After the batter boards, we dug holes for the footings. John rented a rock drill and drilled into rock for the footings which needed to be anchored with rebar. Some did, some didn’t; it depended on how far down we needed to dig, where grade was, where rock was. Wooden forms were built for several footings. When we didn’t need to drill, the rebar was sunk into the concrete which John mixed in a wheelbarrow and shoveled into the sonotube or wooden form. The plumb bob was used to find the centre of the footings, a vertical level.

Homemade House
BY John Pass

We made our meals at a table we’d built out of ship-lap nailed to a frame of small cedar logs. We had an old Coleman stove, and a large enameled pan — for a sink, a salad bowl, a bathtub for the baby. We also made a campfire in a ring of stones and kept a pot of coffee warm on the stones; we cooked meat on a wire grill over the fire. We could also boil a kettle on the fire if we weren’t in a hurry for the water. The water came from Ruby Lake. We’d take down our big twenty litre container and dip it into the deeper water. Sometimes a little gravel ended up in our mugs.

Every step was wondrous. The cedar posts on the footings, then the long beams of strong fir. At that point, our building site looked like sculpture, silent prehistoric animals waiting on the bluff. We built the walls on the platform created by nailing joists to the beams on 16 inch centres, then setting plywood on top, using chalk line to tell us where to nail. The dark red chalk stained my hands, the mark of a builder. We lifted the walls ourselves, apart from one or two very heavy ones. And then we’d ask a neighbour or a friend to help. John would carefully brace the walls with two by fours so that they couldn’t fall over the side of the platform but each time there was anxiety as we lifted and held, one of us reading the level and suggesting adjustments, the other nailing down the bottom plate.

Every step was wondrous. The cedar posts on the footings, then the long beams of strong fir. At that point, our building site looked like sculpture, silent prehistoric animals waiting on the bluff.

Every step — the sheer weariness of holding ceiling rafters in place (it took some time to figure out how to create a bird’s mouth notch), strapping for the cedar shakes for the roof, framing a doorway, nailing down plywood. Understanding the role of lintels, those horizontal structural members supporting a load above a window or door.

How did we ever do it? How did two poets with a small baby build a house when they had no experience beyond building book shelves out of pine? I don’t think it ever occurred to us to buy plans or consult an architect. We had the building code and that told us what we needed in terms of requirements and standards. But I marvel at how John could envision our house from his drawings – we’d both agreed on sizes for rooms and their placement but I was no help at all with the actual plans; he drew them and got them blueprinted and then approved by the Regional District’s building inspector. — Will I like what it will look like? I’d ask, trying to imagine a kitchen from the plans, how the windows might let in light. — Where will the sink be? Where will our bed be? The drawings showed the dimensions, elevations, each room’s relative size, to scale. “For, in point of fact, a house is first and foremost a geometrical object, one which we are tempted to analyze rationally. Its prime reality is visible and tangible, made of well hewn solids and well fitted framework. It is dominated by straight lines, the plumb line having marked it with its discipline and balance.”^[1] I had no spatial sense at all but nailed and lifted with blind trust, not able to translate structural materials to interior space. Drawings spoke of rectangles, clean and elegant. — But will there be a windowsill for a plant? Where will we sit to look at sunsets?