Chapter 327: Construction of Our Hilltop Home

January 1 to late-February, 2007

I won't bother describing the back-and-forth architectural design process we went through for our new home. It was interesting, and Julia had one of the absolute BEST times of her life, but it's really only the final design that matters. Constructing our new home was cool though, so I'll describe that.

The Army Engineers had been heavily involved in our new home right from the beginning of the design stage because they had a great deal of non-commercial knowledge that our architects needed, as the construction of the Main and Kids' Houses, the tunnels and the panic rooms were being done to a military-grade. Most of the design work was finished by the end of 2006. The Army doesn't take much of a Christmas and New Year's break, so the Army's construction program quickly swung into action. They would be doing nearly everything themselves. There wasn't much they couldn't do, from heavy jobs like operating the smaller drilling equipment and installing the main tunnel's blast door, through to the cabling and painting. Only a few specialist tasks were contracted out, such as managing the Tunnel Boring Machines and the interior design (we didn't want everything to be khaki).

The attitude of the Army all the way up the chain of command, until that reached political levels, was that working on our house was part of their redemption for their attack on our current home. They wanted to do a damned good job of building our new place, and to be seen doing a damned good job, so everyone knew they weren't assholes like the CIA.

Most of the US Army Engineers were in Iraq or Afghanistan, but there were still enough somewhere in America to be sent to work on our place. It was a project they enjoyed (it had to be better than working in Iraq or Afghanistan), and we made sure we showed them lots of appreciation by flying their loved ones back and forth regularly, upgrading their living quarters with stereos, TVs, DVD players, a large library of DVDs, getting them temporary memberships of anything they wanted membership of (a golf club through to an 8-ball parlor). It's great having staff working for you, because one of our staff was given the job of thinking of ideas to make the Army guys happy, Dad would okay whichever ones he liked the sound of, and the staff person had to make them happen.

The parents thought of offering all the Army workers a week's accommodation in the finished Visitors' Quarters (a "V"-shaped block of ten units on the northwest slope of the main hill; it's described later), but rejected it for security reasons. Instead we gave each of them what was effectively a "$2,000 Gift Certificate" for an upmarket, nationwide and international hotel chain. The vouchers would be billed back to The Family when used, and would be far more useful to the soldiers than giving them free accommodation in Corvallis.

According to Dad and the architect, the Army gave us superb service in quality and speed. The architect was particularly envious, wishing he had the Army Engineers working on all his jobs. Their quality was great, and their speed was even better. Unlike commercial construction firms who're trying to shave corners to increase profits, the Army Engineers didn't care about cost and it was a point of pride for them to do as good a job as they could for us. That slowed them down in some respects, but that was more than canceled out by the resources they threw at the job. If a particular task could've been done by three guys, the Army would allocate five and make sure at least two of them were experts at it. If a part was needed, they didn't just wait for the supplier to deliver it - a soldier went to get it, by Chinook (a medium-lift helicopter) if necessary. If grunt work was required, which it often was, then there was no shortage of fit grunts in the Army either.

Security was something they took very seriously too - the CIA wasn't going to catch the Army out again. There were plenty of historic examples of impossible-to-detect surveillance systems being possible if the baddies could include them during a building's construction, so we and the Army did everything we could to ensure that didn't happen:

• Any stranger around the construction site that was spotted by a worker was quickly confronted (every worker was a soldier, and they didn't rely on or wait for our own Security).

• Raw materials and building components were checked carefully for being up to spec and not containing things they shouldn't contain.

• Even fellow workers who weren't recognized - a not infrequent occurrence, as specialist tasks needed people to be brought in from strange corners of the Army - were challenged and held until they could be cleared.

• The building site was treated as a secure area, and was patrolled day and night. We also had our own security staff by now too, also performing that job, so our new home's property was very secure.

As my parents had requested and I would have done anyway, I did a great deal of sight blob checking, especially of guys who were working where no one else could see them. I didn't see anything suspicious: no guys looking around before slipping something out of a pocket and installing it behind a grill, no unusual packages installed behind wall linings, etc. I even searched through solid concrete to make sure it was as solid as it was supposed to be. I spent a considerable amount of time on this, partly because I didn't have much else to do during weekdays early in the construction period.

Having experienced a single tunnel at Peoria Road, we had decided that we liked them. They are practical, keep the aesthetics very tidy, and offer great safety, so we are going to have several of them on this property. They'd be massively more expensive to install in this hill than in the Peoria Road mound, but that didn't worry us in the slightest. Before I can describe them - they are the coolest part of the construction - I need to describe the area we'll be building on, and in.

On a map, the property is a rectangular shape, running almost perfectly east-west about twice as far as its north-south width (roughly one mile E-W by half a mile N-S). The property straddles a ridgeline, so the north and south boundaries are at the base of the ridge, the center of the property being at a much higher elevation. Its major land features are as follows, starting at the eastern boundary and going west along the ridgeline:

• A short (in direction being faced, toward the west) steep bank. It's a long bank north-south, running most of the width of our property. This is the steep east face of the "Main Hill".

• The "Main Hill" (described more fully below), the top of which is somewhat "M"-shaped, is about 1,200 feet long east to west, and nearly that far north to south. The top is all in grass. The north face of the hill is a steep, rough, bush- and tree-covered slope dropping nearly 500 feet to the base of the hill at our northern boundary. The southern face is a much gentler slope 250 feet down to our southern boundary, mostly grass but with bands of trees. This hill is Chip Ross Park, and where our homes will be built, having a wonderful view south directly over Corvallis.

• The western side of the Main Hill is a moderate downward slope, running about 800 feet west and losing about 170 feet of altitude. It's mostly covered in trees with some light brush in places.

• A half-grass, half-tree plateau that's about 500 feet wide (in the east-west direction) at the north end, but narrows to nothing halfway to our southern boundary (so on the plan it looks like a south-pointing triangle).

• Another moderate downward slope, running 700 feet to the west and losing 150 feet of altitude. Mostly grass.

• A tree-covered plateau more consistently 500 feet wide all the way between the northern and southern boundaries.

We had extended the property boundary westward far enough to include the two plateaus mostly to create plenty of room for horses. The extension probably added over $5 million dollars' worth of land to our property, but no doubt Penelope considered that she was worth it. [We ended up keeping the horses only on the center plateau, not using the western-most one for the horses at all. Oops.]

Looking from Corvallis, the top ridge of our new hill closely resembles a shape halfway between an "m" and an "M". It has three parallel legs sloping south and down toward town (like the bottom half of an "m") but a "V"-shaped northern end (like the top half of an "M"). The "V" on the top half of the "M" is fairly level, with the eastern leg being only fifty feet lower than the western, which is the highest point of our property. They're separated by about 1,200 feet horizontally, so the top ridge is virtually level. [When construction started, the area under the Main House's eastern side was raised to make the house level]. For those of you interested in such things, the cleft between the two legs forms a steep gully which runs down to the east-west road that's just north of our property. The descent is very steep, but that's the direction we consider "behind" where our house will be, so its steepness wasn't an issue.

The three southern legs of the "m" drop moderately, the middle one losing height at the rate of 1 foot of height per 5 feet of horizontal distance; the western leg losing height slightly slower, the eastern leg losing it slightly faster. They all level off and flatten out about 250 feet below the hill's top, merging into a single open field. That continues to descend slowly for another 100 feet horizontally where it reaches our southern boundary.

The descent to the east of the main hill is quite steep. It's a pity it isn't steeper, as a mega-church ("The Church of The Horsemen of Christ" - sheesh!) owns the land to our east and is finishing building a large lunatic asylum on it (i.e., spiritualist church). The current access to Chip Ross Park is off NW Lester Ave, a road that approaches our hill from the east, going straight past where the asylum is being built, then stopping in a gravel parking lot about halfway up the east side of our hill, before it gets steep.

We're going to wall off that end of the road entirely because we want complete separation from those hundreds of people, and we certainly don't want our sole road access to be through all their traffic. Apart from the security issues of having hundreds of people milling around right beside our front gate, people shouldn't be allowed to drive if they make their life decisions based on the feedback they claim they get when they telepathically beseech a long-dead zombie. Come to that, they shouldn't be allowed to breed either. They claim it started with a virgin, so they should emulate her example.

To complete the roading digression, our road access is going to be to the southwest. Even without the lunatics, that direction is the best as it connects to roads that run straight into the heart of Corvallis. Coming in our front gate, which will be very substantial, and after clearing security, our driveway will enter a tunnel into a garage under the center of the hill, with different elevators to take people up to whichever building they're going to.

On top of the main hill, the western side of the "V", starting from the central point and running northwest, will have the living areas of the Main House: the kitchen, dining room, living room, etc. Outside, continuing northwest on the wide top ridge, there'll be a big pool and outside entertainment area for adult use. The house on the eastern side of the "V", connecting to the living area at ninety degrees, will have the parents' bedrooms, aligned to catch the morning sun (all old people - including my parents in that category for this - seem to like morning sun. It drives you out of bed earlier, so who'd want that?)

Built tightly into the corner of the "V", suspended out over the steep gully and just below the floor level of the Main House so it doesn't block the almost-360-degree views from the entire Main House, will be the "Activity Level". That's going to contain a games room, a small dojo (mostly for Donna, although I hope that I might be able to resume my Aikido training one day), a theater, a relaxing room with a spa pool (for times when using the outdoor one would be unpleasant), an exercise room which will include a short, two lane lap pool with water jets at one end to remove the need to flip over.

Under the Activity Level will be four self-contained little apartments for any live-in staff we might have in the future: cook(s), housekeeper(s), maybe a butler (we tease Mom with that idea). Three of the apartments will have a double bedroom, the fourth will have two. Each will have its own bathroom, small living room and kitchen. There'll be a shared laundry and a shared larger common living room for when they want to socialize.

The Kids' House (formerly known as "Mark's Wing" in Peoria Road, but renamed in the absence of a Mark) will be separate, and built on the western-most leg of the "m". It's the highest of the three legs, but the Kids' House will be built far enough down it to avoid blocking the Main House's views. The Kids' House will be two levels with the same functions as the existing levels of Mark's Wing, although everything will be bigger and better, which is scary thought when it comes to the master bedroom. The bedrooms' level is the top one, and will be offset backward to fit the contour of the hill, so will have a deck on top of the living level.

The slope of the property is reasonably gradual at this point (about 1-in-7), so the bedroom level would normally be recessed about fifty feet behind the living area, except that Julia got the bedroom area enlarged by adding more bedrooms and - no surprise - a closet big enough to need its own zip code. That 'pushed' the front wall of the bedroom level farther forward, reducing the size of the deck down to about twenty five feet. Then she got the living level widened considerably and lengthened somewhat. Apparently the architect didn't realize how important my image is. The bottom floor of the Kid's House is now larger than the floor above, which looks nicer than having them the same size.

To the east of that "m"-leg is a small gully before the next leg begins. In the gully, slightly below the level of the living floor of the Kids' House, will be built a large swimming pool and a spa pool, as well as the whole area being terraced flat for entertaining.

Up that gully from the spa pool, will run the beginning of the tunnel leading from the Kids' House up to the Main House's foyer.

Speaking of which, the middle of the living area wing of the Main House (also sometimes called "Adults' House") is going to be a very large and spectacular entrance foyer. The front door will enter into it (as is usual with entrance foyers), and so will several other accesses: a staircase up from the Activity Level, the just-below-ground level tunnels from the Kids' House and the Office, and the elevator up from the Main House's underground parking lot. (Other elevators from the three-part underground garage - described below - will ascend directly into the Kids' House and the Office. And there'll also be a second stairway from the Activity Level to the bedroom wing of the Main House, so the parents can come and go easily).

The eastern-most leg of the property's "m" will have the Office on it. It'll be downslope quite a long way, so it won't intrude on the view from any of the Main House's windows. The Office will also be connected to the Main House by a tunnel in its adjacent gully. The Office will be large enough for about a dozen people, some in offices, most in an open-plan area. It'll have its own little kitchen and other facilities. Managing our families' finances will require staff, plus whatever MAF work gets done from this end. Room for a dozen people, counting Vanessa and Mom, may be excessive initially, but probably not once things get rolling. The Office was deliberately designed to be easy to add on to, should that prove necessary, which it could well do. Even with our personal tax returns being very easy to fill out, a lot of staff are needed to manage our money and all the consequences of it.

The Main House had two master bedroom suites. Mom and Dad's bedroom occupying all of the far end of the eastern leg of the "V", so they got views almost all the way around (from NW, clockwise around to S). Vanessa and Prof's bedroom was right at the beginning of the eastern leg of the "V", so they got the view from the NE around to the SW; not as many compass degrees as Mom and Dad, but visually more attractive areas so they were probably better off. Vanessa would also be planting a nice garden in front of her bedroom window, whereas Mom and Dad's views were more panoramic.

The other side of the hallway that ran down the middle of the bedroom wing had in sequence: an ordinary bedroom, a bathroom, another ordinary bedroom - that one was Donna's - then another master bedroom suite for important guests or close friends. Its outlook wasn't as spectacular as the other master bedrooms, but was still very nice.

In short, there were two spare bedrooms in the bedroom wing of the Main House, one of which was luxurious. There were also four staff bedrooms under the Activity Level, but staff and guests shouldn't be mixed up (I think that's in a millionaires' etiquette book somewhere), so they wouldn't be counted, not that we had any immediate plan to hire staff for inside the Main or Kids' Houses.

There were two expansions the moms weren't sure how far to take: how much large-scale dining, and how much accommodating. Admittedly Mom mostly talked to the women of each mansion she'd visited, who might've been overly conscious of the cooking and entertaining issues, but it seemed to be a real issue. Several of the very rich families Mom had visited had complained about being constrained in that respect. The parents settled on having the Main House's dining room (and related kitchen and bathroom capacities) designed to handle full, sit-down meals for up to twenty five people.

Inside the front gate, turning left as you come in, will be a fully self-contained, multi-bedroom house for the Staff Quarters - mostly for our live-in security force, but if any of our other staff (gardeners, maintenance, etc.) want to live in there, they're welcome to. The bedrooms will be soundproofed so the off-shift workers can sleep, although there will be repeaters for the alarm in the hallway outside the bedrooms, which will be loud enough to be heard by any sleepers in the event of an emergency.

The Kids' House (Julia still tries to call it "Mark's Wing" sometimes, but publicly we stuck to the new name), had the master bedroom and four spares. One would be set up for Ava to display her parents' memorabilia, and one we'd use when we wanted to have quality time in various pair combinations, leaving the other two bedrooms as truly spare, spare bedrooms. [Regardless of who her partner was, Ava chose to have her quality times in her memorabilia bedroom because it made her feel good knowing her parents approved of us, and she hoped it somehow helped her parents sense how much she loved us and her life with us.]

Julia had delusions of my grandeur, so she was making sure there were plenty of rooms for more girls to stay. Now that the settlement process appeared to be finished not just for the second time but presumably forever because the Government had got the message this time, Julia was encouraging me to start playing around as Mark had. I was inclined to cooperate, because that's the sort of guy I am.

If we - the families as a whole - had guests staying overnight, putting them up in the Kids' House might not be deemed suitable. It wouldn't be a problem if it was The Boys and their girls, but if a delegation of Senators came to discuss MAF business, we'd be pushed to accommodate them properly. Ideally we wanted more accommodation, especially as anything we got built now would be paid for by the Government. That was a very significant consideration in build/not-build decisions.

The parents didn't want strangers sleeping in the Main House, so adding another floor of bedrooms under or over the bedroom wing didn't appeal. It could be made to work architecturally, just not emotionally. Any more bedrooms had to be in a detached building.

We certainly didn't want another building placed anywhere near the top part of the "m" because that'd ruin the wide-open views from the Main House. Anywhere farther down the "m" didn't appeal either because it would make it too 'crowded'. That's a very relative term, because the middle leg of the "m" was empty, and a building on it would've been four hundred feet away from the Kids' House. It could even have been hidden behind a stand of trees, so we wouldn't see that we were being 'crowded'. But we liked the natural openness of the hill and we wanted to retain it. Everywhere that we could've sited a guests' building to offer them great views, diminished our views. The building may not have blocked our views much, but it would've been in them, so would've intruded more than the parents wanted. To offer guest accommodation with good views - rather than "great views" - from locations that wouldn't intrude on us, meant building down near the security guards' house, or next to the horses, so not very satisfactory.