There is much progress to report on our little cabin on "Cold Mountain." As I think back over the last few months, I am struck by how LITTLE we have to show for all our hard work. This is a good lesson to me:  there is a lot of "behind-the-scenes" activity that is required to do most things, and I should never assume that, simply because the advances I see with my narrow vision seem small, there has not been a lot of sweat and toil expended to get there.

I offer the basement as Exhibit A.

When the track hoes arrived we watched these skilled men digging into a granite rock face--at a hand-sweating angle--to carve out our basement. Several times I feared the heavy machinery was going to follow its center of gravity right down the mountain, flipping end over end until some large tree came to the rescue. They made short work of the rocky hillside, though, tugging up one very large tree and moving boulders up and out of the way. When they were done, there was a perfectly cut wall where our basement will go, and footers for our porch which will rise close to 20 feet off the back. Standing at the top of the driveway--now with a clear view--we looked out over the mountains and got our first real confirmation that our dream is going to come true.

But back to the basement.

We decided to go with a modular system, which means the walls, (made of precast concrete) are built to specs at the factory and then shipped to the site. The walls go up and the plumbing goes in. Then slag is dumped and spread to the four corners.

The building inspector requires 6-mil plastic on top of that. North Carolina building code also requires one-inch green board to be laid down around the edges where there won't be any backfill. When that is all done satisfactorily for the Building Inspector, the concrete man comes with 2 trucks carrying 10 yards of concrete and pours to a depth of 4 inches, making the darned thing impenetrable as a bank vault.

Everything depends on the basement. It is the foundation of the house. The company we used went so far as to say that it will be "the best room in the house," because it stays so dry and well-insulated.

Sounds great. But not great enough for my husband, lovingly nicknamed "T.H.P." (Total. Home. Package.) He had some "improvements" in mind.

Three exterior walls (the ones that will be back-filled with dirt) had to be rubberized. Not once. Not twice.

Three times.

Then some sort of landscape fabric was rolled around the periphery.

And 6-mil plastic is for sissies. T.H.P. decided on 18 mils. He doubled up on the green board too.

So I can safely say that we no longer have a basement. I'm not even sure we have a bank vault any more. It's either a bank vault or a fallout shelter, I can't decide. Until the subfloor goes up, it might even be a swimming pool with no water in it. I'm working hard at my visualization exercises to not think of it as a tomb. But if it is a tomb, T.H.P. and I will be safe and secure in there, until someone digs us up centuries from now. Probably to build a cabin.