Early February 1998 saw a couple of powerful nor'easters hit the mid-Atlantic coast. 20 houses in the village of Nag's Head are now, well, houseboats, or at least they were for a brief time before just becoming hazards to navigation.
Fearing the worst, I went down on 10 February 1998 to see if the house and the lot were still around. The dune was a bit reduced but nothing serious (whew!). From the main street, nothing looks different:
Some folks around the middle of the street once had front and side yards but currently have some very nice on-property lakes.
The berm -- the dune between the house and the ocean -- lost some sand on the ocean side. Fences on the dune stabilized it a bit, but the fence took a beating, as you can see from this shot looking south on the beach.
Yup, we'll need some new fences.
Well, at least some of the fence survived.
The house is still pretty well protected, as you see here.
What looks like a hole in the dune is, on closer inspection, a public service message.
Keep off the dunes, eh? Good idea. Sadly, some of the surfing crowd on the crew has found this a more convenient route to the sea. Hopefully that'll stop now.
About all that's left is to finish the trellis and build the beach walkway. A view from the surf:
All of the railing is up now and it looks good.
It's a bit hard to see, but some of the basketweave trellis is up as well; it'll sort of make the underside of the house look less like an invitation to come browse around when there's no one there.
What you're seeing are the carports, one space on the right and two on the left. Unfortunately the placement of the septic tank forces us to put the driveway on the extreme left, so there will be a turnout in front of the house. The cross-members you can see under the house strengthen the pilings, which is just fine with me; I'd hope this place doesn't wobble when people walk up the stairs like many of the houses down there.
The entrance under the house looks more complete, as does most of the the inside. Inside, the house looks more like a house inside as the wainscoting and the door frames are in, all of the drywall's up and painted, and some tile is in place as well.
Just beyond the door are the shower stalls.
A walk upstairs leads to the foyer.
I got a bit nuts with compression, hence the posterized look to this picture. The tile is on the foyer floor and notice the trim is on the doorways. Looking up the stairs shows some of the wainscoting.
There's no railing because that's not arrived yet -- my fault, I dithered about choosing a newel post, rails, and ballusters.
No carpet here yet, but you can again see the wainscoting better. Coming up the stairs and turning around shows the kitchen.
The stairs I just came up are just to the left, outside of the picture. The tall narrow doorway is the dumbwaiter door. You see the vinyl is now down for the kitchen and some of the cabinets are in. The cabinet-less area against the wall is where the range/microwave go. The pantry and fridge to up against the right wall. The framed area on the floor is where the island goes with the sink.
Another kitchen view. The two high windows are on the walls of my office; I wanted windows there so the office wouldn't ruin the light in the great room. One more kitchen view:
Again, the dumbwaiter door provides some orientation (sorry, but it's really hard to do any justice to an inside shot without a wide-angle or fisheye lens). Stairs up from foyer are on left.
Other great room pictures:
A view of the dining room taken from the kitchen. The living room is to the right off-camera. The living room:
That's yellow pine molding and juniper wainscoting. (Yeah, yeah, I know, like you cared. It's frightening how much stuff I've learned in the last year about house design and components. Can't wait to forget it all. I wonder if there's a way to design rum drinks targeted for particular synapses? As long as I'll be drinking them on the deck, they might as well have a purpose.)
The back side of the living room, from the kitchen. (The frame on the floor in the foreground is, again, the island. The door to the right is the half-bath upstairs (oh, sorry, that's "powder room" in the official jargon). The wrapped-up thing to the left is the fireplace. The other door leads to a bedroom we're probably going to make into a sitting room.
And Denise's (the interior designer) tile choices look terrific now that parts of the bathrooms are in place:
One of the things I really wanted was a six-foot tub.
In theory, this ought to be done by the time I get back from my Calgary-Seattle-San Diego trip the second week in March. Maybe only one more page to go, the "finished" page...