We are going into our 6th summer working on this little round house.  We’ve focused so much time and energy and money and years of vacations to build something truly special and gorgeous.  Seeing the dream of this place come into reality is such an incredibly rewarding experience that I almost began to believe I was in control of where I find myself in this world.  Then, out of the blue my mom got sick and 18 months later she passed away.  My vision for this house included her and then it became impossible for her to be part of all the tiling, woodworking, electrical, plumbing, gardening and fine tuning it would take to finish this house.  Her living self would never be here again.

Visions change when expectations meet reality and into the future we bring our memories of what was and what we wanted to be.  In 2017 my mom (Carol) came down to the house just after we had the walls up.  With no roof on the house, gallons of water collected in the low spots of the foundation so she helped Josh bail and sweep the water out.  The next day, she bought us a shop vac to make the job easier next time.  I used that vacuum yesterday to suck up dried bits of mastic so that the next course of tile would go down nicely.

My last post on this site was in December 2020, just about the same time that we learned of my mom’s illness.  Writing here did not seem so important although we’ve continued to make a lot of progress on the house.  Now it seems that every day I go without writing I am further in the hole of being able to describe it all to the point that I might never get to it.  Procrastination is not really my style, so here’s an update on our progress which involves a finished kitchen and bathroom and lots and lots of tiling.

Our kitchen was completed by Wood Revolutions in April, 2021.

In November 2021 Josh finished the shower and the bathroom became fully functional.

The tiling began in July, 2021. We chose to cover all 1200 square feet of the house with 1 foot hexagons. We began in the center of the house, exactly where the post of the spiral staircase meets the floor. Then we finished tiling and grouting in the living room before moving on to the bedroom. Next we moved on to the bathroom floor. At this point, we have roughly 80% of the floor covered with tile and 50% fully grouted.

The next project on the horizon is to trim out the windows. We decided to use beetle kill “blue” pine like we used to wrap the post and beam. The colors in this wood will make your eyes pop.

Thanks for reading.