Robert and Virginia tree planting at Bonny Doon. now and is supposed to rain even harder tomorrow. But I am not dismayed, as carpentry is not nearly as affected by weather as is masonry. Our worst problem is to get a long enough dry spell to permit us to put in the septic tank and to dig a 200-foot ditch for the services, water, electricity, telephone, and low-voltage messenger lines. This soil is getting very soggy for backhoe operations.
February 3, 1967: Robert A. Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame
At the moment, [Ginny] is over at the house site swinging a paint brush…The job is still moving but very slowly; it looks from the outside much as it did in the last picture I sent you, but quite a lot has been accomplished inside. We are stalled by the glazing-still no firm date as to when our double-glazing units will arrive. It is not only a strain on us-Ginny in particular, since she has to put up with the primitive housekeeping and cooking facilities of this summer cabin-but also it has had a very bad effect on our general contractor; he’s become moody and tempery, and unable to supervise other mechanics without chewing them out-which in my opinion is not the way to get the most out of a man.
February 17, 1967: Robert A. Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame
Building-we seem to be frozen in a nightmare. The glazing units still have not arrived-the manager won’t even promise a firm date. The water closets and hand basins which were supposed to be in stock in San Jose (it now appears) do not even exist and we must wait until the factory again makes a run of that color. One of the soi-disant “mechanics” who loused up our water system is now suing us for “wages” — trial on the 24th. We have developed a great big bog of quicksand in our driveway, so it must now be rebuilt at God knows what expense. In the meantime, the wiring progresses at painful slowness…
But our house in Colorado is sold at last and at not too great a loss-not much immediate cash out of the deal after closing costs and commission, but nevertheless I am much relieved. Ginny continues to swing a paint brush daily while I am slowly getting back to the drawing board to finish the detailing of the cabinet work. We are in good health, we don’t owe any bills we can’t pay, and Ginny says we can stay out of the red despite all these problems. The weather is beautiful, the rainy season is almost over, and things don’t look too bad.
June 27, 1967: Robert A. Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame
Nothing else of any real importance today. Ginny is working herself silly everyday on the woodwork finishing-bleaching and sanding and varnishing the mahogany; I’m still sweating over a hot drawing board on the last of the finish details; today I’m designing Ginny’s office. The cabinetwork and paneling is about 80% finished now; then we have the floors, ceilings, fireplaces, permanent lighting fixtures, front steps, driveway, and some exterior painting to do-still lots but the end is a faint gleam in the distance.
July 10, 1967: Robert A. Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame
This should be the last letter I’ll have to write on a card table; Ginny has almost finished the bleaching and varnishing in my study. And today about half the cabinetwork arrived for her office; soon we will both be properly equipped for the first time in almost two years. Hallelujah! We’ll be able at last to get our files straight and get caught up on correspondence and paperwork…and I am itching to reach the point where I can start in on new fiction.
Our soil is black loam on top of sand on top of hard pan. I think we can control this driveway situation simply by treating it as a permanent watercourse, accepting that and installing a slaunchwise steel-reinforced concrete ditch alongside. But I dunno. Yesterday my brother Rex told me of a friend of his, a professional soil engineer, who has a similar driveway problem and has not been able to solve it. (But I don’t think ours is that bad.)