Making Ripples: post-corporate adventures in Floyd County Virginia

Floyd Earth Day 2008

Come celebrate our place in the world with a focus on the topic: Water and Life in Floyd County.

The April 19 event at Floyd County High School will be free and open to the public.

Speakers, panelists, vendors of water and nature-care-related products as well as water, soils and geology professionals will be present. They will meet with interested county residents who want to learn how to help maintain both adequate quantity and quality of water in the county.

Since its inception by Senator Gaylord Nelson in 1970, Earth Day has been an annual opportunity for civic and church groups, schools and universities, municipalities and national organizations to take a fresh look at how we might work more effectively towards a healthier planet.

We may not agree on the global issues or the solutions, but we can all agree that the planet could be cleaner and healthier for the living things that reside here.

Locally, our primary concerns are water, sustainability and earth-care issues in Floyd County and the surrounding region.

Visit the website for Floyd Earth Day 2008 and get involved in the future of Floyd. Do your part to keep Floyd green.

There is a signup sheet for vendors, volunteers and those who just want to be informed of developments.

Gone in Nine Minutes - the future of moving is here

Moving containers take a great deal of stress out of moving and they offer the potential for saving money at the same time. PODS stands for Portable On Demand Storage.

In a recent example of a PODS move from Charlotte, NC to Floyd, VA, this PODS container was delivered by truck and was placed in the townhouse driveway in less than ten minutes.

A day later, all of the furniture from the two-bedroom townhouse was loaded into the container by trained professionals in three two hours and the homeowner locked the container. There was no messing around with inventory lists and box counts. The owner's stuff goes in the container and it is locked up, period.

The next day the fully loaded PODS container was picked up and removed by one driver. Here is the slide show of the PODS container being picked up and removed in nine minutes. Turn on the captions feature on Flickr to get the full effect.

Compare this to the extreme circus of traditional moving company activities. In a traditional move, a huge van pulls up and blocks the street for several hours while a crew of people cram your possessions around or on top of somebody else's household furnishings.

The driver is making an inventory list and giving directions while workers carry boxes, lamps, and furniture on to the truck. Near the end of this activity, workers are creating and sealing boxes for all the odd things that are left over, like your golf clubs and the weed whacker and the left over skate boards. (All in same box - marked with a cryptic number)

When you are given the box count, it is a miracle if the count means anything to you and you hope that it is complete. You sign the inventory anyway and hope for the best.

When a moving truck arrives at your new home, it is a different truck and your household possessions have been rearranged and crammed in around somebody else's possessions. You can tell because they loaded your furniture into the side of truck "A" and they are taking your furniture out of the top rear of truck "B".

Your furniture has been piled high on top of other people's furniture and they have to hand your furniture down piece by piece in 108 degree weather. They are passing your heavy living room furniture down ten feet while hanging off the back of a van with no lift gate and no ladders.

Images of unloading a Mexican bus come to mind while this is going on. The only difference is there are no crates of chickens.

Four hours later when the dust clears, you find that some of your possessions are missing  and you start negotiating with the driver to get the situation handled.

Container moving offers a great deal of flexibility and it does not hold you hostage while movers madly scramble to unload a truck and get your furniture placed in inclement weather. If your new home is not ready, you can store the containers until you are ready to unload them. If they get delivered and the weather turns inclement, you leave the containers sealed until you are ready to unload them

I have written about SmartMove which neighbor Tom King and I have used successfully. Their smaller containers offer a little more flexibility in tight situations and steep driveways, but the delivery and pickup of five containers took an hour versus the 9 minute pickup I witnessed with this recent POD move made yesterday.

See the images on Flickr to get the full significance of what this new container moving system can do. From the arrival of the truck and its driver, to the departure of the truck, driver and POD container, it took only 9 minutes from start to finish!

That's hardly enough time to drink a cup of coffee! Compare this to your last move...

Floyd Building Department Helps Homeowners

Anyone who has applied for a building permit elsewhere is in for a pleasant surprise when they get to Floyd County, Virginia. 

Jimmy Whitten and his staff are a huge asset to Floyd homeowners dealing with the myriad requirements that come with building or remodeling a home. When you apply for a building permit in Floyd, you know immediately that these people are here to help you!

The helpful attitude of the Floyd County Building Inspection Department is evident from the minute that you walk in the door and meet Dawn Underwood. She is the person you meet first and she is a huge help in navigating the many details that have to be handled.

Jimmy is the Building Official responsible for the Building Inspection Department. He is certified to do electrical, plumbing, and mechanical inspections and has been doing inspections for most of his adult life. A Building Official generally oversees Building Inspectors, but in Floyd County, Jimmy Whitten does it all.

He has an open door policy from 8 to 9 in the morning when people can come in and ask questions or discuss problems.

This is especially valuable for the do-it-yourself homebuilder, but I had a experienced contractor working on my house who spoke approvingly of this practice because he said this enabled him to keep up with changes to the building codes and figure out a solution to any problem.

Jimmy also does house plan reviews in which he goes over the house plans with customers. Other places offer plan reviews, but they are done when the customer is not present.

For example, someone wishing to build a straw bale home would find that there is nothing in the code for a straw bale home but there is provision for alternate building methods. Working with Jimmy Whitten, a builder of such a home would find that there are approved ways to meet all requirements using performance-based building codes.

There are all sorts of alternative methods available for home construction including cord and cob houses. Whether it is an  original architectural design or a plan from purchased over the Internet, Jimmy, as the Building Official, makes sure that the final result is a strong, safe and waterproof home that meets the codes in every respect.

Jimmy has also made sure that the current building codes are kept on file in the Jessie Peterman Library so that anyone who wants the information can go to the Library.

If someone wants to build in Floyd County, they can find the entire permit application on the County web page http://www.floydcova.org/ and can download it and fill it out before submitting it. The application includes vital information on recent code changes, what the building inspection will cover and how to get electric service from AEP..

In addition, the County web site refers customers to www.iccsafe.org, the website of the International Code Council  which is a master reference for all aspects of the International Codes, including performance-based building codes which deal with alternative materials, design and methods of construction.

If you are visiting Floyd this Fall, read this...

I am getting more email every week from future immigrants who ask how to make the most of their upcoming visits to Floyd. Some of them have already bought land in Floyd or in the nearby counties and are now bringing relatives here to share their discovery.

For those of you who are considering country life, here is a quick take on how to decide whether Floyd is for you and you are right for Floyd:

1. Check out my website Discover Floyd County. It is a quick overview on some of the factors I found important about country living. 

2. When you bring your family or friends to Floyd, you need to have them wander the streets of Floyd on foot and to visit a few key locations to get a feeling for the lifestyle and ambiance that is Floyd. Make sure that you all talk to everyone you meet.

3. Have them visit the following places and have them ask people about Floyd and how it is to live and work here. If your friends are planning to open a business here at some point, the questions will be different of course.

In no particular order, visit these places:

-Cafe del Sol (several times - in the morning especially)
-The Jacksonville Center, in the afternoon and ask about the classes
-The Bell Gallery - admire the art and Darcie's Kittens
-Oddfellas Cantina on Saturday night or for the Sunday Brunch
-The Over the Moon Gallery and Coffee Shop for lunch and on Friday Nights

-The Blue Ridge Restaurant for breakfast any day and take note that this is the only restaurant open on Mondays and Tuesdays except for Subway and Hardees.

-The Floyd Country Store for lunch and on Friday Nights for the Friday Night Jamboree.

-Visit the Harvest Moon Food store and compare to the Sweet Providence Farm Market on Hwy 221 Northeast of Floyd.

-Visit the Winter Sun which houses the Cafe del Sol and a soon to open Mexican Restaurant. Explore the galleries and studios downstairs. The artists in the Art Under the Sun Studio and Gallery can give you more tips on cultural and other attractions for those moving to Floyd.

-Eat at the Pine Tavern and enjoy family-style food service and hospitality.

-Browse the Farmer's Supply Hardware store next to the stoplight in Floyd.

-Buy hardware or supplies at Wills Ridge Supply off North Rte 8 on Lumber Rd and stop in and check out the Bread Basket bakery on the way to or from Wills Ridge Supply.

-Browse Slaughter's Market and Garden Supply (two stores). Check out the Food Lion

-Stop in at The Pickin' Porch and chat with working musician Scott Perry and admire his vintage and homegrown acoustic instruments.

-If health issues are a problem, ask about practitioners, doctors, dentists, etc. There are a few locally, but most people go to Christiansburg or Blacksburg for treatment.

-For information about local real estate, you might contact Julie Arrington, a friend of ours. There are others, but their names escape me at the moment. I will add them later.

-The Chamber of Commerce Office is staffed by friendly volunteers and they can provide a wealth of information about the area also.

-Visit Mabry Mill  and the Overlooks on the Parkway for scenic beauty. See also the Morrisette Winery and the Villa Appalaccia Winery.

Drive the country roads around Floyd County and drink in the scenery, but look carefully at the range of accommodations on almost every back road. We have beautiful views but we also have residents who don't just accumulate cars in their yards, some of them collect school buses.

Rural living is not tidy lawns and gated enclaves. It is hard-working people struggling to make a go of it however they can. They are good people and make wonderful neighbors. You just have to decide whether you will fit in and make a welcome addition to the mix.

A lot of Some talented people have come to Floyd and reluctantly decided that LA or DC or KC was where they needed to be, and they left after a few years of trying to make a go of it here.

Country life in a small-town environment makes a few demands on you and the most important is that you need to be the kind of person who makes haste slowly and are willing to understand and work with the many groups that make this county what it is today.

Those who are comfortable with themselves will do well here. You can change Floyd, but living in Floyd will probably change you more than you realize.

Please take note of the following, as it can be a real deal-killer for someone planning to move to Floyd:

Plan on bringing your job with you or be ready to invest in a local business because we don't have a robust economy yet.

We need self-starters who will find ways to serve this growing community with goods and services that are needed.

If you have other questions, please send me an email and I will be happy to meet you at the Cafe Del Sol where we can chat. I may be able to introduce you to people who really know what is going on. I am always interested in meeting people who can contribute to the energy that is building here in Floyd County.

You should also read our local Floyd County bloggers to get a multi-dimensional view of life in this county. They make excellent reading and will give you valuable tips for understanding Floyd.

• Blue Ridge Muse
• Fragments From Floyd
• Loose Leaf Notes
• Oh Papa Blues Blog
• Dark Chocolate, Red Wine

Then and Now

A few years ago we began to tire of endless daily meetings, high density living conditions, and 2 hour commutes and decided to leave Silicon Valley and head East, me hoping to begin a post corporate career as a writer/woodworker and Gretchen to continue her corporate career as
a telecommuting Senior Project Manager.
For us, the party was definitely over.

We held our final yard sale, and disposed of car, furniture and exercise equipment. Then we took one last look down our long street of tiny houses with tiny yards and drove across America to a new future.

We settled in an idyllic lakeside community called Lake Monticello, a few miles away from Thomas Jefferson's Monticello.

We enjoyed the peace and quiet after San Jose, but decided after a few years that we weren't cut out for the idyllic life in a gated community.

I fed the deer, which was against the rules, and worked in my workshop at all hours of the day and night, which was also against the rules. I wanted to build a bigger workshop, but that would have also been against...well, you get the idea.

Nice neighbors, friendly kids, but a development that started as a rustic retirement dream was morphing into a neatly groomed suburban bedroom community like the ones you find outside almost every city of any size.

Except for the size of the yards, it was beginning to feel like our old neighborhood shown in the second picture above.

We decided we were done with bedroom communities and we went exploring to find a place with plenty of landscape and industrial strength high speed Internet connections. We found what we wanted in Southwest Virginia.

This is not everyone's cup of tea, which is fortunate, as this unique and colorful county would otherwise be overrun with new settlers. This particular area has great scenery, lots of local talent but only a handful of job openings, so it is wise to bring your own business, preferably one that brings money into the county from the world outside.

This is an ideal place to live if you do business over the Internet. If you are a writer, or a CEO of a virtual corporation, or a knowledge worker, you have instant access to everywhere and you can watch cows while you have morning coffee on your deck.

If you are up to the rigors of country living, you can have the best of both worlds. You have daily access at the local coffee shops to people with fresh ideas and lots of business savvy, while through the Internet you stay connected to your old business partners and clients.

Country living means wells and septic fields and emergency generators and woodpiles and all sorts of things you do not concern yourself with when you live in a city. You keep your pets inside at night so they don't get eaten by coyotes.

It also gets dark at night as there are no street lamps and your nearest neighbor may be a mile away. This shot was taken just after sundown and I captured the moon and the last rays of the day.

The beauty and the isolation are acquired tastes and not for everyone. Some new settlers stay only a few months and find they miss the press of humanity and the all-night deli's. We find the quiet space around us gives us more time for creating.

We found this to be kind of community where there are a lot of  opportunities to serve the community in some capacity plus there is ready access to professional training in the arts.

We have seen new settlers dive immediately into service work such as rescuing animals from being put down or joining Amateur Radio Emergency Services. Gretchen and I became involved in the arts and in the local library association.

Many of the people we know have farms and a job or a career as an artisan. These are not gentlemen farmers as they raise food for their families, but manage to be contractors or musicians or painters as well, or potters, or woodworkers, or even teachers. It is not unusual to meet someone who has four jobs, so you soon get the idea that this is an area where personal industry is recognized and rewarded.

The net result for us is that we are probably working longer at more challenging tasks than when we were "employed" but we have more freedom and more opportunity for self-expression than ever before.

This last may be a result of the fact that when you are surrounded by self-employed and self-motivated people, there is this tremendous synergy which results in you getting inspired to explore new ideas and new business opportunities every day.

We do not yet have a significant base of industry for economic development of the conventional kind, but we may be reaching the tipping point as far as having enough talent in the area to achieve critical mass for a creative economy, which is the business of making money from ideas.

Construction is not over until the dumpster leaves

Construction on our new house and workshop has finally come to a halt. Our contractors have departed and we can occasionally enjoy a few minutes of deck time.

This is one of our favorite spots in the house. We have a 180 degree view of several different mountain ranges and are being visited by a growing number of curious birds and animals. A morning coffee is a grand reward for all of the work we put in, and we savor every minute we get to spend out here.

Life is quite different and calmer than when I was bringing down the last moving van load in late January.

In the ensuing months our contractors completed our back deck and laid down a hardwood floor in the house with a tiled entranceway which serves as a civilized sort of mudroom. This opened the way for us to set up furniture, hang drapes, and generally get things shipshape.

The house is really comfortable and we have settled down to a regular routine of locating the last few boxes which haven't been unpacked and getting things put away where they can be useful.

The workshop looks like a real building now that the siding has been put on and it has heat, hot water and a fully operational bathroom with a shower.

Gretchen and I waited until the contractors left and called in our excavation contractor to pick up the last of the construction debris with a Bobcat. There was so much left that he topped off the dumpster.

The dumpster people came and the driveway is now clear. Our attention is now focused on getting the workshop ready for business. That is the last hurdle to overcome and will probably be a post in itself.

My solution so far has been to erect an array of metal shelves along the back wall of the workshop, with each shelf dedicated to a specific kind of storage: fasteners, small tools, paints, jigs and fixtures, sub-assemblies, etc.

Unfortunately, there are too many bins of "stuff" that don't fit into my neat set of categories, so I have to modify my storage technique on the fly. Fortunately, Gretchen is an incredible organizer and she is able to guide me through this otherwise traumatic period of settling in.

We expect to be up and fully operational by Monday, but that will probably involve donating a lot of spare equipment and boxes of household items to our favorite local charity. That is the only way we will create enough space for me to produce custom woodworking designs efficiently.

In the past, I fell into the trap of working in too little space and it doubled and even tripled the man hours required to complete construction of complex pieces. I spent more time moving things out of my way than I did working. I was able to get the work done, but it took too much time to set things up for  each new operation. Since I was working on fixed-price contracts, I was putting in a lot of time that I was not getting paid for.

Getting a larger workshop was one of the driving forces behind the move to Floyd. Now that we are here, we are putting everything we have into getting ready for production. Work is already coming in from new clients so there is no time to waste.

You have to be careful what you wish for. I wanted design work and I am getting it. That is probably going to cut into my deck time...unless I figure out a way to bring a drawing board and a computer out on the deck.

Anyway, that is a problem for next week. This weekend I will be cleaning and organizing the Augean Stables and turning them into a functioning workshop.

If anyone has a sure-fire method of squeezing more space out of a workshop, I would sure like to hear your suggestions. I need all the ideas I can round up.

Building/moving to a new home - day 127

Once more with feeling

You may have wondered if I'd forgotten how to blog. Such is not the case at all. I spent the last three days driving this 27 foot U-haul moving van and have not been able to post.

Here is the van in profile. It is every bit as big as it looks.

We made a decision last week to bring the rest of our belongings to Floyd so we wouldn't have to pay another month's rental on three storage units. A round-trip rental of a U-haul moving truck was actually cheaper than a one-way rental.

I picked up the moving van in Roanoke and managed to figure out the five-speed stick shift before I had gone too many blocks. After twenty miles of stoplights, I was up-shifting and down-shifting without having to think about it. The fact the my first leg would be driven empty made it much less stressful.

The hardest part to learn was to allow enough room when I made turns or drove into a filling station. I didn't hit anything, but I had a few near-misses until I got used to the width of the truck and the enormous turning radius.

Finding stations that sold diesel fuel for trucks was another adventure entirely. You can't just cruise into a station and check out the pumps when your truck is more than 30 feet long and requires 12 feet of overhead clearance.

Several times I saw Diesel signs but the pumps were set up for automobiles and small trucks only. I finally found my supply of Diesel fuel by looking for beat-up filling stations with large driveways and high canopies. Once I knew what to look for, I spotted these diesel stations on the outskirts of every industrial area I passed.

The loading and unloading of household goods went almost like clockwork. I had enlisted teams of helpers at each end of the run. It took three and a half hours to load the truck in Palmyra and three hours to unload the truck in Floyd.

Driving back with a full load of household goods revealed every quirk of the old van. It had 239,000 miles on it and the steering was not as tight as it once was. After a while I got so I could anticipate how it would handle various road conditions, so it wasn't as wearing as it might have been.

The entire drive was done under severe wind conditions. The warnings from the weather bureau were not exaggerated from the damage I saw in the pine forests I passed. In one stand of pines, about 5 percent of the pines had been snapped off about a dozen feet above the ground while an equal amount had been blown over. The crosswinds were strong enough to sway the van so I watched my speed carefully.

The trickiest part of the entire drive was negotiating the last few miles of country lanes. Winding roads that I normally flew over in the Dodge van required careful driving to avoid severe lurching in the moving van. The country lanes follow the terrain faithfully. Every bump, hollow and swerve are duplicated in asphalt. When you drive a large truck full of fragile equipment and furnishings, the road assumes a far more menacing aspect.

My unfinished driveway presented the most formidable challenge of all. Several trenches have been dug across the drive for power, water and electricity. Every one of the trenches has collapsed to some extent because they were dug and refilled when the ground was frozen. Every subsequent thaw causes the earth to subside. Driving over these sunken trenches was the final test and fortunately nothing fell over or was broken.

As I write this, all of our worldly goods have been moved to Floyd, everything has been stored away safely, and we are sitting in front of our fire surrounded by sleeping cats. We have weeks, perhaps months, of unpacking and finish work to do, but we have essentially completed this building/moving to a new home phase of our lives that began about four months ago.

Thanks to all who have followed this adventure and have offered their best wishes and support. I hope that this narrative has been useful to those planning a similar move. We have put in a lot of hours but the results have far exceeded our expectations. We have learned a lot during this experience and hope that your moves go as well. If you have questions I have not answered, feel free to send me an email and I will do my best to get you a useful answer.

Our future projects in our new home will appear in the category Country Living.

Building/moving to a new home - day 123

Sunday reflections

It's Sunday morning and the fragrant smell of cooking bacon wafts through the house. I have finished the first phase of my regular morning chores and am hoping to get in a few words before breakfast.

I look out the expanse of back windows through the trees, across the meadows, to the mountains in the distance, and I am at peace.

All of the effort we have expended has been worth it. Gretchen and I have made many great changes in our lifestyle in the past 13 years and each change has brought us to new friends and new adventures.

Since adventure consists of overcoming challenges, we have also had a continuing series of new challenges to meet and overcome. We have many more on the road ahead, but we have a strong partnership which sustains us in moments of difficulty and we enjoy the tasks we have set for ourselves.

Not all tasks are fun. Some are pure drudgery but they must be done as required to keep the household functioning.

I know we have made the right choices when I catch Gretchen's eye as we handle our chores and I get an answering smile. We enjoy doing things together and sharing household tasks as well as project tasks. This gives us the ability to co-create in many areas without conflict.

As some of you may know, it is a lot more fun to work together creating something than doing it alone. Shared creation builds a strong bond and when a couple can share in this way, it adds a great deal to their life together.

One last point, when I said I was at peace I meant that life with all of its confusions and excitement is satisfying in the extreme. There is no rest point, no plateau, no "happy ever after" as far as we are concerned. There is only more opportunity to enjoy good friends and to create new business relationships. As long as we can make more right decisions than wrong decisions, we will be able to continue this adventure indefinitely.

I need to break for breakfast. Will continue later...

Four months and counting - how is it all going?

The house is a warm and comfortable oasis in the midst of continuing construction.

We now have a wide front porch with a fine, broad step that welcomes visitors.

Our new side porch provides a sturdy place to shuck off muddy boots before coming into the utility/mud room.

The pillars, beams and joists of our back deck stand strong against the wintry sky. The Windy Hollow Construction team have been erecting this fine deck against the odds of wind and severe weather. We, and our cats, should be able to walk out on this broad expanse and survey our wilderness domain by the end of next week.

Occasionally I have been able to help Bob and Kari in their construction work by holding a heavy beam in place while they secure it, but my contribution has been more in the area of planning and fetching of supplies.  They are so competent in their teamwork that I would only slow them down.

I have my hands full handling the many details that make up a properly functioning house. Putting up shelves and towel racks, installing computer networks, unpacking boxes, and figuring out how to keep the mud outside keeps me busy from dawn to dark. I need to work more efficiently, because my work load is actually beginning to pick up.

The Reverse Osmosis water purification system arrived Friday and I need to get that installed as soon as possible.
We have another medicine cabinet to install.
I am working on building replacement handles for the wood stove.
The office needs to be set up and a computer network put in place.

Most important of all, I am renting a truck this week to pick up the rest of my tools and bring them down here from Charlottesville so I can start work on client projects in my workshop. I have not had a functioning workshop since late October so this must be handled soon.

Building/moving to a new home - day 115

Obligatory Friday the 13th story

On Friday the 13th, you can expect anything to happen. Our little disaster was having a flock of painters descend on us unexpectedly at 9:30 in the morning!

We were in the midst of unpacking boxes and arranging furniture when three smiling men in white overalls knocked on the door and announced they were here to touch up the wall and ceiling repairs left by the drywall crew. Gretchen was not amused. This was the second time that workmen dropped in without notice after Gretchen had asked for an arrival schedule.

She had been asking our contact at Southern Homes when the painters were going to arrive and had been told repeatedly that they would let her know before they showed up. As a result, she had proceeded to arrange pictures and furniture in almost every room in the house.

The arrival of the painters meant that we had to immediately undo everything she had done because touch painting was required on both walls and ceilings in every room. For more than two hours we scrambled around moving fragile items and valuable objects off tables and bookcases so the painters could throw drop cloths on everything in sight.

In some cases, the painters sanded areas on the ceiling before they put down drop cloths. The ensuing shower of plaster dust was then covered up by a drop cloth and wasn't discovered until much later.

The painters were pleasant and efficient and said they were not informed that anyone was in the house yet. This was a gross example of miscommunication because we were in daily contact with the people at Southern Heritage Homes almost every day.

The painters were skilled in their work but I quickly realized that they were missing some of the areas on the ceiling because the earlier repair work did not stand out in ordinary room light. I used my halogen construction lights to illuminate the ceilings and this uncovered all of the ceiling repairs that needed painting.

I followed them from room to room, lighting the areas that needed painting. This almost doubled the amount of touch up work, but it made the entire job go faster because we could all could be certain that everything was caught the first time.

The painters took their leave of us after three busy hours and we were finally able to get back to our regular plans.

Careful planning does not prevent confusion - it prevents insanity

In any major project, there are unplanned events caused by outside factors. The unannounced arrival of painters is a typical example. Bad weather and non-arrival of contractors is another. These events will throw a carefully planned day into confusion, but they will not derail the project for long if daily project plans are used and followed.

We have found that a project board helps up keep track of longer term objectives in this house building effort, but a daily list of targets is required to keep our heads above water during the constant hurly-burly of life at a construction site.

We had just finished making up the day's list of activities when the painters arrived unannounced. Everything we had planned was put on hold until the painting session was done and the painters had left. When the dust cleared, we picked up our daily list and carried on as planned. We had lost three hours due to the interruption, but we were able to get back on course without a lot of hand wringing because we still had a list of targets to meet.

Effective project management is the science of anticipating and handling interruptions as well as planned activities. This applies to the householder doing weekend chores as well as someone who is immersed in a larger project.

Any means you can employ to keep track of your daily goals will help you recover from unexpected distractions. It will go a long way toward helping you maintain your composure while you meet your targets. When you lose track of where you are, it is easy to get frustrated and lash out at others. Having a plan and a recovery plan makes it easier to tolerate the uncertainties of life and deal with them effectively.

Building/moving to a new home - day 113

What doesn't kill you makes you stronger...

A few days ago I described the problems we were encountering in our new home. I said that we would handle them and that seems to be the case. We are working long hours and are bone-weary at night, but the exercise seems to be good for us and we certainly have no trouble sleeping.

Yesterday, many of the problems were efficiently handled by our builder, Southern Heritage Homes of Rocky Mount, VA. They are proving to be quite responsive in dealing with these post-installation equipment failures.

They sent out a plumber named Dan who was a pleasure to work with. He replaced the dishwasher, fixed the kitchen exhaust fan, reset the toilets so they don't rock, and fixed some crossed wires in the Master bathroom. When he left, Gretchen was the happy owner of a kitchen that worked the way she wanted it to.

Our well water still smells of chlorine and metal, but I purchased a test kit from Lowes and it showed nothing out of the ordinary for this location. Our results showed our well water to be slightly hard with a ph of 6.5. Chlorine was less than 0.5 ppm, hardness was 50 ppm, alkalinity less than 80 ppm, nitrate/nitrite 0 ppm, iron approx 0.3 ppm, copper less than 1.3 ppm, and total dissolved solids 38 ppm.

To give us the drinking water quality we want, I have ordered the same 6 stage Reverse Osmosis system we used in our previous home at Lake Monticello. It should arrive in a few days and I will describe the installation.

The water produced by this equipment has to be experienced to be believed. Until I used this system, I never realized that pure water tastes sweet. When all of the goop and chemicals are removed from drinking water, it tastes wet, and the absence of stuff in the water makes it taste exactly like the glacier water we were able to buy a few years ago. Wet and sweet, an unbelievable experience!

More finishing touches

The house is now surrounded by new holes containing concrete footings. These footings will support front and side porches and a deck in the very near future. We will soon be able to enjoy outdoor views from a vantage point high above our muddy surroundings.

The Smart Vaults in our front yard will soon be history. We emptied the last of them a few days ago and they will be picked up today. They provided us with flexible storage of our furnishings at both ends of the move. I would recommend anyone contemplating moving should look into Smart Move, especially if you are hoping to do the packing yourself or if you need storage during the move.

Living with cats - always something new

We and our cats are now on our own after staying three weeks with Doug and Amy Thompson and their cats. We have a warm spot in our hearts for Doug and Amy because they made what could have been a period of extreme hardship into a wonderful living experience.

Take a look at your own lives and consider what it would be like if two people you didn't know well came to stay with you and brought their cats as well! For most people, it would be a strain at best. Doug and Amy treated us as family and our cats as family and we all had a great time.

Now that we and our cats are apart from the Thompson's, I read in Doug's blog that the four Thompson cats are suffering withdrawal symptoms.

Strangely enough, our cats seem to be doing something similar. After a day of cheerfully exploring their spacious new home, they began yowling and would sit and stare at us as if asking for answers.

New home behavior for our cats is unpredictable at best. Usually Sherman will try to escape. Buffy seems to settle in after a period of exploration. This time, Sherman explored the entire house and ended up hiding under the covers for about 8 hours of blessed unconsciousness.

It is now 4:00 am and Sherman seems to have realized that he is really stuck in a new place with no cat doors! Bummer! There aren't even other cats to interact with!

He has been howling intermittently for some time, pausing only to dig furiously in his new litter box. He alternates this with leaping up on counters and furniture and venting his displeasure by pushing things off onto the floor.

Now he has joined me for some close-up grumbling. He paces across the back of the couch looking for a solution I cannot provide. When I return to writing, he drops heavily off the back of the couch and wanders off yowling different phrases, none of them complimentary, I'm sure.

Experience has taught me that this will pass and he will return to his normal habits in a few days. In the meantime, he is not helping...

Building/moving to a new home - day 111

Country living is a new experience

Long days of hard physical work leave little energy for blogging, but there is so much to do and learn as we prepare the house for occupancy, that I feel I must capture these moments before they fade from view.

There is a vast difference between our lives here in Floyd and our lives in Lake Monticello even though the house designs are quite comparable. The big difference, of course, is that here we are still building the house and there we moved into a completed house that had been lived in for six months and almost fully debugged.

We are dealing with the raw stuff of nature here and are fully engaged in keeping the weather at bay and the house clean and heated while shlepping heavy boxes and ungainly articles into the house while contractors sand walls, fix doors and appliances, and generally make themselves useful.

The other big difference is that country living is mostly manual where living in the suburbs is almost entirely automatic. By this I mean that suburban living is almost entirely a matter of throwing switches and setting dials. In the suburbs, when you want heat you push a button or dial a temperature you want and it happens smoothly and reliably, almost all of the time.

In the country, you may have automatic systems in your car and in your kitchen, but you probably use wood for fuel and this takes a lot of attention to do it right. It works well and is quite economical, but a well-fired stove just doesn't happen by accident. A whole series of actions go into making that cheerfully glowing fire burn at the right rate through the day and night.

I am learning fast, but I still have more to learn before I can confidently set up a wood stove to burn through the night, so we don't wake to a cold hearth.

The house will not get cold, even if the fire goes out, because our baseboard heaters will cut in and keep the temperature at whatever temperature we set. Electric heat is increasingly expensive, so it is better to keep the wood stove burning whenever possible. You might say we have chosen to heat with wood for the superior ambiance and economy, but we keep a backup system ready if our wood heat fails.

Some folks have suggested we install backup heating with propane for those times when electrical power goes out for days. We are still considering that as an option because we see how severe the weather can be in this part of Virginia.

Meanwhile we have our hands full debugging the problems that continue to show up in our new home.

There is no light at the end of the tunnel - only more tunnel

A fully equipped house with appliances is a truly complex system. Those of us who have designed complex systems which have to operate in the field know how difficult it can be to achieve reliable operation in a distant installation. This house is better than many, but there are still problems.

When you buy a house where the appliances are part of the purchase, you must not assume that they work. Every single feature and appliance of your new home should be tested before you need to use them.

We discovered some problems in the last two days that we must add to our list of things to handle:

The dishwasher doesn't. Somehow, water is not turning on inside the dishwasher even though there is water pressure in the line leading to the dishwasher. Gretchen discovered this after loading the dishwasher with a full load of glassware.

The kitchen exhaust fan inhales. When Gretchen turned the fan in the microwave stove on, it deposited a load of sawdust on her fry pan. Although we paid a good deal of money to ensure that the fan exhausted outside, it appears that the microwave fan assembly has been given other orders. Air is being drawn in through the exhaust grill at the top of the microwave stove and it blows out through the intake grill.

One of the bathroom fans is dead.

The pellet stove we purchased is still not working right. After being coaxed into normal operation, it ran for several hours and then quit. Either there is some arcane secret I need to learn about this stove, or the installation was done improperly. Blue Ridge Heating and Air has not delivered a satisfying customer experience yet.

The well water still smells of chlorine and metal. The well-diggers may have put chlorine into the system to clean it, but it should have dissipated by now. We need more information and possibly a Reverse Osmosis water purification system like we had in the old house.

All of these problems will be handled eventually, but they certainly add to the workload we face in getting this house ready to use as a continuing base of operations.

Meanwhile, we enjoy the incomparable joys of living in the country, sunsets that stun the senses and vignettes of nature like the hawk sitting on a fencepost watching his next meal scampering in the field before him.

I also got to spend an hour at a blogger's luncheon at the incomparable Cafe Del Sol.  Doug Thompson did such a good job describing the lunch meeting that I gave him the picture I took to accompany his article. Check out his post if you haven't done so already.

Building/moving to a new home - day 108

A vision of the promised land

Yesterday, we paused for a brief moment and looked out of our back windows at rolling wooded hillsides that fall away to the Little River in the distance. To our west, we have a view of open forest, lush fields where cattle graze, and distant mountains. We stood transfixed by the abundance of natural beauty that filled the world before us.

We had a promise of this beauty when we first walked in these woods last Fall, but we now look out from a point twelve feet above our earlier vantage point. When our back deck is completed, we will have a 180 degree view of this peaceful vista.

The beat goes on...

We are getting closer to the magic moment when we will live here in our new home. The LG refrigerator, looking like something out of a Sci-Fi movie, is already stocked with some food for on-site lunches. We no longer have to make the long run into Floyd for a midday meal.

Bob and Kari, of Windy Hollow Construction, have begun building a back porch and it should be complete today. Michael Shortt will excavate holes for front porch and back deck pilings today, which will open the way for Bob and Kari to finish the front porch. This is our last barrier to getting a Certificate of Occupancy!

Excavation is required to put the porch and deck foundations below the frost line. This is the only way to construct a porch and deck that will not sag when the ground thaws. We are seeing graphic evidence of the effects of thawing in the trenches that were dug and refilled when the ground was frozen. Each of these trenches now show deep holes where the frozen earth collapsed in the few warm days that have occurred.

Our driveway and even the street we live on have post-thaw trench depressions which are a shock to drive over. It may take several more passes before the trenches are stably filled.

Meanwhile, our 36 sheets of 4x8 plywood provide relatively clean pathways through the mud for our contractors. Work goes on and the house interior remains relatively clean. I will try to capture the scene in a photo.

Building/moving to a new home - day 106

Next step - getting a Certificate of Occupancy

We enjoyed our visit this morning with Jimmy Whitten, Floyd County Building Inspector. Our plumbing and electrical work passed with only a few minor changes required to meet the new 2006 building code.

We have heat, hot and cold running water, and working toilets and showers. Our new LG refrigerator is installed and working, as is our new electric range.

The attic insulation was blown in this afternoon and the crawl space insulation will be installed tomorow. Phones are working and the Barista Expresso machine will be unpacked tomorrow. We are beginning to look like a first-class operation, instead of a refugee camp.

The only thing preventing us from moving in is a missing Certificate of Occupancy and that is a relatively simple matter. We need some sort of porch for the front door and a landing with handrails for the back door. We designed both this afternoon and the materials will start showing up tomorrow also.

We expect to satisfy all requirements and receive a CO by early next week.

Incidently, the installers from Blue Ridge Heating and Air showed up early this morning and came up with an elegantly simple solution for the faulty stove pipe installation. Tonight the stove pipe is completely vertical and satisfies all building code requirements. Our Floyd County Building Inspector was on hand and approved the solution they came up with. All's well that ends well. This stove installation taught us a few good lessons and the most important was to trust our instincts. We should have also insisted on references.

By the way, for those who wonder if a medium-sized woodstove and a few electric heaters can heat a 1650 sq ft house satisfactorily and evenly, we were so warm today that we left the stove off. And that was before the insulation was blown in!

Building/moving to a new home - day 105

Finally seeing the light at the end of the tunnel

We now have water and hot water in the house, even though we don't have working toilets yet and one of the showers will not turn off. We have three bedrooms with lush, thick carpets, although the house is not fully insulated yet. The outside lights and the closet doors are yet to be installed.

These discrepancies will vanish in the next few days as a final wave of Southern Heritage Homes contractors descend on the house to finish their contractual obligations. The Southern Heritage people build a good house and they respond quickly when a problem is pointed out to them.

The faulty stovepipe installation

I had a conversation with our county Building Inspector, Jimmy Whitten, and he agreed that we have an out-of-code installation. I called Bob Martin of Blue Ridge Heating and Air and I received a promise within minutes from the installer that he would come tomorrow and would remedy the problem.

Being the trusting soul that I am, I plan to watch every step of the repair while it is being done. Moving/enlarging a hole in a roof is not a project to be undertaken lightly. I may even photograph the process... :)

We are really settling in

I installed the mailbox today. Because of our online buying habits, we selected the largest freestanding mailbox available for residences. It has already aroused the envy of one of our contractors. This person had never seen a mailbox big enough for a dog kennel before.

It's not over until they haul away the dumpster

I have been insisting on ordering a dumpster and one finally arrived. It is about the size of a WWII LST and is the largest available locally. It will easily hold all of our construction trash and I have invited friends to use it to dispose of those pesky appliances that can't be handled by the normal trash disposal methods.

When I first mentioned getting a dumpster to my local contractors, they looked at me like I was a few beers short of a six-pack. They intimated that anyone with sense would simply burn whatever was left over after the house was built.

Since most of the trash is wet and covered with ice, I couldn't see how I could burn it without using Napalm or something similar. I know dumpsters work well and are amazingly cheap. The decision was a no-brainer.

We plan to party when the dumpster leaves.

Building/moving to a new home - day 104

Building a house is a lot like making sausage

Unless you have a strong stomach, you are better off not knowing what goes into it. The final product can be amazing, but the the details of construction are better left to those with a spirit of adventure.

We are enjoying this house building project as it is much like the projects we did as high-tech marketing project managers without the complications of corporate life. There is some white-knuckle tension and gut-churning apprehension, but we have no layers of management to deal with. When a problem arises, we assess the risks and we fix it.

I am sharing this saga in the hopes that it might entertain you and save you from making the same mistakes as I have. If you have a spirit of adventure, you might entertain the idea of using some of this information.

We will overcome this...

This two-wheeled dolly was used to haul a water heater around the house and into the 6 foot crawlspace a few days ago. On the return trip, the wheels were so encrusted with mud and gravel that they locked up and refused to turn. I took this picture to show you some of the difficulties we and our contractors encounter every day.

When the clay hardens, I will clean the dolly by whacking the clay off with a hammer.

Meanwhile, I have found some doormats like the one we bought last year. These work very well for scraping mud off the bottom of shoes. I don't know why we didn't think of them before. I have ordered a dozen of these from a dealer on ebay and will use four of them at each entrance, along with various bootscraper/brushes. Performance evaluations will follow.

We will overcome this also...

You are looking at a non-vertical stovepipe installed by Blue Ridge Heating and Air. You may think that the installer had a poor sense of balance and couldn't tell what direction was straight up. That would be the charitable viewpoint and it gives this installer too much credit.

The stove installer from Blue Ridge Heating and Air had made a major goof and was trying to cover it up by installing the stovepipe at an angle so he wouldn't have to fix the mistake he made on the roof.

Here is a closeup of the hot chimney vent where it penetrates the roof. The stove manufacturer makes it quite clear that the vent must be at least two inches from any flammable material. The Blue Ridge installer did not locate the hole properly and the hot vent pipe passes within 1/2 inch of the roof sheathing and shingles. If the stovepipe had been left vertical, the vent pipe would have been pressed against the roof sheathing, so the installer shifted the stove slightly.

This is contrary to the stove manufacturer's instructions and is a violation of our local building code. We plan to have the Floyd Building Inspector look at this tomorrow and give us his recommendation.

Meanwhile, I am composing a letter to Vermont Castings, which manufactures the Dutchwest Stove, and will strongly suggest that they re-educate this dealer or get rid of him.

And now for some good news...

We purchased plug-in baseboard heaters made by Honeywell yesterday and they worked like a charm! They heated the house so well last night that the house was warm even with the stove off. This was a prerequisite for today's installation of vinyl flooring.

We had a contractor install vinyl floors in three rooms today. The results were terrific! They will complete the installation of carpets in three more rooms tomorrow and the house will begin to resemble a home.

We have laid down rosin paper throughout the house and have constructed boardwalks around the house, out to the woodpile, and across to the workshop. As a result, it is now possible to do errands outside the house without bringing clay into the house.

We have also invested in many pairs of slippers for guests to wear inside the house. We will follow the example of many friends and family members who leave their shoes and boots outside in bad weather. For years, as a casual visitor, I have marvelled at the shoes stacked neatly outside homes in Hawaii and in California, but I never fully appreciated the need until I built a new home in wet weather. No amount of scrubbing will clean clay-covered shoes to the point where they can be worn into a clean house. The best approach is to put a bench at each entrance where one can sit and exchange the outside boots for inside shoes.

We still need the benches, but we are making progress. The interior of the house has stayed clean and comfortable all day today, even with contractors hard at work. Incidentally, these contractors brought clean shoes to wear inside the house while they installed the new floor coverings.

Building/moving to a new home - day 102

Another milestone achieved - lights in the darkness

It was dark last night when I drove down the winding country lane that leads to our new home. In the headlights I could see that the melting snow was beginning to freeze again and the puddles in the roadway were beginning to ice over. The snowy darkness was punctuated only by lights shining from houses spread out along the road.

I was making a late run to deliver construction supplies and was thinking how nice it will be when we are living under our new roof. I was even feeling a bit wistful that we have not been able to make it happen sooner.

As I approached the last of the neighboring homes, I was startled to see the gleam of lights from our construction site. I anxiously wondered why our contractors were working so late.

As I rounded the last turn, I saw that the driveway was empty, but light was streaming from our new home and workshop! These were not construction spotlights used by our contractors, these lights meant the electricity was on and we finally had power!

Our on-site contractor had pushed himself to the limit to get everything wired up so we could have power for the long weekend. He left the lights on so we would know he had met his target!

Thanks to Bob Eich of Windy Hollow Construction, we will start the New Year with a home that we can work in at all hours. We are still surrounded by freezing mud and more work is needed before we have running water, but we have power and an Internet connection. Our dream of a quiet home in the country is one step closer to realization.

Today, we will install a mailbox and an extension on our wood stove chimney vent. Stay tuned for some important facts we learned about operating wood stoves at higher altitudes.

As we near the end of 2005, we thank you all for your support and encouragement. And, for those  of you who are still struggling to put, or keep, a roof over your heads in these uncertain times, we wish you the strength to persevere and achieve success, wherever you are.

Building/moving to a new home - day 100

The devil is in the details

In project management, it is generally understood that the last 5 percent of a project requires an enormous amount of effort, so when you feel that a project is 95 percent complete, be prepared for an uphill struggle to break out into the clear.

We have made great progress in the last 100 days, but there is a lot left to do. One hundred days ago we had 3 1/2 acres of forest with a well and a septic system. Our plans were to build a workshop this year and a house next year. Hurricane Katrina changed our plans. Then rising cost of materials made it advisable to complete construction while costs could still be managed. Today we have two buildings and five vaults of household furnishings on the site - some final assembly required.

Connecting Part A to Part B

Yesterday, our contractors teamed up to dig trenches between house and workshop and install power, water, and phone lines between the buildings. We should have power and water working in both buildings by the weekend, if all goes well.

Today, we expect Citizens, the local phone cooperative, to connect up our DSL service. Once this happens, we will be able to do research and order materials online without skipping down to Cafe Del Sol or to Chateau Thompson.

Note to those who plan to be their own General Contractors: An internet connection is one of your most valuable assets. You will use it to get answers, find materials, and to stay in touch with suppliers. When you cannot get online, you will waste hours you cannot spare.

Mud, Mud, Glorious Mud! (With apologies to Flanders and Swann)

As we get closer to putting in carpets and furnishing the house, it becomes apparent that something is wrong with the current picture. Our walls are pristine white, but our floors are covered with several inches of what looks like donkey-crap. It is the local clay mixed with large nuggets of gravel.

We have a boot brush at the door and we all use it, but the clay is tenacious and usually covers the lower six inches of our boots and a good portion of our pant legs.

Our yard, except for the gravel driveway, still consists of 2 inches of glare ice punctuated by islands of sticky clay. The only thing that stops us from falling on our butt is sliding into a convenient outcropping of clay. Any work done off the graveled area involves clay and more clay.

When we walk back on the driveway, our clay-covered boots pick up gravel which doesn't fall off until we walk into the house. Through this simple process we are gradually bringing the outside indoors.  :)

When we have a front porch and a means to keep the clay outside, we may be able to bring in furniture without messing up the house. That will be a project worth blogging.

I have ordered boot scrubbers and will purchase a new shop-vac to clean up the floor and give ourselves a fresh start, but I would appreciate any suggestions from those of you who have experience living with this problem. I have been advised by my contractors that we can expect four more months of wet weather and mud before the ground firms up and the grass seed takes hold.

Is there a solution that will let us keep the inside of the house clean and leave the clay outside? I have seen some boot brushes with water jets, but would like to hear from someone who has used them.

Building/moving to a new home - day 98

A Big Day at the New Homesite

We started the day by widening the driveway. Michael Shortt's father delivered a truckload of gravel and Michael's son and his Bobcat created more parking places.

Gretchen says that our front yard is now a giant turnaround. She may be right because we find that country living means having room for all of our contractors to park at once plus leaving enough parking space for our friends to drop in and see what we are doing. The UPS truck driver has to fend for himself.

The driveway widening was necessitated by the impending arrival of the five Smart Vaults with most of the St Lawrence household goods in them.

Using Smart Move is a smart move

The storage vault approach to moving has a lot to recommend it when your house is still full of contractor tools and every square foot of floor is covered with thick gobbets of drying clay and gravel from the driveway. Your household goods are safely protected until your house is really ready for furniture.

Our five Smart Vaults were delivered on time and unloaded in less than an hour by Ivy Harvell, a UPS/Overnite employee from the Charlotte, NC terminal. Ivy placed the vaults exactly where I wanted them on our newly created driveway parking spaces. He was a pleasure to work with.

We set the Smart Vaults up as an entrance arcade for the still-unfinished St Lawrence home. These vaults will flank the approach to the front door until we have the finished flooring installed, at which point we will unload the vaults in a veritable frenzy of interior decorating activity.

The whole Smart Move experience was so effortless that I would recommend it to anyone who needs temporary storage on the sending or receiving end of their move.

The only disappointment was the inability to track the Smart vaults as advertised. The customer service rep who had been so helpful in setting up the move completely dropped the ball when it came to  arranging for me to track the smart vaults with the built-in GPS tracking system. She said tracking involved some sort of a setup by a technician and she was going to send me an email wih the necessary codes and passwords. It never happened. I would guess that this free service is not actually debugged yet because it should not require a technician to activate tracking.

Bottom line: Smart Move offers a convenient containerized shipping system at a firm price for the homeowner. It is a total and welcome change from the traditional moving experience. Just don't expect to track your shipment online yet.

We've made our way through the smoke and are now a wood-burning family - almost

By means of a very intense phone conversation with the Blue Ridge Heating and Air installation team, I managed to convert a January 3 date for completion of our stove installation to an early morning arrival today.

They arrived and set to work and eventually discovered they had not brought the necessary parts, so one member of the team was dispatched to the nearest store which was 20 miles away.

The remaining installer did a creditable job of installing the roof-mounted kit for the wood stove and we finally thought we had a working wood stove. I started a fire, which drew very well, but the blower didn't work. I was assured by this "experienced" installation team that the blower would come on when the stove got hot enough (109 degrees F). I was gullible enough to believe them.

The team then finished the installation of the pellet stove, which had been smoking ever since it was first installed several weeks ago. They packed up their tools and presented us with a final bill which included $900 of installation labor that the salesman had failed to mention or itemize. We had paid in advance for these stoves and had taken great care to ask was everything included in our invoice. We had been assured by Bob Martin that everything was included. It was not.

We made out a check for the balance of the invoice, including $900 of unanticipated expense and bid our installers goodbye.

A half hour later I verified that the house wood stove was hot enough to burn the hand and yet the blower would not come on. I called our installers and gave them the choice of returning to the scene of the crime now or tomorrow morning. They wisely decided to came back and arrived within the hour.

After giving me all sorts of explanations why the blower wasn't supposed to run, I told them to short out the thermostat so I could control the blower no matter how hot or cold the stove was. It took them another fifteen minutes before they managed to replace the faulty thermostat with a jumper. After that the blower worked as I wanted it to.

We ran both stoves for the rest of the day. The wood stove in the house is an excellent source of heat. The blower produces a high volume of warm air which raised the temperature of the entire house in a relatively short time. When we install the overhead fans, we should have no problem distributing the heat evenly.

The pellet stove is still producing an unacceptable amount of smoke inside the workshop. It appears that the stovepipe is still leaking. I read the installation instructions again and will contact the factory for an alternate stovepipe configuration. I will contract with another firm to install