Bob & Ellen's Excellent Adventure

Black Sheep Tower House

Odd Angles

September 3, 2020 The unfinished half bathroom off the middle garage, when we first moved in, was occupied by a toilet (working), a cracked pedestal sink lying on its side (not working) and a brand new urinal in its box. That was unexpected! We tried for 2 months to give it away, but it seems that nobody else wanted it either. 🙂 The bathroom had wiring but no electricity, no ceiling, slapped up sheetrock, and an oddly shaped cubby under the window. It had a pipe behind the half wall, probably for the aforementioned urinal, but instead, we boxed it in and made a shelf. The intersections of all the walls, ceilings and floors were at odd angles, nothing was at 90 degrees. It is probably no accident that it was left unfinished!

Lots of short pieces of the cedar tongue and groove hanging around, so the ceiling went up as wood. Adam cut practically every piece of trim on an angle, and many of them compound angles, it was a masterful job. Even the door jamb couldn’t hang straight within the walls. Why was it like this? The bathroom is part of the ground floor addition – the room with the windows and aluminum roof. It is hard to explain but the angled exterior wall is to accommodate the concrete footing on one side and the roofline of the garage entryway on the other side. Nobody would build a room this shape on purpose. Wait, but then again, this house has a tower!

The toilet and utility sink, stainless steel (gotta match the industrial theme, plus it is practical!), await installation. Do you notice the toilet plungers? There are actually 3 of them, industrial size. Why does someone need so many plungers? We are afraid that we are going to find out…. :-0

The featured image for this post looks like a pile of rocks that doesn’t belong with this story, but, there is a water theme going on here. The well head is within that stack of rocks that we’ll call the cairn. The stones were carefully stacked to create balance and fit together, and it has clearly been here for some years. The angled stone on the top of the cairn had to be removed for inspection because of a water test. Today, the state of NH tested our water for chemicals related to a gasoline leak a number of years ago at a gas station located about a mile away. We are not actually that concerned, because the houses on our road were not considered at risk, and we were eligible only because of a small piece of frontage on Route 4. But the test was free, so we thought it good insurance. When we put the angled stone back, I created a small stack of angled stones into a sculpture, just for fun. We will see if it will survive the chipmunk activity, they are in and out of that cairn all the time!

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