Day 132: Mistakes Were Made

We have, at best, one more week on site before Carla’s family starts to get offended by our absence during the holidays. I’m still hopeful that we’ll get a lot finished in the time left – though every night I’m forced to revise my expectations when I realize that we can never work as fast or as efficiently as I imagine. In architecture school when a deadline was looming, one of our design profs used to tell us to decide how much we wanted to get done, estimate how long it was to take, then cut the amount of work in half and double the time estimate. It was good advice then, more so now.

The replacement glass for our big south window arrived intact on Tuesday afternoon (only seven weeks late). The delivery truck could get no closer than the snow bank at the end of the driveway, so we rigged up a sled from leftover 2x4s and plywood in order to drag it to the building. The snow, at that time, was 20” deep. We were suitably impressed by our own ingenuity. (This was solely Geoff’s idea…I accept no credit - Carla)

Today we installed the glass. Carla’s cousin Donald drove an hour from Belle Cote to give me a hand lifting it into place, and everything went well until I cracked it.

The tragedy happened when I was trying to insert the neoprene gasket against the bottom interior edge. It wouldn’t fit, and I could see the glass wasn’t sitting tight against the exterior of the frame at that point. So I tried to tap it into place with my hammer, using a block and striking at the very edge, where the metal spacer between glazing layers should, in theory, offer some strength. In my rush, I figured I couldn’t possibly do any damage. I was, of course, mistaken.

The good news is that the crack is fairly minor as these things go. It’s about six inches, spanning edge to edge at the corner and on the interior face only. So it shouldn’t affect the performance of the unit… I hope.

I’ve been pretty crabby with others on site when they’ve made mistakes, but I have to admit that no one else has done anything quite this stupid. I will forevermore be a humble and patient boss.

- Geoff

Day 117: The End Has No Beginning, the Beginning Never Ends*

Winter has hit Cape Breton and the snow is slowing us down. I’d hoped to be finished with shingling by now, but it will take at least one more week. Carla is afraid of heights so, as we climb higher, there’s less and less for her to do, and her dad’s going back to Halifax tomorrow. Meanwhile, I’ve yet to start the plywood cladding on the crow’s nest, or the custom front door, or the cap flashings for the roof parapet, or the handful of other things I can’t remember right now. Listing all of it reminds me that it’s pretty doubtful we’ll finish what we’d like to in the two and a half weeks left before Christmas.

BUT the shingles on the north and east facades are complete and look pretty cool. I love the monolithic quality of the building seen from that corner.

- Geoff

* apologies to Jason Starnes

Day 116

We had some help this weekend from an unexpected place. Last Friday I stopped in at Brian MacKay-Lyons’s office in Halifax to catch up with my old bosses and give a presentation on the artspace over a few beers. The office has really densified over the past couple of years – it looked to me like there were about 15 employees, crammed in every available space, and a whole new menagerie of gorgeous wood models on display. The presentation went well --people seemed excited about what we’re doing and Brian had some kind things to say about the design.

Anyhow, it turns out that Matt, briefly my coworker at Busby Perkins + Will in Vancouver, now works for Brian. After the presentation he told me that he wanted to learn the delicate and zen-like art of shingling. With my grateful blessing, he decided to drive down early Saturday morning and work here for two days. At 8:00 AM on Saturday, Matt called from Antigonish (about 90 minutes from here), where the season’s first snowstorm was in full swing. ‘The driving’s pretty bad here. Everyone’s pulled off the road…Should I keep going?’ I told him that things looked great in our backyard. It was a calm, clear day so far. He elected to soldier on. But when he arrived, the gods got angry.

We managed to work for about two hours, cowering on the high scaffolding, with the winds and snow whipping around our ears and throwing loose shingles across the valley. Then we packed it in. We spent the rest of the day talking stereo electronics and holding a music listening party on our laptops. (Matt is now a fan of the Chills, The Clipse, Dean & Britta, Field Music, and Chad VanGaalen.) Sunday morning the weather was even worse, so we made some farewell scrambled eggs and he headed back to Halifax at 10:00 in the morning to try and salvage the remnants of his weekend.

- Geoff

Day 114

Our move to Toronto is finally getting sorted out. I’ve accepted a job with RDH architects, starting on January 2. Carla and I made a great apartment find – a live/work loft conversion in Corktown. It is, as they say in real estate parlance, a ‘true’ loft, with 14-foot ceilings, enormous industrial windows and lots of raw concrete. Our friend Graham checked it out for us in person and gave his official thumbs up, so Carla drove an hour to Port Hawkesbury to FedEx the deposit to the landlord by the next day. No one in ‘Hawkesb’ry’ could tell her where to find the Fedex box, not even the post office workers, but eventually she tried the mall with the giant Wal-Mart and, sure enough, there it was. Now the only thing left to work out is how to move all our shit from Vancouver.

- Geoff

Day 93: November Rain

Obviously Carla and I are losing some of our drive to update this site regularly. The novelty of blogging has worn off, but a few people have asked for updates and I hate to think of you all getting up every morning and sitting down at your computer with a bowl of Cap’n Crunch, ready to be regaled by tales of construction derring-do, only to be disappointed again and again. Well, today’s your lucky day.

We’ve started shingling, as you may have guessed. Regarding the correct way to nail a shingle so that it can expand and contract freely in the weather, there is some confusion and debate (admittedly most of this debate is in my own head). Most commonly you use two nails, each about halfway up the shingle’s length and an inch or so from the edge. But it was pointed out to me a few years ago that this actually restricts the cedar from expanding when wet and can cause cupping (the expansion forces the center of the shingle away from the wall surface). So what do you do? I still don’t know. We’ve experimented with a few different nailing patterns but the problem seems to have no right or established answer.

Windows remain an annoyance. The replacement glass for the big south-facing unit, which arrived cracked the first time, still hasn’t shown up. On top of that water is getting in around all of the operators. This seemed like a disaster, probably caused by my inexperience at window installation, until the manufacturer told me that those mysterious bits of aluminum that arrived with the order are drip strips and meant to be screwed to the frame cap above each operator. And to think I’d been using them to pry the tops off paint cans.

The Saturday after Hallowe’en, the dregs of a hurricane swept through the province -- if 140kph winds can be called dregs. We were lucky to have already nailed strapping over most of the tar paper joints – those areas we didn’t get to were thoroughly ravaged and had to be re-covered. But really, as long as you don’t lose your electricity, experiencing a storm in the country is actually kind of calming. The pounding rain and wind put me in a deep sleep, and the next day I took a break to drive down to the Mabou Coal Mines beach and look at the massive waves being thrown back from the tail of the storm as it headed off to northern New Brunswick to die.

Next to the beach there’s a long, grassy peninsula edged by high cliffs; I climbed over a fence and headed to the top for better wave-watching. After a few minutes of staring out to sea, I turned around to find a herd of bulls surrounding me. A few horses wandered among them. Behind me was a five-story drop to the beach. I’m badly scared of anything with sharp teeth, claws, hooves or horns, and I have a vague memory of hearing on the radio that, while rare, it’s not unheard of for a person to be trampled by cows. This seemed unlikely for the moment as the animals probably wouldn’t run at a person standing in front of a cliff, but I was certain it would be the logical outcome if I tried to walk through the herd.

After a few minutes, the bulls lost interest in the strange man frozen with terror, and I was able to sneak past them back to the car. But while I was trapped in that pasture I was sure that they would trample and eat me (going carnivore for the special occasion), and no one would ever know what had happened to that city architect building his fancy box out at Hawley’s Hill.

- Geoff

Crawlspaces and Sudoku

So I spent last week UNDER the cottage. The whole week, flat on my back inside a crawlspace, stuffing squares of toxic insulation between 2x4s and then sealing them in place with chicken wire and staples. Funny pictures to come. Geoff finished the skirting.

Shingling started on Monday, with help from Geoff's Dad. He's a retired high school math teacher and a perfect pro at angles and straight lines. Things are looking good. But it's slow work, especially now that it gets dark at five.

The nights are long and quiet. Except for the Freshmart, one family restaurant and the post office, everything in Mabou is closed for the winter. We can't even steal Internet anymore. And the Aliant guy says the nearest telephone access spot is 1km away, too far for him to connect us. We're so far into the woods that we can't have a phone. I'm going to check with Eastlink.

Our nights are filled with Sudoku and New York Times crosswords. By now, we can almost handle the Thursday puzzle.

We watched The Host the other night. Geoff had seen it before and told me I'd be terrified but I wasn't. Still, it was pretty good.

xo Carla.

Day 77: Get Back to Where You Once Belonged (Thank God I’m a Country Boy)

So.

Here we are back in Nova Scotia. What gives, you ask? Isn’t this project supposed to be wrapped up until next year? And why no picture this time?

From the beginning of this project we had intended to spend only ten weeks or so in Cape Breton before moving to Toronto. But while we were preparing to drive there last week we started asking ourselves why we were rushing to return to city life – our money hasn’t run out yet, we’re enjoying ourselves in Mabou and the project could definitely use another month or two of work before winter hits. And Carla is getting lots of work done on her book in the peace and quiet of our rural retreat. In light of all that we decided to stay for another two and a half months, and hold off on “goin’ down the road” until January. I guess I’ll need to buy some warmer clothes now since I left most of mine in storage in Vancouver.

This last-second decision made our week in Toronto much less stressful – more like a vacation from a vacation, really. No need to find an apartment right away, and less pressure on me to nail down a job immediately. However, we did use some of our time to explore the city and visit some open houses – and to find with some relief that we can actually afford a house in Toronto, which is a refreshing change from Vancouver and its housing bubble. I also had some job interviews. No final decision on where I will work yet, but I expect to know in a few days once a formal offer or two floats in. There is plenty of work in Toronto right now and it looks like I’ll have my choice of firms. Good timing.

Bells Clanging played a show at the Tiger Bar on Thursday night (a ‘secret’ venue in the basement of a College Street diner) to a decent crowd. Despite our lack of practice things came off well, and I’m told I sang my few backup lines in tune. We were sandwiched on the bill between Tin Can Telephone System Switch Board Operator (or something like that), a very young band with a bass player who looked just like a very young Burton Cummings; and Brigitte, who were, to use some rock crit-math, like Devo + the Feelies + They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? – in other words, completely spastic but tuneful.

In the week before our Upper Canada jaunt, Jeremy, our carpenter friend from Vancouver, came by Mabou to help for a few days. Jeremy is a whirlwind and doesn’t need much supervision since he runs his own construction business. In three days he and Robert strapped the tar paper joints, made a temporary door, helped install all of the window frames and about half of the glazing, and began working on the skirting. I think I did something too, but it didn’t amount to much by comparison. Thanks Jeremy! And, of course, thanks to Robert too, who we won’t be seeing in Cape Breton for a while.

Installing the big window unit in the crow’s nest was very nearly a disaster. I knew the glass would be heavy but I figured four people could bring it up via the scaffolding since it was too large to fit through the floor opening inside. Jeremy rightly pointed out that this approach was a tad unrealistic given the fragility of the material (even just tilting it up off the ground you have to be careful it doesn’t crack under its own weight) and the 70 KPH winds gusting outside (an hour up the coast in Cheticamp, they call the winds 'les souetes' and they’re known to pull houses right out of the ground). Instead we cut a sort of giant mail slot in the floor and lifted the glass through it. The four of us were just barely able to accomplish the task, and for a few terrifying seconds as my grasp faltered and my arms shook uncontrollably, I really thought it was lost – afterwards we estimated the thing weighed between 350 and 400 pounds.

To make matters worse, this window angles outward by about ten degrees and the moment we leaned the glass into its frame I fully expected the entire unit to detach itself and drop 16 feet to the ground, maybe taking out some foundations posts when it hit. With a bit of bad luck, I imagined, the whole building might come down (this is a vision I have a lot, and it’s usually accompanied by some vague thought that I’ll try to jump out one of the windows as it falls – a logical plan to be sure). It didn’t. Or hasn’t, yet. Then again, I’ve been away for a week now, so I can’t say for sure.

- Geoff

PS the reason there's no picture for this entry is that Blogger is a piece of crap and takes hours to upload a 400KB image. I don't have the patience for it today.

If Tyra Banks Saw Our Artspace, She'd Declare It Fierce.

Hello lovely readers.

Are you still out there? Apologies for my complete and total disappearance from this blog during the past month or so. During that time, I completed my MFA in Creative Writing. Good boy yourself, as my grandma used to say. As Geoff mentioned, now I'm in Banff, trying to finish the second half of the manuscript. I would love to post a photo of the pretty deer that I found munching on leaves outside the theatre building this morning. Alas, I was only able to capture its image with my cheapo disposable camera. Who knows when I'll ever print those pictures, let alone scan them. (Update: My friend, Mike Kennedy, who graciously drove me from Calgary to Banff, took the above photo outside a place where we'd stopped to eat brunch. Postcard perfect, eh?)

Besides writing, I'm doing some Banff-y things like hiking. Honestly, I'm not doing much of that, although I did walk from the Banff Centre to downtown the other day. I was in search of vital toiletries, namely eye drops, moisturizers and hand creams because the air is so damn dry here. Today I attended a Pilates class and then a free classical concert in the Music and Sound building. Then tonight I'd organized an America's Next Top Model party in my room with some of my new female writer friends, but apparently this program doesn't exist in Banff. Which is probably a good thing. After all, we're here to write, not to get distracted by Tyra Banks.

Anyway, this blog is about our artspace so I'll quit with the tangents. I'll have you know that, despite Geoff's worries and lamentations, our artspace rocks. I mean, like, totally. While I was revising my thesis, it was so hard not to run down to the work site every five minutes and ogle the progress. It's completely beautiful. The second floor view is to die for. I even found the courage to climb up to the roof and it's utterly jaw-dropping up there. Geoff: take a picture of the roof and post it, would you?

Thanks for all of your comments and support. This has seriously been one of the best summers of my life.

xo Carla.

Day 50: Indian Summer

Carla has run off to the Wired Writing Workshop in Banff to spend two weeks working on her book and getting one on one mentoring from Lynn Coady, one of her favorite Canadian authors. It’s a big deal for her and she’s been waiting for this all summer, but her departure, along with the sudden cold weather, has made it abruptly clear to me that our time in Cape Breton is running out – only two weeks left.

It feels as though we’ve barely started. Not only has the novelty of the experience made time pass quickly, but we’re so far behind schedule that I’m now scrambling to finish just enough so that the cottage can stand up to the winter onslaught. The application of building paper is nearly finished, roofing is nearly complete and the windows will be installed next week, but shingles aren’t going to happen this year, and neither are plumbing or wiring or, obviously, any interior work whatsoever.

If I could stick around and keep working for another month I would, but with no income our money isn’t going to hold out too much longer. Luckily we’ve managed to stick closely to our budget, so we should be able to replenish our savings in time to do more work in the spring.

After dropping Carla off at the Halifax airport I picked up the skylight to bring back to Mabou, as well as the plywood we’ll use to clad the projecting porch and ‘crow’s nest’ volumes. It’s marine grade Merengi -- as exotic as that sounds the price per squre foot ends up comparable to that of regular old shingles, and the wood’s strong grain and rich red colour will contrast beautifully with the cedar shingles as they turn silver with age. Now the trick is to design the panel joints well enough so that it doesn’t meet the usual soggy, swollen and rot-ridden fate of plywood cladding after a season in the rain and snow.

I was lucky to make it back alive with the wood. As I pulled out of the warehouse parking lot, fully loaded with supplies, I felt the truck shudder and heard a crash. Looking in the rear view mirror and letting out a particularly nasty profanity, I saw the wood and the spare tire I’d used to weigh it down scattered in the middle of the busy intersection – the truck’s rear gate hadn’t latched properly and had let go at the first bump. The light changed and oncoming cars started honking in irritation as I ran across the intersection and began struggling with the heavy sheets and pulling them one by one back into the parking lot. To my amazement, despite the fact that there was plenty of room to maneuver around the mess, two cars drove right over it, leaving tire tracks on the wood and seeming completely oblivious to my plight. When I finished, I turned to head back into the warehouse to elicit help reloading the truck and saw that one of the workers was sitting on a nearby picnic table on his break, languidly smoking and staring at me with the faintly hostile, blank expression that backwoods hicks in horror movies always give to city folk who stop to ask for directions. I had the sense that he had been sitting there the whole time, watching. I hated him for a moment with great passion and stared back until he slowly turned, threw his butt on the ground and headed inside.

- Geoff

Day 45: Danny 'n' Me

Carla and I both have large extended families in Cape Breton (I’ve got about 15 aunts and uncles and somewhere around 30 cousins on my Mom’s side alone), and some of them like to stop by periodically to check out the project. None of them have much interest in contemporary architecture. Their reactions most commonly involve some variation on the phrase ‘it certainly is different!’ Some seem enthusiastic and impressed, though I always imagine they’re just trying to be supportive. Others don’t say much at all.

I haven’t had much direct contact with other designers of any stripe since we arrived in Nova Scotia, and it’s a strange experience to find myself in a place like Mabou trying to explain what I’m doing without recourse to the usual archi-speak terms or concepts. It’s useless to talk about wrappers and cores, or served and servant spaces, or all the other terms I can use when speaking to other designers. As a result I’ve been thinking about the way architects conceptualize things, and how closely those things should relate to the real process of building and making.

In my mind there’s a spectrum between, say, Daniel Libeskind and Louis Kahn. At one end is the purely formal, where abstraction is complete: a building is a crystal, and how it is made is, to the architect, almost literally immaterial. At the other end is the systems-based, where construction technology is illustrated in the form itself – the separations between building systems are fetishized and nothing is purely decorative.



Looking at my building as it is now, covered in OSB (and looking strangely more naked than it did a week ago), it seems closer to the former position than the latter – and, philosophically speaking, that is somewhere I never expected to find myself. I was trained to think of things in terms of systems, and to me this design is an assembly of three parts – the service core or ‘tower’, the plywood-clad ‘crow’s nest’, and the shingled ‘sleeve’. But they’re all made in exactly the same way as parts of the same inextricable mass of studs, joists and sheathing. The differences between them will be visible mainly in terms of finishes. Maybe that’s OK. To me, there is still something deeply satisfying about a space that can be seen clearly in terms of just a few constituent parts – even if it’s all just cosmetic.

- Geoff

Day 34: Burnout

If any of you are keeping track (and the depressing lack of comments on these pages suggests otherwise), you’ll have noticed that Carla and I have been a little slack lately with our blogging schedule. There are two reasons for this. One: I haven’t had a day off since the beginning of the month. Since Carla is swamped with her thesis and you need at least two people to work effectively on a project like this, so when people show up for short periods it seems foolish to take time off while they’re here. Carla’s dad left for Halifax last Wednesday, but was replaced the following day by my father, who was able to help until today. Then John Robert called to say he could come back Sunday night and work through Wednesday (he’s nothing if not eager to help, to a kind of scary degree). This would all be manageable, except our friend Scott arrives Thursday to help for a couple of days… will I be able keep up the pace, still without a day off? I’m feeling the burn.

Oh yeah, reason two for our lack of blog entries: as I alluded to above, Carla passes in her thesis on Wednesday. Needless to say she is more stressed than I, so I suppose I should quit complaining.

Today we framed the ‘crow’s nest’ – it’ll house the 12-foot writing desk with the prime view. It’s the most formally dramatic element of the design, and I’m pleased with it so far. We’ve been able to frame the roof in such a way that the necessary ventilation (which in a more traditional house would be through the eave soffit) will happen through a continuous slot vent just above that window. It should look pretty sharp.

Roof framing is over half complete, which means that roof cladding will come next… this will be the moment of truth. There are areas up there I’m terrified of, since as an architect I’ve learned to fear and loathe flashing and roof membrane details like wrathful gods. So why did I design this roof with internal corners and awkward angles galore? Lucky for me the parapet means no one will be able to see much of it, and if it leaks I won't be sued.

- Geoff

Day 25: Anhedonia

With one of the second floor walls framed, you can now begin to see the final form and scale of the project. It’s strange and kind of thrilling to see the building this far along, with no major problems. I should be happy and relaxed all the time now. And yet... every morning when I wake up already exhausted, my fingers cramped, I remind myself that this is a unique time in my life, one that my future self will look wistfully back on. No office, no one to answer to, and I get to spend all my days out in the sun working on something I conceived. But all the petty worries associated with construction keep getting in the way of my enjoyment.

For example, Carla’s parents have to head back to Halifax later this week, and Lynette and Simon are leaving too (they’ve already been ridiculously generous in spending over a week with us). This means that we’ll temporarily be without help. Seeing as the roof framing and the sheathing of the second story will be starting up soon, that’s going to make things tough. Carla and I weren’t built to carry all that plywood up two stories alone. Our stick-arms are made for typing, or gently strumming guitars.

On the other hand, I’ve been tentatively offered a position at a good firm in Toronto. I can’t say where, but needless to say this takes a huge weight off my mind. At least my future self will have a job to look wistfully back from.

- Geoff

Can You Spot the Sex Symbol?

Hey y'all,

We're back in Halifax for the long weekend. Catching up on correspondence and bills and all that fun stuff. Actually I'm also frantically throwing together an application to the BC Arts Council. Story of my life.

We had some fun visitors this week. Walter dropped by with Anne-Marie and Sage. I have a picture of him pretending to hammer a nail into a wall, but he actually spent most of his time lying on the beach and whipper-snipping Robert Frank's lawn. Also a bunch of Geoff's relatives stopped by to examine the progress. And the fiddler Joey Beaton made a visit because he's also a Commissioner and I needed him to sign our Affidavit of Family Gifting (I won't go into what that is since it's boring).

Lynette, Simon, Mom and Dad have been a huge help. It's a full house (cottage), but everyone's doing their part. Mom's a blueberry-blackberry-picking fiend. And the moment we finish eating one meal, she's planning the next. Or hanging laundry on the clothesline. Or vacuuming our muddy tracks off the floor. Or running to the Freshmart for more groceries. Tireless, that woman.

Lynette's a lovely companion and awfully handy in the kitchen. Simon inspires Geoff and Dad to go shirtless. The other day he was wearing a small pair of red shorts and nothing else and Mom said to Lynette, "Simon is like a sex symbol." Holy that was funny. Dad and Geoff have become a real team, constantly working out problems and strategizing.

The other day, the five of us erected an enormous 12-foot wall on the second story and it was, hands down, one of the scariest moments of my life. The wall was ridiculously heavy and we had to slowly raise it in a completely controlled manner so that it wouldn't slip off the edge and crash into the field down below. We'd inch it up a little. Then a little more. Then a little more, until it was almost level. Then Geoff ran around positioning bracing. Every slight wind made me nervous, made me imagine it toppling over the side. But we got it in place and now it's majestic. I don't even want to put up the other three walls. That one just looks so beautiful on its own, stretching into the sky like that.

- Carla

Day 23.

Perhaps my hammering skills still need some work.

- Geoff

Day 18 - The Curse of the Sleepless Architect

Most nights now my sleep is broken by bad dreams or half-formed panicked thoughts about some mistake in the design. Last night I lied awake for about an hour trying to stop myself from wondering if there will be enough operable windows in the studio. To reduce the window costs, a few weeks ago when placing the order, I switched some operators with fixed units. At 3:30 this morning, it suddenly seemed obvious that in hot weather the interior is going to be stuffy and overheated. To ease my mind, I emailed the window supplier this morning with some revisions that, at this late stage, might not come cheap. I can never stop second-guessing myself. Being a perfectionist is both exhausting and costly.

Carla’s dad, John Robert, who’s been helping since last week, is equally obsessive. As a carpenter by trade who built his own cottage (where we’re staying) almost completely by himself, he looks at building from a pragmatic point of view. My approach to detailing, on the other hand, comes out of a minimalist aesthetic where the final goal is to create very precise alignments between finished surfaces. This often requires some counterintuitive detailing of structural elements. In one instance, I need a carrying beam for the second floor cantilever to be suspended above a window, exactly where it should logically never go. Luckily John Robert is very accepting, even when I can’t explain myself in clear terms and resort to saying simply, ‘I just want it to look a certain way’, or ‘It’ll all make sense later on’. But working side by side every day, the difference in mindset between the Architect and the Builder has never been clearer to me.

- Geoff

Butt.

Geoff and I are totally picking up Cape Breton accents. And he's acquired carpenter's butt. Who woulda thunk it?

- Carla

Friends at Work

This was a great week! Mom and Dad came down on Tuesday afternoon and immediately started helping out at the site (Dad) and in the kitchen (Mom). Mom and I picked a strainer full of blueberries from the fields out back. That night, they headed to a dance in Brook Village while Geoff and I anxiously awaited Matt's and Lucas' arrival. We killed time by watching Extras. The one with Chris Martin is soooo good. Matt and Lucas had some trouble finding the driveway, and ended up traveling a ways down the dirt road that runs alongside the cottage. But in the end, they found the place and settled in for the night.

We spent Wednesday heaving shovelfuls of gravel into the bed of my once-pristine and recently-purchased white Ford Ranger. I had to keep reminding myself that it is, first and foremost, a work truck. Besides, all the dirt and bugs washed out pretty nicely with a high-powered hose. But then the next day, we did the same thing all over again. Two more times! But again, the truck washed clean. Mostly. Lucas and Dad were a huge help during these gravel sessions. The sun was insanely hot and the black flies were out in full force, so having two more people made the job run much faster.

That night, I think I made some Kraft pizzas. Or maybe we had a BBQ. Then Geoff, Matt, Lucas and I went attempted to watch the sun set at the Mabou Coal Mines beach, but a detour to an ice cream barn prevented that from happening. Hey, sometimes Tiger ice cream is just worth it, you know? We went to the beach anyway but dusk was coming on fast. I found a cave that struck me as the perfect place to sleep if I ever found myself stuck outside for the night. But then a whole bunch of screaming black bats flew out of it and I changed my mind. We sat on some rocks and took pictures and watched the dull glow of a lantern creep down the side of the mountain across the way. Then it started raining. Then the lantern got closer. Then I got scared. Then we realized it was some campers looking for a place to pitch a tent. I wanted to suggest the bat cave, but decided against it.

After that, it pretty much rained all the time. It stopped now and then, allowing the boys to continue with the platform. (I was holed up in the basement, trying to revise my thesis.) Mom picked a million blueberries. And we all went to the dance in Glencoe on Thursday night. The fiddler was about ten years old, and really amazing. I danced with Geoff, Dad, Matt, Lucas and a messed-up man with Afghanistan written across his shirt. He'd just returned from a tour of duty, where he had "seen things." Then he said, "But you try not to look, eh?" Matt danced with my mom. Lucas danced with a really hot blond girl from Ohio. Go Lucas.

All in all, a fantastic time. Thanks Matt and Lucas!!

- Carla

Day 11 - Platform

When I'm building a piece of furniture or an architectural model, the most satisfying part isn't seeing the finished product, but rather reaching a certain point, different every time, when the most basic structure of the thing is visible and I can picture the finished product in its perfect state. As the work continues, imperfections begin to pile up and I can no longer fool myself into believing the object will ever be exactly as I imagined it.

The studio is somewhere near that highly satisfying point right now. We have a platform, off the ground, perfectly level, proof that the building is actually coming into existence but so far free of compromise. When it's all finished I'll only be able to see the mistakes and think of what could have been. Are all architects like this?

- Geoff

Finally, some real progress.

The backhoe showed up at 8:30 Saturday morning and, save for a few short rain delays, construction has been nonstop since then. The foundation trenches were dug by 10:30 am. There were three trenches, each two feet wide by twenty feet long by four feet deep. Carla and I spent the rest of Saturday erecting batter boards to align the foundations and getting the hollow plastic sonotubes set in place by nightfall.

Naively thinking we could, all alone, shovel about 18 cubic yards of earth back into the ground on Sunday, we started out early but gave up by lunch time, our lower backs throbbing and our scorched skin covered in fly bites. (Tommy, who dug the holes, told us that rubbing a sheet of Bounce over our skin would keep the flies away. And it did, but only temporarily.) Then we went up to Carla’s aunt Carol’s and called another backhoe guy to see if he could come down and refill the ditches. This time, we called a guy named Finley Campbell who lives in Mabou. He’s a rather strange man, reticent and extremely hard to read -- my phone conversation with him Sunday afternoon went something like this:

Me: Hi there, is this Finley?

[silence]

Me: Uh… I called a few weeks ago and we discussed some digging I wanted done down at John Robert Gillis’ place. Well, we’re looking for someone again, this time to do some backfilling. Are you available?

[silence. I start to think he might have hung up]

Finley: Well, I suppose you’re looking for it done right away…

Me: Well, as soon as possible, yeah.

Finley: [inaudible comment]

Me: Sorry?… Hello?

Finley: I suppose I could come at dinnertime.

Me: Great… so around five or six o’clock?

Finley: Mmm. [hangs up]

That ‘mmm’ sounded suspiciously noncommittal, but in the end he arrived on time (people here are generally very punctual, which has been the opposite of my expectation for such a small rural community), and when I offered a handshake he looked at my palm as though I was about to poke him with a stick.

Monday morning we had the concrete poured by a cheery, sloppy man named Sonny. He left me the gift of a two foot-high mound of concrete on the ground next to the site, saying ‘lots of times people need some extra’, but really meaning ‘I’ve got some leftover concrete sitting in the chute here, and I’m not about to push it back in the mixer so you’ll have to spend the next hour shoveling it off your lawn. You’re welcome.'

That afternoon Carla’s parents showed up to help, and then Matt and Lucas arrived later that night. I cannot express how thankful we are that there are friends and family willing to spend their summer vacations doing construction work on someone else’s project. For free. Well, I suppose I can express it. We’re very thankful.

We’re almost out of the ground! A thunderstorm prevented us from finishing the regrading of the soil yesterday but we’ll get that done today. Framing starts today too. Things are shaping up…

- Geoff

Directions, Part II

Upon arriving in CB we realized our post last week offering directions to the site was a bit inaccurate and might get some people lost.

It turns out the cottage is a bit further along the highway than we remembered, so for those of you on your way down (no one here says up, as you might assume from looking at a map): Once you reach the Mabou bridge you should continue along for almost exactly 4 km to reach the site. A few hundred meters before you find us, you'll pass an old farm on the left called Hawley's Hill. We're on the right, address 12266. The marker is hard to see, so go slow and try to arrive before dark.

See you soon!

Day 3

Cape Breton is a beautiful and frustrating place.

We arrived late Tuesday night at our idyllic patch of land, rested after a week in Halifax and ready to start building. After almost three days there's not much to see except some stakes in the ground, but when you spend those days trying in vain to find cell phone reception (screw you, Rogers), then using Carla's aunt's phone instead to call every friggin' backhoe owner on the island, finding one who's got a few free hours to dig a hole only to have him cancel due to the rainstorm of the year, then having to phone all those same people again to find another machine, and meanwhile the building inspector tells you he needs the owner's signature on the building permit application but the owner just drove back to Halifax and you have no idea where to find a fax machine, and once that's dealt with you have nothing to do but stare at the empty site and wait -- well, you can still get stressed out. Things move at a different pace here and I'm just now starting to sync up.

Despite these rather petty complaints there is a lot to be happy about. We should have the hole dug by tomorrow morning, the foundations poured by Monday, and framing started by mid-week. All-told we're still more or less on schedule. Costs have generally been under my projections so far. I'm not in an office all day. And last night we drove over to Inverness to see our friend Joel Plaskett play a sold-out solo acoustic show at the Arts Centre. Every time I see Joel play the crowd is a bit more devoted than last time, and this was no exception. A cluster of Irish hooligan-ettes in the front row were extremely drunk and smitten. Joel seemed a bit put off when they insisted on singing and clapping along to even the morose ballads.

More next week.

- Geoff

Plans

Some people have been asking, understandably, to see plans of the studio. Here they are, along with the south elevation (sorry if the resolution is a bit poor):

Calendar.

Scroll down to the June 5th posting for updates to the Google calendar. The list of helpers and work timeline is constantly changing. We need lots of help for September. Let us know if you can lend a hand!

Goodbye White Shark...

Hello White Whale.

Directions to Mabou

I just copied these from MapQuest (search Halifax, NS to Mabou, NS):

1. Get on the MacDonald Bridge towards Dartmouth.
2. ANGUS L MACDONALD BRIDGE becomes NANTUCKET AVE. 0.2 miles
3. Turn LEFT onto VICTORIA RD / HWY-322. 0.3 miles
4. Turn RIGHT onto WOODLAND AVE / PROVINCIAL ROUTE 118 N. Continue to follow PROVINCIAL ROUTE 118 N. 9.9 miles
5. Take the HWY-102 N exit toward AIRPORT. 0.1 miles
6. Merge onto PROVINCIAL ROUTE 102 N. 46.2 miles
7. Merge onto PROVINCIAL ROUTE 104 E / TRANS CANADA HWY E toward CAPE BRETON. 104.7 miles
8. Enter next roundabout and take 2nd exit onto PROVINCIAL SECONDARY ROUTE 19 N. 27.6 miles
9. Go STRAIGHT. 0.5 miles
10. Stay STRAIGHT to go onto PROVINCIAL SECONDARY ROUTE 19. 8.1 miles
11. End at Mabou, NS CA

Now, the hard part. Stay on Highway 19. You have to drive all the way through Mabou, towards Inverness. You will pass the Shrine on the right side, drive over a small bridge, go up a long hill, pass the Red Shoe, drive for 2 or 3 more minutes. The highway levels off and curves to the left. Go slow! You'll see a blue cottage on the right, which is my parents' place (see pic). Turn right down the dirt road.

If you reach Glenora Falls, you've gone too far. Geoff's cell number is 902.951.0339 in case you get lost. We'll try to erect a proper marker once we get down there.

xo Carla.

One Giant Leap

Geoff here -- after a long and shameful absence from this blog, here's my debut. I'll try to post regularly now, since we're making real progress, finally, towards starting construction.

The big move from Vancouver to Halifax on Monday was, to say the least, arduous - not to mention the lead-up. Two nonstop weeks of preparation, every workday lunch hour devoted to buying moving supplies (the day I tried to carry nine very large collapsed cardboard boxes four blocks through Yaletown was particularly embarrassing, looking as it did like a poorly executed Buster Keaton routine), or cancelling some insurance policy, or trying to make it to Memphis Blues BBQ so I could finally sample their famous pulled-pork sandwich before leaving the west coast (I finally did, only when passing by the place by pure chance about four hours before our flight). Still, we saved our most focused worrying for the cat, a nervous homebody who had to spend 8 hours in two consecutive cargo holds. Happily she's adjusting well to her home in Carla's parents' condo -- after an initial 24 hours under the bed she's getting back to her usual curtain-climbing and forearm-clawing regimen.

Carla and I have begun looking for a truck - not much construction can happen until some transportation is acquired to move all the supplies around. If we can sort this out by this weekend and head to the island right away, we might have foundations poured by the following Saturday. A little behind, but who needs schedules? (anyone who knows me well can see this is a total bluff - I really, really love schedules.)

We received the site survey and a copy of the application for subdivision of the property (submitted by the surveyor to the county) today... accompanied, of course, by a pretty hefty invoice. I should explain that we're splitting off a piece of land from Carla's parents property in Carla's name, so that we can put a mortgage on the building at the end of construction. Anyway. I suddenly realized, looking at the money we already owe without having erected anything, that our operating budget may not be as airtight as I'd assumed. Surveys, legal fees, and much of the site work such as a septic tank and field - we never gave much thought to those things. Frantically I've begun adding them in. All the spending finally seems real... and terrifying. To stay within our budget for this year we'll have to phase the building as much as possible; insulation, plumbing and the wood stove will definitely have to happen in 2008. Which may not be a big deal since we probably won't have time to get to those anyhow. Still, that means no Christmas by the fire in Cape Breton as I've secretly imagined...

Bye Bye Vancouver

So we had a Bye Bye Vancouver Party on Saturday night, which 40 of our closest Vancouver friends attended. Yay for friends! Yay for sparklers and wine! Yay for helium balloons! Yay for Snifty Snakes, a bizarre board game made in Burnaby, BC.

Today I ate sushi and went to the VAG with two work friends, Deanna and Grace, for what was probably the last time in a long while. Tomorrow we bid farewell to Courtenay and Jeff, and to our beloved station wagon. The new owner seems very cool. She's already christened it "the white shark" and promises to take it on many adventures.

Tonight Geoff and J.F. tore down our Geoff-built shelving units. Next, the wall comes down.

As for the Mabou project, our land survey is finally finished. And yesterday Geoff ordered the windows, which gave me a little thrill. Now we just have to get down there and build. We leave one week from today! Hopefully we'll see many of our Halifax peeps soon. Maybe at the Sloan show at the Marquee next Friday? Oh, and we still need helpers for the last two weeks of September...

Car = Gone

We sold the car!

Another View.

Hi friends,

Here's another view of Geoff's fantastic artspace design. A few of you have contacted me to see if we've arrived in Nova Scotia yet, which we have not. The project is now taking place through August and September. And we still need your help! Especially during the last half of September. Thanks to everyone who has contacted me about volunteering; I've penciled you into the Google Calendar below.

Currently, Geoff and I are (frantically) packing up our belongings in preparation for the move. God, there are so many things to do. Sell the car, find a way to transport the cat, get a land survey finished, finish my thesis, secure financing, blah blah blah.

But it'll be worth it! Can't wait to see you all soon...

P.S. If you live in Vancouver, we're having a big Farewell to Vancouver party on Saturday, July 21st on my rooftop. Contact me for address deets.

Calendar

Enticing Reasons to Join Us.

Mabou has gorgeous beaches.



And Charlotte's gonna be there.



xo Carla.

Mabou Artspace

Project: The Studio
Goal: To build a 450 square foot multipurpose artspace
Where: Mabou, Nova Scotia (about four hours from Halifax)
Timeline: August and September 2007 (note: the original July and August dates proved too soon for us)
Team: Project Architect Geoff Miller, Land Owner Carla Gillis and as many family and friends as possible

xo Carla.