Since Marion had left, we’d stayed in touch. Our encounters were often uncomfortable, sometimes difficult, but we’d been too close for too long to loosen the ties binding our lives together too quickly, if ever. Marion had always been a happy, outgoing person, so seeing her now, muffled by sadness and numbed by anti-depressants, only enhanced my own sense of futility.
Life hadn’t been easy for her, or straightforward either, and often it felt like watching an amateur tightrope walker practising without a net. My friends counselled that I just walk away and leave her to continue her solo performance alone, but I couldn’t do that, as much for myself as for her. What joy could I get if she did fall? And despite everything, she didn’t deserve to fall. I might have given up on us, but I still hadn’t given up on her. We were still friends. Though I knew it was over between us, I hadn’t stopped loving her.
Now she came to visit and offered to help with the floor. Was it out of guilt? Or pity? I didn’t care, I just wanted to get the floor done. After completing the ceiling, suspended five metres above the ground on a sloping surface by myself, repeating the process on a flat, low surface, with assistance, should be a piece of cake, despite the fact that mistakes weren’t going to be so easily disguised this time.
First we had to drape underfloor insulation (reinforced aluminium foil with air-holes) over the joists. It seemed hardly worthwhile having such a flimsy barrier between the floor and the cold, but that was all that was required according to the specifications, and I certainly didn’t have any better ideas. But we quickly discovered that once the foil was draped over the joists, it was hard to see exactly where the joists were, and the foil itself made a poor safety net. So we only unrolled one strip at a time, stepping very carefully across the joists until we had a strip of floor to stand on.
Because any mistake made now would be permanently visible, the process was a little slower. I even took my time cutting straight ends. But that was as far as I was willing to compromise. For me, a floor was something to be walked on, used, scuffed, kicked, have things spilled onto it, be stained, dented and generally lived on. It wasn’t supposed to be a monument to my building prowess or an advertisement for floor polish, and I’ve never been big on ballroom dancing.
So, despite larch’s tendency to split when nailed, I didn’t bother drilling each hole first. And despite the permanent visibility of any gaps or joins, I didn’t attempt to ‘secret nail’ the floorboards to the joists or clamp them tightly together. Any minor imperfections would soon vanish beneath the feet of wear and tear, so we simply levered each board onto the previous board, then hammered in two nails every second joist. Which allowed us to complete the ground floor in a single afternoon.
If either of us had felt like dancing, we now had almost 55 square metres of open space in which to indulge ourselves. But dancing was still the last thing on our minds, so Marion returned to Dunedin, leaving me to finally move into my house. The roof wasn’t entirely waterproof, but the plywood seemed to be doing a reasonable job of keeping most of the rain out, so I was willing to take the risk and move all my stuff inside.
When I was five, my family moved into a new four-bedroom home in Banyo. All memories of that day, along with most of my childhood, now lie buried deep beneath the rubble of recollections casually discarded like last year’s toys. All except the memory of eating fish and chips battered with spicy optimism, breathing in the scent of newness and hope among the unopened boxes of the past.
My family has never had any tradition of oral history, of passing down stories, of valuing yesterday’s lives. Our river of memories flows like the Minzion, concerned not with its source, but only with reaching the sea. So I have no sense of ME prior to my awareness of my self. No sense of my past beyond the boundaries of my own mapping.
I’d always expected moving into a new house would be very much like that night so long ago. But the motorcamp only made fish and chips on Friday nights, my brash possessions shrank shyly away from the world’s sudden vastness, and sawdust was a poor substitute for hope.
I was in my home. Living. Alive.
Perhaps I should have waited until it was finished. After all, surely I deserved to experience that ‘new house’ feeling after expending so much energy on its construction? Surely moving in now would be like lending my new car to a friend before I’d even had a chance to drive it, or letting someone else eat the season’s first strawberry? It was tempting to delay, but faced with the choice between another few months living in an uninsulated, mouse-infested, overcrowded, flood-prone, draughty corrugated iron shed, and a solid, spacious, draught-proof, insulated house, all for the dubious pleasure of being able to eventually move into a complete new house, I opted to move in straight away. Besides, I was beginning to realise a self-built house is never truly finished.
As it continued drizzling over the next few weeks, I was able to fully appreciate the wisdom of my choice. Although I’d never feel truly comfortable sheltering between exposed pink batt walls, and there was the inconvenience of having a perpetual game of musical possessions as my work and living spaces competed for supremacy, it was much more comfortable than shed-life. \
Once I’d set up a minimal power supply, complete with a movable lightbulb on the end of a six metre cord, and established a kitchen in the bathroom, things were even bordering on cosy. Plus there was the added bonus of being suddenly, enthusiastically even, available for night shifts.
Of course I could have worked nights before moving into the house, but once I’d made myself comfortable in the shed at the end of the day, it was difficult to drag myself back down to the house, particularly on cold, drizzling nights. But it’s difficult to sit watching television when you’re surrounded by unfinished work demanding your attention - especially during the ad breaks - and the comparative advantages of the two options are obvious.
Over the next week, while nightly frosts ensured the roof remained damp, I finished the rest of the floor. But the constant delays in completing the roof were beginning to get a little tedious. I was starting to get frustrated and a little paranoid. Possibly the first signs of ‘cabin fever’, since I only left the house to go to the toilet hole - I won’t even attempt to dignify this pathetic, muddy, slippery, board-covered, shallow hole by calling it a ‘longdrop’ - and Faigans, with a weekly visit to Wallace and Sheena for some intelligent conversation and warm company.
During most of this period, they were my only lifeline of sanity, my only accessible friends, and life would have been so much drabber and depressing if they hadn’t also somehow ended up living in Millers Flat. Though their story had started fourteen years previously.
‘Someone’ was causing this weather, I ranted. ‘Someone’ was responsible for all my miseries, I railed. Sometimes ‘someone’ was an unseeing, hateful God, sometimes a conspiracy of grey men, sometimes nobody but me. Yet no matter how much I condemned the world and life, the poor weather continued.
Eventually Wallace and Sheena asked me to house-sit while they were on holidays in Marlborough, and I gleefully accepted. For a week I relished the civilised life, the warm life in a warm house, with a woodburner in the kitchen and underfloor heating in the livingroom. There was extravagant meals cooked on the range, exotic favourites baked in the oven (an oven!), hot showers, warm beds, lights in every room.
With my house so far away, I was no longer dragged awake at first light, and no longer lingered beyond the first sprinkle of dusk. Rather than fonder, distance only made my heart grow more distant, putting the house into sudden perspective. It wasn’t life, just a small piece of it. There were goats to feed, water to be carried to thirsty calves, books to read, music to drive the winter from its perch for a single, fluttering moment. There was more to life than building a house, and I lived it for a short week, unfettered by worry and frustration.
It was a welcome and invigorating break from my builder’s life, instilling a new sense of the inevitable. One day I would finish the roof. One day the weather would assist rather than hinder my efforts. And until that day arrived, there was enough productive work I could be doing which didn’t require climatic assistance.
For example, there was a door to be made. Ever since I first watched Mister Ed on TV, I’ve always imagined a house with a stable door. Not that I was ever intending on having a horse (talking or otherwise). I certainly didn’t want to convert the entire house into a Mister Ed memorial. And I couldn’t even foresee any occasion when having a half-open door would actually be advantageous. But it was my house, so if I wanted a stable door, I was going to have one. There were only three doors in the plan - front, back and bathroom - and I’d already bought two at the Roxburgh auction.
Marion and I had gone to this annual fundraising event, eyes aglitter with the prospect of filling our new home with bargains. It was our first auction, and our list of requirements was endless, so everything looked like a bargain. Within an hour we’d acquired two armchairs, two handbasins - one for the basin, one for the taps - a toilet bowl, and a large sack of fluff which Marion claimed would make an ideal, though somewhat formless, beanbag.
We never identified the exact nature of the filling, but we did later discover some of its charming properties - such as the fact it was highly flammable, requiring a single shooting spark to set it alight. Or that the only way to ensure the contents won’t re-ignite is to dismember the sack and sift through each strand, casting any smoking, smelling, smouldering clumps of fused fibre off the verandah. And although it’s difficult to remove fluff from roughsawn timber, or charred fluff from grass, half a sack of fluff still makes an ideal, though somewhat formless, beanbag.
But after these few purchases, the auction split into two, with one auctioneer moving to the larger items outside, while the other continued with household items inside. So we alternated frantically between the two, coming inside in time to bid for thirty-two straightback wooden chairs (reaching a mutually agreeable agreement with the other bidder - after all, we only needed eight - which halted the bidding at $1.50 per chair).
Returning outside in time to beat other bids for the rimu door. Though we also had to take the two pressboard cupboard doors, the chipboard mantelpiece and a masonite interior door as part of the deal.
Back inside to lose out on a rimu table.
Outside again in time to join the bidding on a waterpump. Though, as it turned out, I was actually joining the bidding for the park bench upon which the already-sold waterpump sat. Coming in at $20, waving Marion impatiently away when she realises I am the ‘confident’ bidder behind her and tries to warn me, but there’ no time for explanations in the midst of a bidding war, and suddenly it’s SOLD to the man at the back for $35 ...
“Why did you buy a bench?”
“I didn’t buy the bench, I bought the waterpump.”
“No, you bought the bench.”
I had bought the bench, and what a useful, much-used bench it turned out to be!
So the rimu door was ideal for the bathroom. Exterior boards could be attached to the frame of the masonite door thereby converting it into a heavy back door. But that still left one door to be made. And if I was going to make a door, it might as well be a stable door.
Actually, it was unlikely I’d even be able to find a suitable door anyway, because all my door openings are odd-sized, even compared to each other. The plan didn’t exactly specify the door measurements, so I simply considered my own height and width and allowed space all around, though with no degree of consistency. As with much of the house, each door would be made to measure, fitting my requirements rather than adhering to any standard size.
A door is little more than a large, wooden window, consisting of a frame supporting a hinged bit which swings opens. And I’d already decided to build the windows myself. Quotes from joineries were in the $4500+ range, but the timber itself only cost $1500, and the glass $200, so I had little to lose and $3000 to gain. Of course, they were going to be an extremely simplified version of the windows specified, but as long as they kept the rain out and opened, it would be a huge bonus.
So I decided to establish a production line and build all the frames together, rather than just the doors.
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