Week starting 6th October – Life in a Subdivision, Slow site progress, Foodie heaven & TV adverts
Slow progress on building
One of the slightly frustrating things about most projects is that things don’t progress at a standard rate. Slow, slow, rush, rush. The best thing you can do in a slow period is to try to get ahead on planning and decisions for the time when the rush comes on. Building a house is just another project, and the same rules apply, I believe. Building the lower floor of the house is a multi-stage concrete job. First trenches for foundations (footings) were dug and filled with concrete. Followed by a curing period (extended in our case due to some rainy days). Above is what the site looks like at the end of pouring footings – at the end of the video, you can see the driveway winding back through the trees towards Porter Springs Road.
At present we are in the slow period whilst we wait for concrete to dry out and fully cure before getting the next stage done. Next, walls will be shaped with wooden shuttering and more concrete poured. These are not the interior walls of the house, they are just the second stage of the foundations. These retaining walls split up the building, providing a solid base for interior and exterior walls to be constructed. Voids are filled with soil (from the original landcarving, currently burying the proposed orchard many feet deep) and plumbing pipes are laid according to the architect’s plans. And finally, phase 3 of concrete pouring to make a solid flat slab for the lower floor – and then upwards on onwards with the real walls.
So whilst we have this slow period, we are working on forward planning. The basement floor will be made by the third phase concrete pour. But we don’t want a boring concrete slab like a warehouse. This week we had a meeting with the concrete guy, TJ, to sort this out. The concrete will be coloured and “stamped” to give a suitable texture. We are looking at a natural stone colour and an appearance like natural stone paving (something like York Stone). Of course, there will be lots of rugs over it, but the final effect should be great.
Other planning under way includes getting electricity to the site (which will mean a trench dug alongside the driveway – we hope to simultaneously install a pipe in the same trench to take cable for TV or broadband). We are also thinking about some of the fancy interior beams that will be exposed but are structural – these will need custom sawmill work.
Subdivision life
One of the aspects of American life that may seem strange is the “subdivision”. As you drive through the countryside, you will often see an elaborate set of gateposts with a name that may or may not be appropriate (round here in the mountains there are “Shady Cove”, “High Shoals” and “Camelot”). That’s the entry to a subdivision! There may even be a gatehouse to keep out the unwanted. The technical definition talks about division of a piece of land to make the land more saleable in smaller pieces. But a key part of the definition is “for the purpose of building”. The subdivision is the American Dream of cosy suburban living as a practical reality. The house we have rented is in just such a community, called Waggon Creek. It has all the requisites of a carefully managed neighborhood complete with a signpost at the entrance announcing the name, ten pages of rules for residents, and a subdivision committee (headed by Ira, who patrols around the subdivision regularly). There are no waggons visible (nor even the contemporary version of the pioneer waggon, the “RV” – a 40-seat coach converted into a mobile home on steroids) – any such things must be kept invisible from the road. And whilst everyone we talk to is friendly and polite, I don’t sense the neighbourliness that we enjoyed back in Ealing.
From the road, the house we are renting looks like a fairly standard American bungalow. It’s when you look at from the side that you see that this is built on a fierce slope, dropping away at a gradient of 1 in 5. There is a lower floor (which we are using purely for storage of all the boxes from London that we don’t need open until we have the new house built). Don’t think about walking out of a back door on the upper floor – you would plummet 20 feet to hit ground. We live on the upper floor, with an open plan kitchen/diner and large living room with a high high ceiling, two bedrooms (one a box room at present) and a third room which I have adopted as a mancave (whilst Lisa has taken oven the dining table as her domain). There are decks on the upper and lower floor, so we have somewhere to sit out (and the Big Green Egg grill has a home on the upper deck). We are surrounded by huge trees as you can see below. I just hope none fall on the house whilst we are in residence.
Views of the front of the house showing how steeply the road slopes away
View of the side – and you thought the road was steep!
Looking up at the back, and the view from the top deck to the photo point in the “side” shots
Food, glorious food
Another thing we have done this week has been to find some REAL meat. Meat purchased from supermarkets is rather odd to European palates. Chilled chickens, pork and other meat are typically sold in a stout plastic bag where the meat swims in a “broth” of water with 15% meat materials and unknown additives). So the meat is full of water and other nasties. When cooked, it often has a strangely gelatinous nature. Yuk! After internet research, Lisa found a farm about forty miles away which sells proper meat from fowls and animals they have raised themselves organically and processed locally (rather than be sent halfway across USA to one of the very few city-sized abbatoirs). We came back from a trip there with a carload of lamb, beef, pork, chicken, eggs and even bags of freshly picked herbs (free offer to visitors who shop with MaryBeth at Joyous Noises Farm). And literature about the organic farming movement in Georgia. So, we have a possibility of a life here more meaningful than meals from MacDonalds.
Finally, a word on television adverts. When I first started coming to USA, the advertisements could probably defined as cruel and unusual punishment, with medical products for conditions you don’t really want to know about and badly drawn cartoon films lauding local hardware stores and car sales. The years have made the advertisers up their game (perhaps due to unflattering comparisons on TV programs about the world’s worst adverts). So, now things have changed. There appear to be four main categories of adverts.
> Testosterone-fuelled red pickup trucks with chunky men driving through puddles whilst extolling the virtues of 900 horsepower of rotary torque (no, I don’t know what that is either) and extraordinary cheapness.
> Pharmaceuticals for mysterious ailments, suggesting you persuade your doctor to prescribe them for you. However, impact is rather reduced by a legally required announcement of possible side effects (“may cause earaches, hair loss, rashes, kidney failures and sudden heart attacks. Do not use if you have visited places where certain fungi are common. Not recommended for children under 10 or for adults over 40.”)
> Updated versions of the adverts for local businesses. Now the local ambulance-chasing lawyers, carpet warehouses and car dealers are found in clips of family members gurning frenziedly in front of the products on offer in high colour, high contrast, high volume and high definition.
> A few, a very few, amusing adverts which, whilst they may not have you racing out to buy paint or household insurance, at least make you smile.
And to make things worse, the time for advertising seems to be limited, so adverts run into each other without a second to catch your breath. I await with interest for the occasion when the pharmaceutical advert or the macho-man pickup truck segue seamlessly into a lawyer touting for clients who have been crippled or killed by said products!
There was one disappointment this week – the Braves were beaten 3 games to 1 by the LA Dodgers in the National League semi-finals. So, that’s the end of World Series dreams this year.
This weekend we are heading South to Monticello and Warner Robins in Middle Georgia for a couple of days, to see Lisa’s family and friends down there, and tend to a few chores. And on Friday we are going with Bill to see another house he has built in Suches, about 20 miles away to pick up ideas and lessons.
Also – What is it about the ubiquitous and omnipresent American flag? And which US State features the Union Jack?