Cottage for Sale, Must Be Moved (13 page)

“You got to learn how to drive these machines,” John replies.

He nods, and I can see he is a little envious of the men who get to be boys for a few days. This is what I have come to realize. John, Brian, Ed—they are having fun driving these vehicles around my yard, making sand piles and digging holes, yanking out tree stumps and every once in a while banging into the side of my house. The longer I watch them, the more I understand the look in the eyes of the hand-digger. I’m beginning to wish I could take the Bobcat for a spin myself. Egypt, on the other hand, prefers the yellow mini-excavator. He’s claimed it as his own, sitting on the black vinyl seat, grooming, mugging for the camera. “All you need is a little yellow hard hat,” I tell him as I snap his picture.

Fat chance,
he tells me, as he stares straight ahead, but he does allow me to join him. I take the seat and he sits on the flat yellow metal plate just in front of the steering wheel. I hear his purr,
Vrroom, vrooom.

“Vrroom, vrooom, vroooooommmmh,” I answer, but quietly, so my neighbors won’t notice that I am playing trucks with my cat.

THEY POURED THE FOUNDATION TODAY
. For the uninitiated, this would seem a beginning. But this newborn construction maven knows better. This is easily the middle. We have run the gauntlet of local regulation, cleared the land of trees. We have disturbed the earth, uncovered the sand base of Cape Cod, and just last week poured the footings. The footings are the very bottom of what will become the walls of my basement. Thanks to Ruben, I know they are ten inches deep, twenty inches wide. Along the center line of each, the concrete workers placed a two-by-four right on top of the concrete, while it was still wet. “Why?” I asked the concrete man today, as he removed the board to reveal a long thin line in the center of the now-solid rectangle of cement.

“To lock the walls in. It is called a keyline.” I like this new word and add it to my growing vocabulary of building terms.
Keyline.
I want to write it down right away, before I forget it, but I am too busy with the camera, taking endless shots of concrete being pumped and poured and moved around with shovels.

The walls of the foundation will be ten inches thick and eight feet tall when they are dry and free of the concrete forms. The forms are interlocking rectangles with faded printing that once advertised their manufacturer. They resemble a strange fortress built into the hillside, wooden frames around panels whose color can only be described as pale corrugated, the color of boxes left in the shed for a few years. Setting the forms is a process that looks like something you could do on a smaller scale with Legos. But before the forms are set, Ronny, the head honcho of On-Cape Concrete Forms, comes and measures and levels and sets up strings and makes sure that the foundation will land exactly where it belongs. This is especially important in this case, as we are planning a foundation that will hold a house already built. What’s more, this already-built house will be deposited by a crane. There is no room for error.

That is probably why I’ve been seeing so much of Mr. Hayden recently. He visits at the end of the workday, on his way home. I am learning to expect him—or, more accurately, to expect anyone at any time. My house, my schedule are no longer mine alone. Men and trucks and tractors come and go. They knock on my door before 8
A.M.
They surprise me in the garden in the late afternoon. “Make sure Ronny calls me,” Mr. Hayden said to me early last week, while I was patting some dirt around yet another transplant. “Have to give him some very specific measurements. Need some bolts in the foundation. Maybe some butterflies. Not sure yet which, maybe both.” With each visit, my Haydenese has been improving. I’ve hardly begun to notice the missing subjects in his sentences; I’ve just been filling in the blanks in my head.
Butterflies?
I didn’t ask. For a moment, I held the image of thousands of small beating wings—orange and black; blue and yellow—circling the foundation, holding my little cottage in place. But I didn’t share this thought with Mr. Hayden. I was pretty sure his butterflies were of the hardware-store variety, something like those hooks that expand on one side to hold hanging pots.

Ronny visited the site a few days later, and I passed Mr. Hayden’s message along. He nodded, pocketed the card for Hayden Building Movers with Mr. Hayden’s numbers. Ronny was not worried yet about the bolts, or even the measurements for the walls. He was worried about my hillside. “We’ll pour the footings if we can, but we’ll probably have to pump the walls.” It seems the contours of my land present a challenge. We can’t get a concrete mixer up high enough to pour the concrete between the forms to make the walls. The pump truck, Ed told me yesterday, costs $700 every time it visits. The price does not seem so outrageous when I realize the pump truck is essentially a pale yellow crane. I struggle to fit it all into one picture, holding the camera vertically and getting myself onto the top of the woodchuck hill.

When the concrete mixer arrives, they hook his chute to the pump truck, and soon the concrete is coming out of a big rubber tube that hangs off the crane. The guys, stationed atop the forms, hug the big tube, get a good grip on it, and move it into position. They signal to the driver.
More water, pour harder, lighten up.
The man on the crane adjusts his controls, repositions according to their signals.

As they pump the first section of the foundation, I am adding up how much it will cost just to create a resting place for the cottage waiting in Harwich. Two more trips of the pump truck, $2,100 total. Then there is concrete, labor. And I found out only a few days ago that a concrete floor is an accessory item. You want the radio in the car? You have to pay for it. Ditto with the basement floor. We make the walls. You pay extra for the floor. I fought hard for a full basement with the Conservation Commission. Damned if I’ll settle for anything less than smooth concrete at the base of my eight-foot walls.*

*
I WAS IN BOSTON
this morning while they were setting the forms for the walls. Just before I went into a meeting, my cell phone rang. A question about the elevations. The man at the other end of the phone asked to speak to the person who had done the drawings. “That would be me,” I answered. I sensed the confusion at the other end of the phone. “You have some questions?” I asked, urging him along. He wanted to confirm the location of the door and the windows. The south-facing wall will boast two windows, side by side, and a door, which I also imagine with windows. I want to draw in as much light as possible to the basement, not because I plan to spend so much time there, but as an antidote to the mold and mildew that come gratis with any Cape Cod cellar. There will also be small casement-style windows on the sides of the foundation, for ventilation more than light. I had a copy of the plans with me. In the front seat of my car, I felt like a real construction super. He promised to call again with questions.

On the second call, he asked about the four small openings I’d specified in the front and rear of the cottage. “Those are for the straps,” I explained. “When the house is lifted up, it will be held with two big straps. When it lands on the foundation, there has to be somewhere for those straps to go.”

“You on your way home?” he asked. He wants me to see the forms, make sure everything is in place correctly before they pour. The concrete truck is scheduled for noon.

“I should be there unless there is big traffic.”*

*
IT IS JUST A FEW MINUTES
before twelve and I am driving down the steep little road that leads to my street. I see the top of a crane through the trees. For a split second, I am worried there has been a horrible mistake, that the cottage and the giant crane have arrived before the foundation. Then I pull into the driveway, spot the cement mixer, and see the guys hooking up the mixer to what I now realize must be the pump truck.

I feel a surge of pure pleasure at the sight of the concrete mixer. Despite my unpleasant experience working in the white dust of the concrete plant, I love to watch these mixer trucks, their huge drums set to spinning, graphics going round and round. Mixing sand and water and stones, adjusting the recipe for the job. I have had a few different mixers on this project already, but my clear favorites have drums painted to look like the Cape Cod license plate: red-and-white striped lighthouse, a bit of blue sea, a sailboat. I love to watch the scene on the truck spinning faster, faster into abstraction, then slowing down, moving back, resolving finally into what is recognizable, bright, simple.

Indeed, we have a Cape Cod drum today, and I view this as a good omen. I jump out of my car and run over to the men, conscious of my heels, my dress. We triple-check the drawings, walk to the front to make sure the forms look right, that the openings are okay. “Looks good,” I say. “I’m going to quick-change. I’ll be right back. Do you mind if I take some pictures?”

I climb atop the sand mountain in my backyard to get a shot, but I am not happy with the angle. At the highest point on the far hillside, I can get almost all of the crane into the picture. Better. Watching the men, the movement, listening to the sounds of the pump and the mixer, I think about how long it has taken to reach this point: four and a half months. From the first reading of the classified ad to the Conservation hearing, that fateful night at the end of last month, Mr. Van Buren’s odd sense of humor.

I do hope my cottage doesn’t fall apart. Ed says it is good and sturdy. When I visited for more measurements a couple of weeks back, I got down on my knees to have a look underneath. The wood was clean and dry, reddish, maybe spruce; it looked brand new. It’s been sitting in a sunny spot on sand for the last fifty years. A few more pine trees in that cottage colony and there would be wood rot, maybe even termite damage. I stood up to resume my measurements: base of cottage to base of kitchen window. The underbelly of my cottage is beautiful and strong, I thought. I drew an arrow to the spot on my drawing, made a note of the span, and felt something like pride in my sturdy, well-built cottage-to-be.

My thoughts turn back to money. I have never had much of it in my life, and I tend to trade in risk rather than in security. In the early days of my business, I barely eked by. I accumulated a good deal of debt, and not just the good kind my old boss had recommended to me. Over the years, my income has become a little more predictable, but still there are times when the IRS gets paid with a Visa card, or the mortgage payment requires a cash advance. I’ve learned to live with the uncertainty of cash flow, and most of the time, it all works out in the end. Right now I have a lot of work, but tax time is coming, and I know I’ll need more than the equity loan to complete the cottage. But I am committed now, and I have no intention of turning back. I may have to adjust my expectations, perhaps take more time to finish the inside work. Chances are, I think, as I watch the concrete spill over the forms and onto the ground, as the concrete worker wrestles the tube into another section, chances are I will not be able to afford the furnace move. Chances are the furnace will stay exactly where it is. But I am getting a cellar floor, for sure.

Now the men are smoothing out their work with shovels, making sure that all is even. The tube is being pulled up into the air; it is still spitting concrete. “It’s very rocky,” I remark to one of the men.

“That’s what makes it strong,” he replies.

“Makes sense,” I concede, but still I am struck by the sound, the chortling sound as the rocks hit the form, and I wonder: Is there enough water? Will they take away the forms tomorrow, and find tumbling piles of rocks? It is an image I suspect Conservation Chief Van Buren would enjoy.*

*
THE NEXT DAY
they remove the forms, and I have walls. The concrete looks almost wet, it is so dark, but it is smooth and sturdy. No tumbling rocks in sight. The foundation sits in the rain for a couple of days before the strongman of the concrete crew—the one who was hugging the big rubber chute, moving it around to make the walls—comes back to tar the foundation. He asks me roughly where the soil line will be, and I give my best guess. He paints the black tar onto the outside of the foundation, from the bottom up, following the contours I’ve indicated. When he is done, the tar gleams and the foundation looks all dressed up. I shoot a photograph, pleased with the aesthetic of shiny black against dull gray. The tar will be covered by earth when we backfill around the foundation, but I like the security of knowing it is there, protecting my basement from the elements, keeping it dry against the damp.

John and Ed and Brian return with a black-topped Bobcat and their giant ruler. They do a little filling around the completed portion of the foundation and make way for the smaller section that will sit four feet away from the house. They calculate depth using a nail hammered just under the kitchen door as their reference point, and they dig carefully, working very close to the house. More than once the house is hit with the scoop of the Bobcat, and every time this happens, Egypt gives me another dirty look. But he has gained some ease with this process, with the machinery, the noise. He likes our walks at dusk, when all is silent except the birds, calling and chattering like crazy in the trees around us. He enjoys surveying the progress of each day at least as much as I do.

My kitchen plumbing has been disconnected now, so that any water I use at the sink runs out the open end of the waste pipe and into the ditch outside the kitchen window. I take to using a dishpan and dump the wastewater in the tub. It’s a relatively minor inconvenience; at least I have running water. After the inspector comes to give his seal of approval for Part One of the foundation, I let a little more water run out the pipe, but I still send the big loads down the drain in the bathroom. I don’t want to create any more erosion of the earth close to the house. The four-foot margin between the unpoured foundation wall and the house has been cut in half by excavation, and we want the house to stay standing on its four-foot block foundation. This is where the issues of “structural integrity” come into play.