Wall week

The crew began the week building walls for the second story.

The telehandler is invaluable for getting the lumber up there,

Before the walls were erected,

One of the completed walls,

Shop class,

The rough window assemblies to make up the tower,

And up they go,

The telehandler is even more useful for lifting/standing up walls; this is the back of the house, with the dining room nearest the telehandler,

The dining room from the other side,

The 16-year-old running the telehandler,

Finally on to the fourth side,

The 14-year-old securing the temporary brace (until the interior walls go up),

The white painted piece of lumber is salvage, when the grandstand at the fairgrounds was replaced years ago,

Moving the top plate/cap plate assembly out of the tower to erect the wall pieces,

I got distracted by a tiger swallowtail on the lilacs,

Putting the top plate/cap plate in place,

Removing the GoPro from the GoPro pole,

A productive afternoon!

Belated Europe

After the New Year, we spent four weeks in France and Germany, Tom’s and my first visit in 19 years, and the kids’ first ever. Home base was the house of an old family friend outside Paris, near Fontainebleau, and we took a variety of trips, to western France near Angers for a visit to a farm family, to Paris, to Tom’s family (his mother’s cousin) near Bremen, and back to France (Morzine) for some skiing.

One of the highlights was the stay in northwest Germany, which we all enjoyed very, very much — meeting some family members again, many others for the first time, the architecture, the food, and mostly the very warm welcome. And the kids were delighted to be able to help with farm chores, which helped with missing their animals at home. We had a lovely time, lots of fun and adventures, and made the most of our rental car, a BMW with GPS which turned out to be indispensable. The kids got to do a number of things on their wish lists — driving fast on the Autobahn, birding (Laura had several outings with local birders, and added 70 new species to her life list), and skiing in the Alps.

A few photos from the trip (in chronological order):

One of the houses down the lane in France, with moss everywhere (photo by Laura),

A stone wall, more moss,

The village’s outdoor Sunday market; yes, the butcher sells horse meat,

During one of our drives through the forest of Fontainebleau, we came across one of the regularly scheduled hunts for deer and wild boar, necessary to keep the populations down in the area, for the safety of the humans and health of the habitat; we met the hunters who talked to us about the hunts and showed us some of the animals from that morning,

We took a walk along the Loing river,

Visiting a farm near Château-Gontier, in the Mayenne region, with Rouge des Prés (formerly known as Maine-Anjou) cattle,

At the farm of a distant cousin, where they grow organic potatoes, onions, and carrots; lots of very, very old brick in northwestern Germany,

Laura birding with some virtual friends made real,

Peat blocks drying in stacks at the Drebbersches Moor near Lange Lohe; Black Grouse is now extinct in the area because of habitat loss caused by the peat harvesting in the moors,

While Laura and I were birding, Cousin H. taught the rest of the family to make brooms with twigs, very good for sweeping out the barn stalls,

The family farmhouse near Bremen is more than 100 years old, and had these lovely encaustic tiles in the main hallway,

I drooled over the kitchen’s 1920s aluminum storage drawers/bins, a hallmark of the celebrated Frankfurt Kitchen,

At the neighborhood beekeeper’s, old terracotta roofing tiles salvaged for a new project,

The beekeeper also restored a 19th century bake house on his property,

From the bake house door,

Scenes from a French village,

For skiing, they made do with a combination of regular clothing we brought for the trip and rentals,

The view from our hotel room in the Alps,

We tried a variety of local cheeses every evening and I was able to attend a cheesemaking demonstration,

Snowing steadily in Morzine,

Back in Paris,

All three kids had a great appreciation for the various fast and fancy cars,

View from the Arc de Triomphe,

Another fast and fancy car,

which we discovered was possible to rent,

At the Louvre,

An eye for an eye,

Another story

Work on the new house stopped last October. It got too cold and snowy for working outdoors, Tom had other projects for clients, we went to France and Germany for four weeks after the new year, the kids made it to high school provincials for curling in February and March, Tom and I travelled to the West Indies to clear out the last bits from my parents’ retirement house before the sale (hallelujah), then it was calving season, and more big projects for clients.

Work started up again last week, and first thing on the schedule was to start working on the second story. The main floor now has a ceiling and the second story has a floor. Wall-building begins tomorrow, and Tom and I double-checked all the window placements this afternoon.

The view from the master bedroom’s tower sitting area (facing northeast),

Another view from the master bedroom’s tower sitting area, facing southeast,

View from the bedroom (facing east); you can see how dry it’s been, with only one decent rain (this past week) since March,

View from the guest bedroom (facing north),

The living room tower sitting area, on the main floor,

The kitchen, with the pantry on the other side of the wall; the window is on the sink wall,

The pantry, a very exciting prospect!

Dining room (facing south) surrounded by the larch trees we planted eight years ago,

Dining room door to the back porch, facing west,

The living room, facing north and the front of the house,

The temporary stairs (the actual stairs will be over to the right), which Tom rescued from the old farm supply store’s warehouse before it was demolished 25 years ago,