Weather Underground
Western North Carolina is in the possible path of Tropical storm Fay. Wouldn’t a nice rain late next week be nice.
The footings have been poured
2 p.m. Friday
By 3:30 p.m. today, the footings had been dug, inspected by the county, and 10 cubic yards of concrete poured. I believe that works out to around 15 tons of concrete.
On Monday the materials for the foundation walls will be delivered, and the masons should start laying blocks on Tuesday.
Groundbreaking
10 a.m. Friday
The work on my house has started. This morning they’re digging the footings. The concrete truck should arrive in the early afternoon to pour the footings. It rained yesterday, and the ground is a bit wet, but that doesn’t seem to be of much concern to the guys doing the work. I think I may leave this afternoon to spare myself the sight of the concrete truck rolling over my poor abused soil.
RFD!
Stokes County couldn’t issue me an official mailing address until I got my final building permit. Since the time I left California, my mail has temporarily been going to family in Yadkin County. I got the building permit on Monday, and I put up my new mailbox this morning. I’m officially on the map now in Mayberry Country RFD. If anyone would like to have my new mailing address, please email me.
I signed a contract to build my house!
I signed a contract today with a construction company in King (also in Stokes County) to build the exterior of my gothic cottage. I also got the building permit from the county today. The construction company is eager to start, so work on the foundation may well begin this week.
As I mentioned in an earlier post, a metal roof, flared at the eaves, was just too expensive. I’ve ended up with a conventional 30-year roof. The roof will be dark green. The exterior of the windows and doors also will be dark green. The siding and trim will be rough-sawed white pine. The white pine, when newly sawed, is a cool yellow color. After a few months of exposure to the sun, the pine takes on a warm, golden hue. Then gradually over the years the siding will turn gray.
The people in the Stokes County building permits office, when I commented on the low cost of the building permit, said that it has been a long time since they’ve issued a permit for a house this small – 1,250 square feet. The permit price is based on square footage. I’m kind of honored, actually, that in Stokes County, North Carolina, which is far from a rich county, I’m building the smallest house that anybody has built in a long time.
Rough hurricane season ahead?
Three organizations that watch hurricanes have issued revised forecasts calling for a rough hurricane season ahead. One of the organizations, Tropical Storm Risk Inc., has given a 95 percent probability that 2008 will be in the top third of years historically for hurricane activity.
A good source of hurricane information, and the one I watch most, is Dr. Jeff Masters’ blog at Weather Underground.
Update on rural Internet access
Omnidirectional vertical EVDO/cellular antenna
DSL speeds!
For reasons I don’t really understand, I’m getting better EVDO performance with an omnidirectional antenna than with a directional Yagi antenna pointed at the nearest Alltel tower. Small improvements in antenna placement also have made a substantial improvement. The antenna wants to be high and in the clear (as opposed to perched on the roof of the trailer). The antenna also likes a metal base with ground-plane wires roughly the same length as the antenna. You can see the ground-plane wires dangling from the base of the antenna.
I now feel like I’m getting my money’s worth out of Alltel. I’m also getting a decent Internet experience, at last.
30-day weather forecast
The National Weather Service released new 30-day forecasts today. For here in the Southeast, the forecast is for above normal temperatures and normal precipitation. OK. I’ll deal with the heat if it will just rain.
Color schemes for the gothic cottage — help!
I’m in the final stages of negotiation with a builder for the exterior of my gothic cottage. I’ve determined that I just can’t afford a metal roof and that I must fall back to a conventional 30-year asphalt shingle roof. That also means that I must pick a color. One can make an argument for roof colors like brown or gray. But I’m intrigued by the idea of something a bit bolder than that. There are many roofing colors, but window colors are much more limited. My siding will be white pine, which is a yellow at first, then a kind of warm gold, and then, eventually, weathered gray.
Here are quick-and-dirty sketches that I put together in Gimp (an open source program that does what Photoshop does). I would be delighted and honored if anyone has comments on these two color schemes or if anyone has suggestions for other color schemes. I need to make a decision soon, because I may be only a couple of weeks away from starting construction.
Some extra blur may help to stimulate the imagination:
Tomato Christmas!
For weeks I’ve waited for my tomatoes to ripen. Then finally, of course, everything starts happening at once. Here’s my first real picking of tomatoes, July 29. I’ve had cherry tomatoes, actually, for two or three weeks. I’ve used quite a few green tomatoes in curries, or to make fried green tomatoes. I would have had tomatoes earlier except that the deer wiped out all my green tomatoes about a month ago, and I had to wait for the second round of growth.