design, building, and art workshop brooklyn ny timseggerman@gmail.com
I purchased, what was possibly, the most woebegone house in all New Jersey. It certainly had more violations than any property in Hunterdon County. Being a naive city boy, I believed the agents when they told me the foundation, walls and septic were all fine. I figured to make the sad house whole again, piece by piece.
Of course, within a few days of closing, there was no house, but a hole rapidly filling with water and homesteading frogs from the creek below.
The factory cast foundation walls were placed on top of crushed stone (that I wheelbarrowed into place because the backhoe operator never showed), carrying ground water 150 ft. into the woods. When floods washed away Lower Creek Rd. and filled every basement in the area with water, my basement and house were bone dry.
view from the roof, while installing skylight, looking east
the house is clad with untreated
12" X 1 1/4" cypress over a 1/4" plastic mesh that floats over house wrap allowing the house to breathe and stay dry.
The railing would conventionally be attached post to post, but here it is separated from the posts, 12" away, allowing for a long 33' uninterrupted stretch.
Cypress flooring, same as the outside, installed with 2" wrought iron cut nails. The boards were 16' long, not by any means, perfectly straight. They had to be straightened, using many lengths of 2 X 12 beams with shims, pushing slowly to fit tightly... by my lonesome.
Trees are heaven to live with, but when a 75' oak falls, within 5' of your house, with a thunderous crack and oceanic shaking of the ground... one can only thank the heavens for being spared. This happened three times.
At about this point, owing to a tiny tick (Lyme) and a sulfurous letter from a pipeline company, labor on the house pretty much stopped for 4 years or so. Eventually the pipeline co. was sent back to Texas and I was able to get the c/o... of course a house is never "finished".
A bow to the initial framing crew and roofer, the dream electricians (father and son, straight off the set of Green Acres), my Tasmanian Devil may care friend Gyorgy the plumber and just in the nick of time help from Andrew and Mervin and above all, my sister Carol, who always kept the lamp trimmed and burning.
