A Silver Summer For $11.00

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After the first width of plastic was secured we cut, spread and nailed down the second 10-foot sheet—with a generous overlap of the first—and my home was nearly "roofed". We needed only a four-foot end piece to cover the remaining space and provide the six-inch overhang . . . this we twisted around the end saplings and secured with more vinyl and nails. Now we had a beautiful open-ended tunnel of plastic, its top faintly dappled with sunbeams filtered through the hemlocks. We were proud.

End to end ventilation (cross ventilation) is important in a plastic dwelling—since the material absorbs much heat—and our next step was to make door and window frames for the ends of the tunnel.

On the ground across the front, we put a ten-foot sapling and lashed it to the bottoms of the end poles. Next we ran two poles from the ground to the top of the first arch and spaced them to accommodate the width of the cabinet door (the fit would be tight so that the door would stay closed). After lashing these two uprights securely to the ground-level and arched saplings, we cut a sapling crosspiece, placed it four and a half feet (the height of the door) up from the bottom pole and lashed the higher cross-pole to each end sapling. We fit the door into thisframe, nailed its hinges to the left-hand support—using the same three and four-penny nails—and we had ourselves a real opening and closing door. (Editor's note: the door and window frames in the accompanying pictures were made with squared logs rather than saplings.)

Making the window was easy once we had the door frame completed. The top sapling of the door frame became the upper edge of the window frame as well and, about two feet below it, we ran a second horizontal sapling from the right-hand edge of the door frame to the right sapling of the arch and lashed the two together with twine. Window frame done . . . ready for screening.

We cut the donated screening to overlap the window frame by about three inches all around . . . the edges got rolled over the sapling frame and nailed at four-inch intervals on the inside (the closer the nails, the less the chance of invading insects).

We then cut a piece of plastic roughly the shape of a slice of pie to fit over the whole right-hand section—from door to arch—of the house's front. After lapping and rolling the edges over the top and edge of the loop and around the sapling crosspiece at the bottom, I then nailed the film all around the outside of the window frame (three-inch intervals this time, again for bug resistance). I cut the plastic along the two sides and bottom of the inner edge of the frame to make a plastic flap that could roll up or down over the screen depending on the weather.

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