We’ve been accumulating a drawer full of catalogues, magazine cut-outs and copies, and pictures of everything from cool electrical outlets to various flooring and woodstoves. Last week, we finally gathered everything together into a 3-ring binder. Now we have all that information at hand when we need it.

I’d talked to a friend of mine who’d also built a house, although they had a contractor and hired builders. She told me how every few days the contractor would call and say something like “We’re ready to install the stove. Have you picked it out yet?” Then there would be a mad rush to appliance stores to select one.

A week later, the stove is in and they discover that because there’s not much clearance between the stove and the island opposite, the oven door doesn’t open all the way.

And that got me thinking about how, as a consequence of not having much money, our house is growing very organically. We take one step at a time. And because we have time between projects, we’ve had the luxury to look at different options for many of the home’s components.

For example: since the barrel vaulted structure is self-supporting, we have flexibility in planning our interior walls.  Some walls are set with plumbing and conduit coming up through the floor and can not be changed.  But we could easily reposition the rest without affecting the integrity of the structure.  Even the exterior walls are not load bearing. This will allow us to build a temporary wall on the South side with a couple of recycled windows.  Later, when we can afford it, we we can remove that wall and replace it with our dream “Curtain Wall” of glass. (The one in the binder.)

BTW the cool outlets shown in the picture are the 22 series plugs by www.bocci.ca