By the third of October, much of the framing was underway, the outside walls of the first floor were up, and some of the walls of the second floor were up. The house started to show the shape that it would ultimately assume. Darcee's comment: "It's big. It's gaudy." Kaz's response: "oh, don't worry, it'll look much bigger once we get the roof on." Sigh...

From the street, you see the rough width of the house. The box jutting toward you is part of bedroom 5. The wall that's already up on the street side will be the side of a gable, as will be clear once the roof's up. Right now it gives it an odd "chapel" look. I took these pictures with a new camera, the Sony Mavica. It's good, but I don't think the pictures are as good as the Epson -- but it has the amazing convenience of saving pictures straight to floppies.

Walking closer, it looks a bit different

The hole is the space for the doorways. We'd hoped to put a double door in, but as seems usual, they changed the code and we can't.

This is, or rather will be, the view from bedroom 4, a bedroom in the back on the street side of the house. As we had to build back further than I'd hoped, there won't be a surf view from the bedroom; nevertheless, the view will be nice. In this "hole" will be a sliding glass door from the bedroom to the deck. That'll hopefully be the worst view on that floor; contrast that with the following, which is the view from master bedroom 1 on that level:

Again, not a surf view, but it'll do. Now upstairs for the better views --

I took this from roughly where someone will be when first coming up the stairs. Kaz, the builder, is on the left, Darcee's on the right. (Like you needed to know that.) Darcee's pointing out where something's going to be, I can't remember what. The part that juts out toward the ocean is my office (to the left, about one third of the width) and the dining room (to the right, the remainder). Let's see what it'll look like from the dining room table…

Okay, I know, enough with the views already. This picture doesn't do justice to how nice the view is; Darcee stood there and actually said she thought it was too close to the sea!

Well, maybe one more view picture. This is from the upstairs master bedroom. It's in the back of the house, so it's a bit foliage-inhibited, and actually there will be a screened porch in the way. To the left is an outside wall, to the right is one also -- the porch will go between them.

This (above) is the wall that you saw on the left in the previous picture. The hole is where the external door goes; the wall part you see will be behind the fireplace. You're looking at the living room; most of the space to the right, that currently doesn't have a wall, will be windows. This is a view from roughly the center of the house; next is a view from the dining room (closest to the ocean) looking back at the wall:

And turn around to the west (street) a bit…

This is the back of the wall that looks steeple-ish from the street. This will end up as an exterior wall attached to the bathroom for the upstairs master bedroom (which is to the left) and a storage closet. Walking to the right looks like it'll cause you to plummet to certain limb damage, but it'll be a sundown deck.

My office. The window is the north window from the office. The place to the right without any wall will be a sliding glass door with a small deck outside. You can't see it yet, but the office will be about a foot and a half higher than the dining room.

Another view of the office. Note the new-wave rotation of the picture. Actually, what you're noting is the fact that the camera doesn't have a viewfinder…

After a vertiginous climb down to earth, let's look at the lot. When Kaz removed the shrubbery, he found that the lot sat a bit low. It was considerably lower than the lot to the north (left, from the street) and a bit lower than the lot to the right. He brought in $6K worth of sand and dirt. The results?

Parity with the folks to the north -- actually, a little higher, but that'll all settle down. And to the south, a similar story:

Now, if you'd told me a year ago I'd be worrying about high my lot was, I'd have been a bit skeptical. Now I'm just as happy to be able to forget it.

I wanted next to show you the view looking from the dunes back toward the street, but I don't have a wide enough angle lens. So I took two pictures and, using a technique very much like the one used to create photo mosaics of Mars (although not done nearly as well), put this picture together:

It looks like I'm closer to the house on the left, but what you're seeing is that they built that house recently, and so they're farther back from the ocean, like my house. The folks to the right built earlier, so they're closer to the ocean and don't show up in the picture.

Above, a view from the ground to master bedroom 1, Darcee and my room.

Above, the hole you see to the left is the door from master bedroom 3. To the right of the hole there will be a deck upon which will sit a hot tub, albeit not a very large one.

Same view, but backed away a bit. Unfortunately, there's no polarizing lens available for the Mavica; I'm going to try to cook one up.

Next trip: somewhere in the 22 October - 27 October range.