We are not being repetitive. We are in fact surrounded by construction wherever we turn.
If you’ve been following the blog, you know we are six weeks into what is supposed to be an eight week construction project at Boar Lodge, Chata Diviak. They are starting to put the roof on. No new stairs. The bathroom is a raw concrete closet with a hole for the toilet and one for the shower drain. We’re not sure when it will finish but we bet €500 it won’t be on 31 May: we’re renting our flat here in town for another month, just to be safe.
Speaking of the flat, it is also under construction. More precisely, we are under the construction of the flat. That is to say, they are repairing this listed building’s roof. This means, beyond one more beautification project of our beloved Banská Štiavnica, we can’t park our car close to our building because of the hazard of falling debris. It also means we must be careful when entering or exiting the building because of the hazard of the same falling debris.
You can see how anxious Sisi is to get out from under the precarious plaster.
On top of this (no pun intended), the main road on which our flat sits is also under construction. The town is restoring the original cobblestone, (yes, yes another wonderful beautification project, well worth it) which means only local traffic is allowed through. This has further restricted our options for parking the car. We must be clever and resourceful (often with a blind eye to parking restrictions) when parking.
In this photo you can see our roof between the construction sign and the ‘New Tower’ Nový Zamok (built in the 1500s) in the distance.
There is an upside to the main road closure. It is a busy street and our driveway in and out of the small alley on which our apartment building sits is between two blind curves. Frankly, it’s a crap shoot getting out of the driveway without getting broadsided.
The closure also means that the traffic is less likely to kill Sisi, who has acquired a suicidal habit of wanting to chase the cars that whiz by. She probably senses JoEllen’s anger at those speedsters who ignore the 30 mph rule.
This absence of killer traffic has had a marked effect on JoEllen’s stress levels, and she enjoys taking the dog for walks again.
This is not to say she is not wishing fervently to get back to normal in her cozy house with its new kitchen, new stairs and new bathroom.
But she’s also discovered that they make a perfectly acceptable gin and tonic at the local hotel, further ratcheting down the stress levels.
Sisi encourages a daily walk to that quiet outside terrace.
Okay, please help me here.
Because of revels in decades past that stretched to the breaking point all the superlatives that apply to debauchery, my memory isn't immediately providing the details about an anecdote that's very relevant to your construction projects.
The core of the story is this:
A house, located either in the US or the UK, was under continuous construction for several decades because of an eccentric fear or dread held by its owner.
The owner believed that if the continual construction of the building should ever cease, then some horrible fate would befall him or her.
As a result, the construction project was protracted by the addition of needless garrets, staircases, widow's watches, turrets, additional attics and other architectural disfigurements so that, by the time the owner died, the building took on a bizarre shape possibly akin to the sinister home described at the end of The Fall of the House of Usher.
Does this story ring a bell? Have you ever heard of this incident, which happened sometime between, I believe, 1860 and 1970?
As for other long-running construction projects, I suppose the dams and levees along the Yellow River, including the Three Gorges dam project that will wreak havoc on the climate and hydrology of the region, have continued annually for about three thousand years.
As for individual buildings, didn't Chartres Cathedral and some of the other medieval churches take hundreds of years to complete?
Who underwrote the completion bonds for those Gothic cathedrals?
The same attorneys and insurance companies that drafted the Irish land leases that run, and I quote, "forever?"
Presumably those Irish land leases were drafted partly to confound Stephen Hawking and any other spawn of the oppressor who might attempt to interfere with Druidic eternity. Which must last a very long time.
In the more prosaic, not so say boring, arena of North American construction projects, it would be hard to beat this one:
The Tennessee Valley Authority's Browns Ferry nuclear power station, which consists of three General Electric boiling water reactors, started construction in 1966.
To make a very long and expensive story short, Browns Ferry Unit One started construction on Sept. 12, 1966. went online on June 2, 2007 and reached full power on June 8, 2007. It now is licensed to operate through December 20, 2033. The reactor actually did operate and provide electricity during about 10 of its total of 41 years under construction.
That's because, first, the reactor was shut down for repair of fire damage for about 12 months in 1975 and 1976; and then shut again for 22 years between 1985 and 2007 so it could be almost completely rebuilt, at a cost of more than $2 billion, because it was built ass-backwards the first time.
A forty-one year construction project. Hmmm.
At TVA's Watts Bar plant, construction on the two Westinghouse reactor units started in 1973. Unit One was completed in 1996. TVA plans to complete Unit Two in 2012.
That will be a 39-year construction project, at a price tag approaching $3 billion.
If Watts Bar Unit Two does go online next year, it will be the first new commercial nuclear power generating reactor to start in more than a decade.
Good old TVA. If I could issue 100-year bonds, like TVA does, maybe I could take my time getting things done, like they do.
Think in continents, feel in centuries. Stay classy, TVA, and keep reminding us in these parts why we have a few doubts about government-owned enterprises (not that private companies don't have their own, potentially more heinous, vices).
Posted by: Wilson Dizard | 05/24/2011 at 06:06 AM
Oooops....in the third-to-last paragraph, that's the first new commercial nuclear electric generating reactor to go online IN THE US in more than a decade. Copy desk fail.
Posted by: Wilson Dizard | 05/24/2011 at 06:09 AM
Wilson, I'm sorry I haven't a clue about that eccentric home owner. But please tell me I won't have to wait centuries for my little project to be complete. Scott would kill me.
Posted by: JoEllen Zumberge | 05/29/2011 at 12:36 PM
That's a lot of hazard and construction for one month! I don't think I can handle all that, if I were in your position. Good thing you're able to - that can turn nasty over time, especially if the weather isn't in a cooperative mood!
Posted by: Sierra Nordgren | 07/05/2011 at 07:42 PM