A House In A Field
The story of a house. In a field. And how it gets there.
Cutting concrete.
Lots of activity on a (relatively) dry Dash Landing today, but this may have been the biggest — the basement floor. This will allow the mason to start the chimney, the framers to start the stairs and the electricians to pretend that we have electricity.
View across the field – June 7th
With the addition of the first 2nd floor gable, we’re starting to get a sense as to the overall “shape & size” of the house.
Let’s do this shot every Friday…..
“Bureaucracy and social harmony are inversely proportional to each other” – Trotsky
Even after all we’ve been through with Central Maine Power over the past 291 days, those crazy comrades in Augusta never cease to amaze us.
Annoy us? Oh, yes. Perturb us? Absolutely. Yank out our rapidly greying hair in giant clumps of frustration? Each and every glorious day. But rarely a week goes by in our great quest for electricity that we don’t begrudgingly say “Wow –didn’t see THAT coming….”
On one hand, we definitely made forward progress this week. With a bit of help from The Leader of the Pole People, the trees along Lower Mast Landing were trimmed back in preparation for the electrical lines :
That’s a big deal. Without trimming back those trees, no wire. No wire, no electricity. But after two days of chainsaws and chippers, we’re ready to roll.
Even more surprisingly, we got a meter. YES, A METER. An orange truck glided up out of the mist one afternoon, a guy got out of a truck and a few minutes later, CMP’s version of a reverse ATM machine appeared on our utility panel :
Trees trimmed. Conduit run up the driveway in an elegant arc with pull lines in place. Meter in place. Wire from the meter to the house. Electrical panel on the wall with a couple of outlets already wired in the basement for the sub-contractor crews.
We. Are. Fricking. Ready.
So you can imagine our surprise to get this email today :
DEAR CRAZY HOUSE BLOG LADY*,
We’ve set a date to connect your new service and we guarantee it will be done.
We will connect your new electrical service by 06/28/2013. In fact, we guarantee it. If we don’t connect your new service by that date, the CMP delivery charges on your first electric bill will be free (up to $250). That’s our Customer Service Guarantee.
The guarantee will not apply if CMP suspends normal business operations because of storm conditions or emergencies.
We are committed to timely and courteous customer service. If at any time we don’t deliver up to our commitment, we want to hear from you! If we can be of further assistance, please feel free to email us and one of our Service Coordination Team members will respond to you in a timely manner.
Thank you for giving us the opportunity to serve you.
Sincerely,
Your CMP Service Coordination Team
We are available Monday through Friday from 7:30 am to 4:00 pm. Please don’t hesitate to e-mail us.
(* Not her real name.)
Seriously? TWENTY-TWO MORE DAYS? ON TOP OF THE 291?
It’s at these moments that we grab a gin & tonic, sit back and say to ourselves — “Wow. Didn’t see THAT coming…”
2nd Floor
Had to deal with a “distraction” earlier in the week, but the gang did an awesome job of getting us back on track today. If the weather cuts us a break over the next two days, they hope to have most of the 2nd floor structure in place by the weekend.
(Don’t forget — there are plans available here. Helps to get oriented.)
View from the back yard. Master bedroom on the right, the little “dog shed” is the study on the 2nd floor.
Looking out the front of the 2nd floor. Nate / Karl bedroom window on the left, Abby / Nancy on the right. (Or visa versa.)
View from the front. Master bedroom on the left. Wall on the 2nd floor is for the two bedrooms.
2nd floor study reading nook thingy.
Who wants to live on Flying Point Road?
Some of you might have noticed a sign pop up on our lawn this week :
All part of the plan, but bittersweet nonetheless. If you’ve been following ahouseinafield for long, you’ll know that we’re incredibly attached to this place — both our home and the Flying Point neighborhood as a whole.
The listing is here : http://www.trulia.com/property/3090456400-175-Flying-Point-Rd-Freeport-ME-04032
But here are a few things not disclosed in the listing — probably due to arcane Multiple Listing Service goofiness :
* If you’ve invited 80 people to an outside lobster feed to celebrate a college graduation and it turns out to be 47 degrees, driving rain and otherwise crappy, everyone will fit nicely in the garage. You know it’s a special place when someone from Mumbai has dinner wedged between a chainsaw and a road bike and tells you “That was the best lobster ever!” :
* It has been the headquarters for flyingpointroad.com — the world’s sorriest, most specialized and least profitable photo service bureau in the world. Odds are that if you were looking for images of an obscure nordic ski race in Maine during the last ten years or a fan of JohnnyKlister.com, you’ve been to the website. More likely, you visited because you were looking for directions to a surfing beach called “Flying Point” on Long Island.
Jessie Diggins winning the 2011 U.S. Cross-Country Ski Championships at Rumford, Maine
* Speaking of skiing, it was the wax room for the Freeport Middle and High School ski teams for six years. At one point, there was so much wax floating around that our hardwood floors gleamed like the noonday sun.
That was the nice part. The less good part was that the floors became so slippery the dog could barely stand on them. (We’ve both cleaned the floors and changed the dog since then…)
* There are recently rebuilt raised bed gardens in the backyard which have — in the words of neighbor who should know — “… the best soil in the world.”
Yes and that’s because they were piled high with what only felt like a backbreaking ton of compost and vermiculite every fall for a decade, followed by a thorough rototilling in the spring. You’ll be saved from all that nonsense.
* You’ll live close to Wolf Neck Farm, Recompense Campground and the Burnett Bridge. It’s fair to say that we might miss this part of the neighborhood the most. It’s where we run, it’s where we swim and where we hike. It’s the center of the Flying Point and Wolfe Neck neighborhoods and a true treasure for dogs, kids and adults who still act like kids.
You get the idea.
We have no doubt that the MLS listing is fair and accurate to the letter of the law. But it does a lousy job of describing where we’ve lived for the last 22 years.
A House In A Field 