Sewing Up the Last Hole

While I was in Boston this week, Steve and crew finished off the final outline of the house, and in essence sewed up the final seam that brings all the new and old pieces together.
Pictured below is the latest shot of the house with the final dormer in place. It reaches from the entryway all the way to the third floor and is the crowning element that brings together all the rooflines in one central point.



As Steve’s assistant Pat put it to me today “It was a real head banger yesterday.” Imagine pulling together all those angled rafters, beams, joists and uprights to all connect perfectly into this puzzle we call a house. Little of the framework will be visible when the project is complete. This is a fact that always saddens me because we are barred from viewing what is often a very graphically beautiful element, and certainly one that gives clues to how the house stays standing up. I remember being in a friend’s house a few years ago when a round room was being constructed there and seeing the incredibly detailed underpinnings that would create the conical roof. In the end it was finished in a smooth surface of plaster and its guts are just a memory.
In an article I wrote this week on the building of a yurt in Maine however, I was able to show photos of the lattice-like framework that hold up this rounded home. Thought the support pedestal that was constructed to hold up the roof beams was only there temporarily, it was like a ladder to the sky, a monument to the structure of what made this yurt work. (These pictures courtesy of Pam Swing - the yurt owner)






New rooms are beginning to take shape. The outline is complete and now come the many months of making the house livable again. Next time, I’ll talk about the kitchen plan, the contract for which was finally signed yesterday. It is surely one of the more complicated aspects of the house, but inevitably one of the most important.