When people ask what we are building next door, we tell them it's something that will make our old house disappear. They think we are joking because the house is a bit of a landmark, but the Hazelnut Inn will handily steal the show with it's much fancier architecture!

Today, the carpenters began tipping up the forms for the giant firewall which will run along our shared property line. Our house literaly disappeared (from certain angles)! This is only the first story of the wall which will go up two and a half times this distance in places. Once the concrete is poured the real interesting work will begin. This is going to be a whole lot of fun!

The windows of the Hazelnut Inn's suites are not square but irregular, with some rounded edges. These shapes sometimes give carpenters pause, but for us they are simply fun.

We carefully designed the shapes of the windows in our routing software. These computer files were passed on to the window manufacturer to ensure they accurately build the windows.

To create the non-traditional spaces in the concrete walls for the doors and windows we needed to build some special forms called "bucks." These will be placed in-between the concrete forms and are locked into the concrete as it is poured. We will fasten in the windows to the bucks once the concrete is dry and the rest of the forms are stripped off.

We used those same computer files to route the plywood 'shapes' around which we built the bucks. The curved sections were fabricated by laminating six layers of half-inch treated plywood. Once the walls are poured we will remove the plywood 'shapes' and the windows will take their place.

Work is progressing quickly on the Hazelnut Inn work site! Today our task was to build the final concrete block wall. It was a tricky one as it is curved but after a week of laying hundreds of blocks, we are getting very fast. The day seemed to fly by and before we knew it we were done!

It was with great delight that I laid the last block on the Under Hill suite garden wall. Concrete blocks are heavy and rough - my hands and back are really going to like taking a break from masonry work!

With the garden walls now clearly defined we can get a good sense of the space of the garden. The extensive theme work and lushly landscaped garden will be the perfect size for a couple to enjoy some private time together.

The front curved wall of the North Star suite is also now in place. This wall defines the pathway which circles around the front of the Hazelnut Inn’s property and leads to a raised garden.

Next week our contractor will be on site to begin forming the inn’s many concrete walls. We are very excited to see more progress!

Each day, the worksite of the Hazelnut Inn changes a little bit. The wooden forms for the footings are now removed and neatly stacked for reuse. Hundreds of cubic yards of sand fills the inside of the footings of the buildings and two of the three gardens. The most visual change is the concrete block walls for the gardens and raised paths which are quickly becoming more vertical each working hour. The site does not make much sense to our regular sidewalk superintendents yet, but we can already see the inn clearly in our mind's eye.