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Category Archives: The house

As though it was here all along…

Wednesday, May 11, 2011

It’s pretty pretentious to give your house a name. But what the heck. The name suits the place. And I’m guilty of worse than pretense. I’m also guilty of magical thinking. I often have the impression that Acorn Abbey existed in some form before I built it. It wanted to be built. It demanded to […]

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Porch lizards, in flagrante delicto

Monday, May 2, 2011

I don’t know what species they are. I just call them porch lizards, because for some reason there are gazillions of them on my deck and porches. This morning I caught two of them in flagrante delicto, making yet more porch lizards for me to catch someday in flagrante delicto, and so on, ad infinitum. […]

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The garden path

Saturday, April 16, 2011

Ken finished a project yesterday that had been needed for a long time. He made a garden path from the side porch to the garden gate, using stones from a local quarry and granite sand as the base. Ken kept an eye on the baby chickens while he worked. Not that they had any interest […]

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Microsoft Hohm and energy consumption

Sunday, March 20, 2011

In June 2009, using analytics software licensed from Lawrence Berkeley National Labs and statistical data from the Department of Energy, Microsoft launched a web site permitting homeowners to enter data about their homes and energy use and compare their energy use to that of other homes. The web site is www.microsoft-hohm.com. Microsoft launched this web […]

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Some winter angles on the abbey

Friday, December 31, 2010

While I was out with the camera today, I took some photos of the abbey from angles from which the abbey is visible only in winter, when the leaves are down. It’s not an easy job to build a photogenic house, but it sure is fun to live in one. The pile of debris is […]

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Solar gain

Thursday, November 11, 2010

The front door and hallway around 8:30 a.m. Building a house will make you crazy. But one of the advantages of new construction is the greater energy efficiency of current building codes. Stokes County’s insulation requirements, for whatever reasons, are stricter than surrounding counties. For example, the amount of ceiling insulation required will not fit […]

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Carolina morning

Friday, July 23, 2010

From the road Recently a reader asked for more pictures of the grounds of Acorn Abbey. I admit that I’m stingy with such photos. This is because it will be years before the abbey looks the way I want it to look — overgrown and blooming. Ken and I have planted a lot of stuff […]

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Bat houses

Thursday, July 15, 2010

I finally got my bat houses put up yesterday. There were carpenters here to work on making Acorn Abbey more waterproof, and while they were here I asked them to use their ladder to put up the bat houses. I bought the bat houses from the Organization for Bat Conservation. The bat houses are at […]

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This summer at Acorn Abbey…

Saturday, May 15, 2010

David and Ken use a rented machine to drill post-holes for the garden fence. The trailer is gone now, by the way. I sold it the same afternoon this photo was taken. The trailer was my home while Acorn Abbey was under construction. Now that the house is built, much outdoor work remains to be […]

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Old Southern house trimmings

Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Much of the South’s old rural housing stock is falling into ruin. This is the case with the Yadkin Valley house that my mother was born in. It was built by her grandfather. The house, and most of the land the house sits on, is no longer in the family. I’m considering salvaging a tiny […]

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