have to return for the stuff when I'm back in Georgia to do a library visit next week.

Here in North Carolina we had a beautiful day for unpacking. We were able to pull the truck right up to the front door and load right into the house too, so we had no up and down the ramp. Check it out:


See that big empty front yard? That's where we're going to build our new house. SOON. And here's Jo on the moving bridge:

So while we were unloading the truck, we accidentally broke a huge round mirror that goes to a bureau in Jo's room. And I mean we SMASHED it. It completely blew up.

Now, if we were superstitious folks, we would say we just bought ourselves seven years of bad luck at our new home. But we're not superstitious folks.

It took all day, and it wore us out . . .

But we finally got everything into the house. Thankfully, the owners had emptied out all the junk that had been sitting in the house. UNfortunately, they just dumped it in the yard:

Thanks. Thanks very much. *I* could have done that. But at least I didn't have to do it while we were moving in, I guess.

So, remember, we're not superstitious folks. So when we were returning the truck to Johnson City, Tennessee, (an hour and a half drive!) and we got a call from our mortgage lender and were told that we would not be able to close the next day, as we had once planned, we didn't chalk it up to a completely unrelated broken mirror.

Nor did we get suspicious when our new electric oven from Lowe's caught on fire and had to be replaced.

Or when a pipe burst under the house and we had no water for a day.

Or when the fuel oil started to leak and we had to turn off the heat the day after that. And when we had it repaired, we learned the tank was almost empty.

Or Wendi's sudden dental emergency, with the nearest dentist on our plan in Johnson City, and the earliest they can see her May 1st.

And we've been here exactly one week.

Then yesterday, perhaps tempting fate, I attempted to have a fire in our fireplace . . .

And it worked just fine.

Seriously, we don't blame all these things on a broken mirror. I blame instead the renters who lived in this place before we did. They abused the heck out of the place, and we're just cleaning up their mess.

I suppose the renters can't be blamed for the oven catching on fire. Or for Wendi's toothache. But there is such a thing as coincidence.

We'd just prefer that the odd coincidences stop now, thank you.

Handy Manny: Latino Role Model or Stereotype? In this show: Happy Birthday to Andrea and Lucy, Tools for thinking about Disney’s “Handy Manny” Special Thanks to : Kevan Miller for the station ID. Music: Happy Birthday by Craymo Podcasts Mentioned: Just One More Book Websites Mentioned: Latin_Know, Vivir Latino Participate in the show. Subscribe and listen in iTunes XML Feed Location : feed://www.bazmakaz.com/clip/?feed=rss2 Let [...]