Waitress Builds Fortress
(Page 5 of 5)
April/May 2004
By Dorothy Ainsworth
Inside the house, the inner walls remained rustic with visible logs, but the walls sheltering me from the outside had to be insulated. I furred them out with 2-by-4s to receive fiberglass batts and sheetrock. I chinked between the logs on the outside. I hired an electrician to do the extensive wiring but painstakingly did the plumbing myself—and passed inspection.
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Let there be light! —but not just any light. I suspended chandeliers from ceiling fans. To help support the one 18-foot horizontal log that freely spanned the middle of the house, I fashioned two hanging knee braces out of black chains and turnbuckles (see photo, Page 28).
I rented scaffolding again, but this time to caulk every crack and apply a beautiful protective stain to the entire house. Night and day, up and down the rungs and ladders I climbed, buttering the logs with my linseed-oil concoction until they glowed like the sunset. I wiped the baseboards with a tiny cotton T-shirt and laid it out to dry.
On June 29th, 1995, the T-shirt spontaneously combusted and burned the house down in two hours. I put the fire out with tears. After six years of building, I was back to square one.
Second Time's the Charm
I had nominal insurance to cover tools and a new foundation, but rebuilding would have to be done the hard way: all over again. Fortunately, being a waitress in a coffee shop meant I knew a multitude of people. They rallied together, threw a music benefit on my behalf and raised enough money to buy foundation beams, floor joists and rafters. Then Kitt and I headed into the forest with our trusty chain saw.
After we stockpiled and peeled 300 new logs, Kitt took a leave of absence from his job to help me rebuild the basic structure. It took two years. I continued to waitress and do the finish work by making doors, cutting and fitting curved knee-braces, creating a "tree" as a king-post, and building the stairway, railings and decks, which took an additional three years.
House No. 2 cost about the same as house No. 1 — $15 a square foot, for a total of $30,000. Now that I have my home, I've come to the conclusion that it is better to have built and rebuilt than never to have built at all!
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