Work In Progress

You may be wondering why I have been so quiet lately. Well, one reason is that there is no high-speed internet in our neck of the woods, and a masochist I'm not.

We're also preparing for the big cottage renovation, and got our building permit last week.

Unfortunately, the proposed addition is located exactly over our current bathroom, which must be demolished before we can proceed with the construction project. This means a summer of no hot and cold running water, no showers, and no toilet!!!

Well, the first two we can do without, temporarily, but not the latter. So, I have been busy building a temporary dry toilet, aka outhouse, privy or biffy.

Here's what we started with - thick mosquito-infested bush behind the cottage.

The first job was to select a site with the right Qi and polarity. We settled on a soutwesterly orientation corresponding to the Kun trigram (坤) whose nature is Earth and personality is receptive. It is the mother of the six gua children and the mate of the Heaven or Qian gua. The meaning of Kun is receptive energy, and that which yields, which seemed perfectly appropriate for the structure's function.

I used the machete I picked up on my honeymoon in Guatemala in 1979 to clear the brush. The sand from the 4'6" pit under the privy served as suitable fill for building the access path from the driveway to the structure.

A solid foundation is essential. These boulders weighing up to 100 lbs. come from Donny's sandpit. I removed all the organic topsoil before placing and leveling them, so they rest directly on a bed of compacted sand several metres deep .


Once the pit was dug and the foundation in place, the framing could begin. This is a view of the structure from the rear, facing the lake with the cottage to the left. I can already imagine the joy of perching here on a tranquil summer morning, listening to the birds and enjoying a fresh breeze off the water.

Desigining and then cutting and assembling the roof trusses was the most complex part of the project. I suck at cutting angles with a circular saw, so despite all the Pythagorean geometry that went into my calculations, it took several tries to make all the trusses the same size and shape.

Installing the sheathing for the roof, and then the shingles, was by far the most physically demanding task so far, made more difficult by the 12:12 slope of the roof, the fact that one of my ladders is too short and the other too long, and by the swarms of mosquitos that wait to attack until the moment when you are balancing on one foot, 10' in the air, with 20 lbs. of shingles in one hand, a hammer in the other, and a mouth full of nails. I was lucky that my good buddy John from down the road was able to help with this phase.

The exterior cladding of 1" x 6" tongue and groove pine (about $1.00 CAD a foot) started going up yesterday. I ran out of lumber before I could finish so I'll have to make a trip to Home Hardware for more.