None of this is of much use to Ellen Baker. None of it will sell her house faster, or for a dollar more. No-one sells a house by standing in it with an inventory of its shortcomings ticking through their head.

It has good bones, sturdy western red cedar logs to gladden the heart of the cabin buyer, a wedge of mountain view through the forest at the back, a sense that lives have been conducted here in a state of general contentment. And it has a couple of million more knick-knacks than it needs, lined up along the picture rail where the logs meet the pine boards that lead up to the ceiling – brass cowbells, a painted oil can shaped like Aladdin’s lamp, empty souvenir bud vases from visits to far-off places.

From the wall next to the fridge, I take a laser reading across the kitchen and add the measurement to my floorplan sketch. Feet and inches, still not my thing. But I have already had enough conversations with people in this country about the metric system, and too many of them are still vexed by the nagging thought that it might all be a conspiracy, a sly flanking manoeuvre from the Deep State, with its slick base-ten convenience, fast as blockchain, while the US stays loyal to good ole medieval feet ’n’ inches.

There is no grandchild art on the fridge. Just magnets from vacations, one of them holding a list of pills to be taken at particular times, another with my flyer offering free appraisals and Ellen’s note in pencil on it of our appointment time.

I slide the laser measure around the pole, keeping its base against the timber, and fire it against the far wall for a living-room reading. Sixteen feet, six and three eighths, with the laser dot on the most convex part of the opposite log, just beneath a watercolour of a forest scene that suggests a lapsed hobby rather than art.

We will be staging this room soon, staging and photographing. Its sofas are past retirement age, but I have access to cushions in fizzy citrus colours that will draw the eye of the young away from that and hint at the bright cabiny adventures that are possible in here. A splash of colour saves all.

Two found antlers are leaning against the wall, framing the fireplace. Every Alaskan home has those. The TV is unfashionably small. Below my laser dot, on either side of a CD player, sit shelves of CDs, most of them classical – most of them the yellow and black of Deutsche Grammophon.

Ellen notices me looking that way and says, ‘Nicola Porpora.’ She’s had the music playing softly since I arrived, but I zoned out once I started lasering. ‘He’s more famous for who he taught than for his own work.’