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.