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First occupants
comments (0) January 4th, 2008 in Blogs
Kevin Ireton, editor-at-large
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Those of us who build and remodel houses are also the first to occupy them. You can’t help it. The guy rolling joists into place gets the first view from the deck. Later, sitting on sawhorses and upturned drywall buckets, he and his crew eat the first meals in the house. They play the first music (framers like rock and roll), spill the first blood, have the first arguments.
All of this came to mind last week as I was running baseboard in our new bedroom. Actually, I was supposed to be running baseboard, but instead I was staring at the pattern of sunlight cast on the wall by the window in the new dormer. When you’re building or remodeling for yourself, all these first experiences take on deeper meaning.
Although our little three-quarter Cape has sat here for 200 years, the western sun never got upstairs until now. Thanks to Christopher Alexander (and all his disciples who’ve written for Fine Homebuilding over the years), I know the value of light entering a room from two sides. One tiny shed dormer transformed a dark attic into a jewel of a room.
So I was transfixed by that patch of sunlight on the wall, knowing it was there by dint of my efforts and that one day soon I would sit nearby and watch the sun set over Mount Tom. I was so distracted, in fact, that shortly thereafter I shoved a half-inch chisel into the tip of my left ring finger, spilling first blood in the room.
Or maybe it was the music that distracted me. I was listening to Willie Nelson’s tribute to the songs of Cindy Walker. One particularly haunting line on the second track always gets my attention:
“Does she still close her eyes when she dances?
I just wonder…not that I care.”
I’m not sure what the room’s first argument was. My wife and I disagreeing about where the bed should go or, more likely, me arguing with myself about the best way to do something, an affliction common to those associated with this magazine.
posted in: Blogs, remodeling, windows, bedroom
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About this blog
As the editor of Fine Homebuilding, I spend my weekdays trying to produce a magazine that will satisfy 300,000 of the most demanding builders, both professional and amateur. As the owner of a 200-year old Cape in Connecticut’s Litchfield Hills, I spend weekends working on my house.
Each activity invariably informs, and complicates, the other. In this blog, I’ll offer observations from both worlds -- publishing and building -- with the hope of providing some useful or at least entertaining insights.
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