Memories - the building of a "dream" house

Ten years ago we started building our home here in the country. It was my first (and last) job as a contractor. It seems like an eternity, and I didn't remember it being that much work until I recently read a "coda" (final movement), that I wrote after the home was finished. I thought it might be interesting for friends and family to read:

Written in September 1999:

I am writing this in my new office, on what was a pasture just one year ago. It was a beautiful pasture, just the way it had been for hundreds, maybe thousands of years. High on a hill with hundred-mile views, it was full of majestic fifty-year-old oak trees, thistles, and knee-deep grass. Blooming with lupine wild flowers in the spring, the pasture was so quiet you could hear the tall grass move as the wind blew, and watch the moving flowers paint an ever-changing picture. Here and there in the tall grass you can now see posts sticking up, connected by bright pink ribbon... these posts are marking out our "dream".

And then the men came....
They arrived in large trucks with cranes that in a minute could lift a man higher than it took those old oaks to reach in fifty years. The silence was broken by chain saws, chippers, and stump grinders...and in a day, ten of those majestic oak trees that looked out over that view and weathered storms and heat through fifty or more ever changing seasons, were gone....gone so we could build our dream house in that pasture.

Then more men came...
This time with bulldozers, moving tons of dirt, reshaping the gentle rolling slopes of the pasture into a precise pad of dirt that would be the resting place of our dream. Then after a few days, the bulldozers left and all was quiet again. The grass and wild flowers were now gone, and when the wind blew only dust disturbed the air.

Then even more men came...
They marked the dirt with white lines, the outline of the garage over there, the master bedroom here, the dining room over there...like marking out a football field before the start of a game. But these marks were our dream, and after the main house was drawn on the dirt, we selected the final spot for the cottage....just a square chalk mark on the dirt where the lupines bloomed in the spring...that square would become the Lupine Cottage.
Then, along those chalk marks the men dug trenches that would hold two-foot-deep legs of cement that would anchor our dream in this pasture. They erected wooden forms outlining the shape of the house and cottage. Pipes were installed connecting the rooms, later to become the arteries of the plumbing system. When the forms were finished and the plumbing tested, the cement trucks arrived. Fifteen in all, waiting in line, driving up to the house one by one to unload their cargo of cement that would become the foundation of our dream. Ten men scrambled to push and form and smooth the cement over four thousand square feet of surface, and when they finished, it was quiet again. As I looked at the beautiful piece of cement work surrounded by trees, I could see the dream taking shape.

And still the men came...
Truckloads of lumber were unloaded, more wood than I had ever seen. The property had no power yet, so the sound of generators broke the silence. Followed by power saws, drills, and nail guns. Poof, poof poof, the sound of nail gun fire... like a war, but this was our dream going together. Slowly the walls went up, with all the openings for doors and windows, and the two houses started taking shape.
Thirty-nine windows arrived on another truck and were put in their places so later we could sit in our dream and look out over those beautiful views.
When the frame was finished, more men came...stringing thousands of feet of wire throughout the house like spider webs. Air conditioning and heating ducts crisscrossed the ceiling frames, all terminating in their proper place to ensure that we would always be comfortable in our dream.
The wood frame was wrapped with wire and waterproof paper and given an outer skin of cement and plaster, while more men covered the roof with waterproof paper and carefully laid roof tiles in place to ensure that rains would never see the inside of our dream.
A truckload of rock was delivered and masons began building fireplaces, rock walls and chimney stacks. Insulation was laid into every opening in every wall and ceiling, doors were installed, and finally the dream was sealed from the whims of Mother Nature.

And then more men came...
Electricians and plumbers, connecting the arteries that had been roughed in, installing sinks, bathtubs, lights, and intercom systems. The cabinets and tile that Peggy agonized over for months brought the kitchen and bathrooms to life. Painters added the colors that Peggy had meticulously selected to match her vision of how the dream would be decorated. Fireplaces were completed, molding, doors, window sills, shelves, closets, bookcases, cabinets, carpeting...the finishing touches.

And then, finally, no more men came...
We will miss those ten trees, and the grass will no longer blow in this pasture, but Mother Nature would be proud of what we have built. Gently blended into the wilderness, our dream has become part of it. Hundreds of trees remain on this property and the grass blows in another pasture I can view from my office, and I’m sure the Lupines will bloom there next spring. The birds have coffee with us each morning and the deer and turkeys have cocktails with us in the evening....and now our "dream house" is a home.