Wednesday, July 24, 2013

We did it!

After five long years, we moved into our beautiful home on July 7.  In some ways I cannot believe we are finally living, sleeping and eating here, but in other ways it seems like we were always here.  It must be the tremendous number of hours we devoted to hand building this place.

There are so many people to thank for helping us accomplish this project:
  • My sister, Laura, for designing such a sweet, not-so-big, but perfectly delightful house;
  • Benjamin and Company Timber Frames for designing our frame and providing us with excellent plans.
  • All of the folks on the island who allowed us to come onto their property and cut down trees to turn into lumber; 
  • Bill McGuinness and Cory Duggan for helping to pour the footing;
  • The whole crew who showed up to help us pour the foundation walls;
  • Bentley Howard for helping us with our sawmill and teaching Jason the basics to get us started;
  • To the whole entire town for showing up to raise the frame; 
  • Cory Duggan and Jacob Bach Jensen for helping to cut the frame; 
  • Jim Amuso, Cory Duggan, Gary Gould and Bruce Fernald for heroically lifting those roof truces into place(!);
  • Jim Amuso and Steve Krasnow for helping to roof the place; 
  • To the countless people who showed up over the course of two summers to stuff the walls with straw-clay infill insulation and plaster the walls with clay plaster; 
  • Jim Amuso for helping in the final days to get it ready to move in; 
  • To my mother-in-law, Joan, for always being here when we needed her help, no matter what it was we needed help with; 
  • To my parents, Jeff and Lucy, for the moral support, the extra hands cleaning up and (of course) the plumbing; 
  • To Eric Dyer for our chimney;
  • And to the dozen or so people who showed up to help us move.
We are so fortunate to have been blessed with this downpour of support, love and belief over the last five years.  We truly could not have done this without you all.  Thank you.