It will have been a year this month since their house burned in last Octobers’ devastating fires around San Diego; the new house is coming along, rather more slowly than we had estimated, but faster than the original did. They had estimated three years to build it themselves, but it took five, mostly because they insisted on doing even the boring stuff like shingling the roof, the interior drywall, and tiling the floors themselves. This time, they are farming out the boring, and labor-intensive stuff to professionals, and since a lot of other houses are being replaced, the construction crews are very, very busy.

The work goes quite rapidly, once it is started, but there are long waits between various jobs being accomplished To date, the exterior walls are complete, and the verandah is nearly so, with the posts, rafters and plywood ceiling in place. The joists are being delivered this week, and Dad is collecting a crew and a forklift to get them all set into place. Once that is done, then the roof over the house itself can be completed and tiled, and the interior space divided up into rooms, and dry walled…

I had hoped to see the whole thing completed in time for Christmas, but Dad advises me not to hold my breath on this. I think they are actually rather having fun improving the house. They were insured to the exact level needed to rebuild and replace, so they are not having the worries with the insurance company that some of the other affected families are reported to have.

Oh, and they have acquired another cat, in place of the Siamese, and the two kittens who went to stay with my sister after the fire, and adjusted so well they were given to Pippy’s family permanently. The new cat seems to have been a pet, dumped out in the country, which had the good sense to hang around near Mom and Dad’s closest neighbors. He is sort of long-haired and colored Grey, so he is named Davie, after the former governor.