Housebuilding Week 5: All Hands on Deck - Part 2
- Elisa
- Jun 27, 2024
- 3 min read
Updated: May 5
Hi Friend,
To go along with my "all hands on deck" theme, I want to mention some other team members who are integral to this project: those on children/house/kitchen duty.
Let's face it - it's hard enough for me to run this household under our "normal" circumstances. And there was certainly no way that I could manage this project - understanding each step in the building process, making design decisions, checking the site, calling the architect, making headway with the next stage in the project - while increasing my household duties with extra people living here, all of whom need adequate nourishment to sustain their hard physical labor.
So I was so thankful when Jordan agreed to spend her summer here to help manage things inside the house, and Leah agreed to help her. There are so many other opportunities these girls could have been pursuing - traveling, theater, camps, fun summer jobs - that to choose to make huge meals daily, do mountains of laundry, clean bathrooms, and watch kids is a big sacrifice (even if you're getting paid for it). Thank you for supporting this crazy cohort, girls! You're making it all work!
Anyway, every weekday, Jordan has been making a hot breakfast, providing lunch and snacks, and cooking delicious dinners (linguini carbonara, Korean rice bowl, tikka masala ...). Almost every week, she'll make trips to our local co-op, the local farm store, the local bakery, the local dairy farm, our CSA, and then drive way out to Costco. She started out buying 6 gallons of milk a week, but last week, we went through 5 gallons in 3 days (I think Judah was the main culprit!). Jordan is naturally very thrifty and likes to make use of everything, which has worked pretty well ... except when she made 4 times the amount of orzo salad she meant to make, and then forced us to eat the leftovers for way too many days in a row. And if it's any indication of how well she's been feeding us, several of us may be gaining weight; one person (who shall remain anonymous) reported that he gained 4 pounds just in the first week!
And just so you know that it's not all rainbows and roses over here, there have been plenty of conflicts over who's watching the kids and whose responsibility is it to clean up after dinner and where someone can go to be alone and undisturbed. It can be a bit messy, but no one can deny that it's a memorable experience!
Quick update on the house: all the rafters are up, sheathing is almost done, and we're getting ready to start the insulation.
Until next time,
xo
P.S. A snippet of how we bless our meals:
P.S. Having small children again has reminded me of the need for more connection, support, and education around holistic living in our community, so I'm starting a chapter of Holistic Moms Network here locally (https://holisticmoms.org/). Our official kick-off event will be in August, but I'll be announcing a date for our gathering in July shortly. Please join us!
P.P.S. Our design challenge this week was deciding on the number of windows upstairs. The FirstDay Cottage kit offers only 3 sizes of windows - small, medium, and large. I decided on the placement of the mudroom door and the kitchen windows based on having 3 large windows above. But I didn't realize that the corner of the windows would expose some of the rafter (this is possible because the walls are outside of the structure, and David Howard said it would be fine). Which do you like better?
Next post: Housebuilding Week 6: Raise the Roof
How do you manage to do what you do??? So inspiring!