late november sunrise

anticipating house wiring with snake and conduit 

   Here's a very short blog post I've been wanting to post for a while. It's about a small, personal triumph.
   The weather has finally turned cold. But at this time of year, a remarkable effect warms my heart.
   Seven years ago I took a picture of myself while organizing the wiring of our future kitchen, laundry room, dining room, and living room. The wires would pass through conduits that would be buried in the cement floor. Previously, we had excavated the dirt floor down about a meter, reinforced the wall foundations with steel reinforced concrete, spanned the air space with pre-stressed concrete beams, laid hollow blocks on the beams, provided ventilation ducting to the underfloor space, and cut our steel reinforcing grid for the floor.

burying the waste pipe

   We were ready to pour a concrete floor. Except that once the concrete hardened, we'd be unable to install plumbing or electrics.  In order to finish the floor, we had to design the kitchen. And the living room, dining room and the laundry room. And we had to predict the position of electrical outlets and plumbing points.
     In the years it took to do all this, I lived down there in the cantina through all weather and seasons. I breathed the dust, sweated in the clay, froze with the cement, and got to know the sun, wind and rain. The room layout ideas were batted back and forth between Alex and I. I wanted a garage, a big kitchen, no second door in the pantry. She wanted a "drawing room," a separate dining room, two doors to the pantry, and certainly no garage. She got her way most times. Probably for the better. But one thing I did get was morning sun in the kitchen.

golden cappuccino at 7am

    This morning, like many mornings in the fall and spring, the rising sun penetrates right across the kitchen counter to the back wall lighting my coffee with a light like transparent gold. It's something the architect in me has always wanted. As I've said to many recent visitors, the memories of those difficult days struggling with puny efforts against ridiculous tasks make it difficult to sit back and enjoy. I can still see the filthy rubble behind the plaster, the falling bricks from the smooth arches, the gaping hole of damp clay under the white floor. They are like ghosts laughing at me. The plaster will fall away. the arches will crack and crumble. It's only time and an earthquake away. But getting that morning sun to join me in a little toast and coffee and warm fire. That is something.