Fantasy World Online II: Second Chance

Day 73-211: Hôn

To earn enough money to built a house from scratch, Hôn had decided to work. Contacting the Architect guild he was sent to various construction or renovation sites.

For the next three months he mixed mud and sediments, made bricks out of argil, used them or squared stones to brick and form walls and played acrobat on wooden planks and logs to reach higher places to nail or measure things.
As the time passed by his work increased in quality and quantity therefore so did his pay. He became able to work at any post with ease and was soon considered an asset. At some point site managers came to hire him on their own.

His clothes were always dirty no matter how long he spent in the river cleaning himself and the cloth. It gave him the appearance of a hobo.
Hôn ate with the crew at mid-day and only took hard and old rye bread at dinner and breackfast. From time to time he would find an apple on a tree or given some food by the other workers. He slept on a bank in the central place or in a stable on the straw to save loggin money too.

All of it was to gather the necessary founds as soon as possible.
At the end of those three month, Hôn had gathered twenty three gold coin worth and gathered small amounts of material here and there.
He had found an abandoned tools such as a rusty shovel, saw and hammer and greasy measuring rope.

As he worked on the sites he also met the other contractors such as the wood cutter, miller, stone carver and carrier men. He made sure to develop good relation ship with them as it might bring reductions when he bought the necessary materials.

In his off time he would draw designs for houses, cabins, mountain retreats or even simple huts.

He was also looking for a land on witch to build. It couldn't be expansive or he would have to save money again, it needed to be in the city too or else it risked being attacked by mobs.
Finally he found a land between two houses. It was small but long.After noting the address Hôn went to the Architect Guild and looked in the catalogue for the price of the land. 15 Gold. it was a bit steeper than he expected but by reading the construction rights he discovered that the two walls from the adjacent houses where comon property. In other words, two of the four walls were already built. Not only that but the place was high enough to be allowed a cellar.

Without hesitation Hôn bought the land under his name. He then went back to it and took measurements.

He measured the length and height of the pre-existing walls, noting thir color and materials before taking other measurements that he would need to build the two other walls and the roof.

After thathe sat on the damp soil and took out a make shift pencil and a paper scroll. He put everything he had measured in a 3D diagram and thought of what he wanted to build. The house would be in the middle of the city, trapped between two houses and wouldn't be big enough for a familly.

"How about i make myself a house then?"

And with that thought Hôn made a mental list of what as a player he would need.

"A bed to log in and off, a drawing desk to work on, a space to store my designs and a living space such as a kitchen. The kitchen means a fire place... I have the cellar to stock things and make my work place, i can turn the place under the roof as a bed room too... No stairs, it takes to much place. A ladder then. Do i close the bed room? No. Lets leave it open, the heat from the kitchen will be shared this way. Night can be cold here. Where do i put the fire place anyway? The center..."

For more than an hour he mumbled by himself thinking of how to design his future home. When finally his ideas were all incorporated to the design he calculated how much material he would need for it. Nails, hinges, locks, wooden logs and planks, quarried stones and mud...
Once the quantities were written down he went back to the Architect guild and had it checked by a professional. It had needed a few adjustments before it was confirmed ready to go.

In the end Hôn had done several designs, three for each level. The first ones was of the cellar during its construction, after its construction with the larger furniture and finally fully furnished. The next ones showed the floor level in similar fashion, it was planed to have a bar like kitchen with a chimney that separated the room in two while the rest of the space was adjusted into a living room. the last plans were of a space directly under the roof that would become the bedroom/workplace.

"Sleep, food, storage and work... okay, i have it all! Now i need to buy the materials."

In the month that followed Hôn went back to working on renovations, reconstructions and building sites during the day, gathering more money and obtaining scraps of material here and there.
But at night he could be found digging at his newly obtained land. He dug relentlessly, not caring of his fatigue, back pain or the dirt on his clothes. His joy of doing what he licked, namely building a house, overcame all the pain and inconfortable aspect of such work. The idea that the house would be his only further enhanced his determination.
Not even when it rained to days straight and that he had to empty the water from the dig with a bucket did he give up, on the contrary he saw this as an opportunity and in the day folowing the rain was delighted by the tender soil he dug out.

As the days passed the hole he dug became deeper and wider. He sold the earth he dug to farmers and alchemists and bought quarried stones and cement powder from his contacts.

Finally when the hole was two meters deep and half as long as his land in dimensions he put the shovel down and went back up the old wooden ladder. He then shoved a dozen quarried stones in the hole and went back in it to transport them in their correct placing, fixing them with a mix of dirt, cement and water.
Since he needed light to see what he was doing he planted torches at regular interval in the soil.

In this fashion he covered the bottom of the hole with stones and built walls too. At regular interval he placed long wood poles to support the future upper floor. As the logs were twice as tall as the hole's height this action had necessitated the help of friendly workers that he had paid on the hour. Of course those only worked durring the day which forced Hôn to stop working on the sites.
When they were done Hôn verified that everything was made correctly and thanked them for their work.

The next step was to build the ground floor's floor. It took three thirds of Hôn savings to buy the necessary Planks and another for the nails and an entire day to have them delivered.
For the following six days and five nights he nailed the long planks, starting by the end of the whole that was further from the road to the other. When the whole was half covered he stopped.

"I need to build the stairs and chimney before closing the cellar."

Using some more money he bought small quarried stones and started on the stairs. He built them next to a wall so that he had only on ramp to make and sawed smaller thinner planks for the marches.
The stairs proved to be the most difficult part he had yet to do. For every step he had to measure and calculate the angle compared to the ground floor and adjust it in consequence. When he reached the ceiling he had to saw and polish the oppening and fix the sawn planks to the stairs with a few nails.
When he was done through it became much easier to access the cellar. In his joy and pride of a work well done he went up and down the stairs a few times.