Good morning dear friends,
It is one hundred days this morning until the end of the year. After a five-year marathon of building preparations and land offers, frustrated permit applications and pandemics, we are now within sight of home.
Over the course of those five years, our online foundation has grown to be so large and various, one might ask why it is still so important to build a house? The answer is simple: to ground in material reality the transcendental values we would represent to the world, for nothing is so in need of realization as idealism. Without that one tiny woodland house we have no roots in the ground, and our "dream too wild" is vulnerable to blow away in the wind.
From this moment to the end of the year, it is a sprint to the finish. Our historic "Virginia frame" building plans are now in the expert hands of Jeff Klee, in consultation with our architects Ed Pease and David Stemann. Once Jeff is finished, the plans will be given over to Ed and David to be elaborated and reconciled with modern building requirements. Materials will be ordered according to takeoff specifications and delivered to Garland Wood and his team at Colonial Williamsburg. Garland's team will then build and discuss the classic frame before the viewing public. Once finished, the frame will be disassembled and transported to the site, where Garland and interested volunteers will reassemble it.
Our schedule at this point is exacting:
September: Plans with Jeff Klee
October: Plans with Stemann Pease; Site Corners Marked and Area Cleared
October 25: Last Date to Order Materials
November 24: Last Date for Delivery of Materials; Brick Foundation Piers Established
December 24: Last Date to Finish Frame
February: Move and Reassemble on Site
This and subsequent messages are being copied to officers, board members, selected advisors, and interested volunteers in order that you should have all the assistance available at your disposal. We'll be conferring regularly now, and a summary email message will be circulated every Monday through the end of the year.
Five years and nine land offers ago, this all looked as though it would be simple. If our experience has taught us anything, it is how labyrinthine the approach to simplicity can be in the present world. Now we are almost home.
Yours with pleasure and thanks,
Michael
The Innermost House Foundation is an entirely volunteer organization,
dedicated to renewing transcendental values for our age.
