Week starting 22nd September – Concrete Progress
The big house building challenge this week was to get the design of the lower floor modified so that passing bears can’t get into the storage areas and visitors don’t have a window showing nothing but Georgia clay. Previous readers may have noted that there was a terrible clash between the original design and the steeply sloping gradient of the land. Bill had roughed out a proposal (and he later confided that he had discussed it with the architect, Mike Garrell, over the weekend) to flip the layout about. Personal contacts have their benefit! We all went down to Suwanee (in North Atlanta, a 40 minute drive away) on Tuesday afternoon and spent two hours with Mike. It was interesting to see an architect at work in the “creative” mode – lots of tracing paper overlaying existing plans, and furious broadbrush scribbling with flipchart markers. I just hope Mike can make sense of all the jottings – I certainly couldn’t. He seemed confident that something could be done to make a really good solution, and even squeezed in a little more usable space. And as we worked with him, he suddenly had an inspiration moment and spotted an error on the original plans. So, everything should be redesigned in time for the framing (putting up the beams that will be the backbone of the timber-framed house), and pouring concrete can continue. The redesign will cost, but only a minimal amount in the grand scheme of events.
We went out to the site on Friday afternoon to check progress. The footings crew had packed up with their first pourings now complete – they have to wait for the concrete to cure. The footings (in Britain, they would be called foundations) twist about like a maze, but I have to believe that the crew knows what has to be done.
Back at our new house on Choctaw Ridge (now, that’s a name to conjure with – any country music fans remember the “Ballard of Billie Joe”?) unpacking the multitude of cartons from London continues. What came out of the container was about 350 boxes and items of furniture. Boxes represented more than half of that number. And whilst the room they came from in the old house is generally accurate, the contents descriptions are not. So, we are having to open each one to establish if there is anything we need for the rental house. A mammoth task. And then box contents which will not be wanted until the new house is ready need to be resealed and moved to the basement store. Since that means a vertical movement of each 40lb box from the ground floor down to the basement 15 feet below, the physical effort is not inconsiderable. This a job that will take a week or three!
On a positive note, the doctor has given Lisa’s foot a thumbs up – healing has been even better than expected, probably due to the care she has been taking with it. No more casts, boots or braces, just exercise. On the way back from the surgery, we called in at the shops in Dawsonville to get some things we couldn’t find in Dahlonega. We picked up the local newspaper, and found our smiling faces peering back at us. Not really our 15 minutes of fame – we were in our insurance agent’s office last week when a journalist arrived to take a photo as the agency had just been awarded “best local insurance company”. We were pressed into service as examples of happy customers.
We now have two significant improvements in our life, to replace items we had to leave behind in London. Our famous Big Green Egg barbeque grill (the best grill in the world, if you have not met these before – ours is now serving a happy second life on the Isle of Wight) has been replaced by a new one from the local egg shop in Dahlonega. And we have also got a proper “beans to fresh hot coffee” machine to replace the one we had in London. We ordered it from Amazon and, alas, it arrived broken. Never mind, Amazon shipped a replacement in double quick time, and we are now having much better mornings.
Next week, some thoughts on US television, autumn falls, and also life on the edge in Choctaw Ridge.