Building a Log Cabin

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Step by step, a pile of rubble was converted into a brand new home.
Step by step, a pile of rubble was converted into a brand new home.
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After a tornado destroyed their home, the Williams family decided to build a new one. And they didn't let a lack of experience stop them.
After a tornado destroyed their home, the Williams family decided to build a new one. And they didn't let a lack of experience stop them.

If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost,” Henry David Thoreau once wrote. “That is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.”
 

Thoreau’s words came back to me with doubly renewed emphasis recently when I read an article in the Charlotte Observer about a series of “dream” houses in the Queen City. To me, the dream was a nightmare: the “everyday” house in the development costs $400,000, while the “middle priced” house sells for $739,000!

But, the article went on to say, there is much more than mere house at these prices: the buyer also gets, in addition to the 3,500 to 4,500 square feet of living space, a 0.7-acre lot with an impressive view and a guarantee that someone will not put up a mobile home next door.

At that point I put down the article and announced to my wife Elizabeth and our 17-year-old son that we should all go out and hug as much of our house as we possibly could. The truth is that we did hug the house, in bits and pieces.

  • Published on Apr 1, 1995
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