A boat for a roof. By Alex Holland.
Rain may not fall on one roof alone, but strangeness just might. I’ve occasionally heard stories and seen images of the, well, unique items that eventually become the recycled roof of a home or shed. I was amused by the above image, a shed built by Alex Holland in Machynlleth, Wales, which features an upturned 100 year old boat as a rooftop, as one great example.
For whatever reason, we have access to a lot of black walnut lumber around here. A lot of twisted, knotty, warped, split 1x black walnut, that is. Hell, at least it is cheap, but you definitely get what you pay for. The stuff is sort of a nuisance to sift through, and oftentimes, up to half of any given pile later becomes firewood.
But I have been using this stuff almost exclusively for making window trim, and baseboard, and other finish work. I’ve gotten a lot of practice picking through piles, and hopefully finding that one piece that will actually work. Under that sometimes ugly surface, there is some really gorgeous wood.
Coming soon!
In less than a month, we’ll be fearlessly led by our maestro Tom Cundiff in assembling the beautiful timber frame that you see above during our 10 day workshop. This is going to be a particularly slick design, and rather unique for several of its features. The foundation plan is highly irregular — read: non-square, also read: organic, wild and crazy, funky. It’s a small structure, about 300 square feet in size, and a great learning model for folks interested in small house living.
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This will soon become a long-lasting timber frame house…
This pile of wood will soon undergo a magical transformation. With a team of builders, the timbers will be laid out with squares, levels, and chalk lines. The wood will be cut with saws, and struck with axes and chisels. Later, the once seemingly random logs will be snugly fit together like a giant puzzle. And then, what was once a big pile of raw logs will become a magnificent timber frame, the skeleton for a small house.
Yup, all of these locally harvested black locust trees are material for the roundwood timber frame we will build during the 2013 Timber Frame Workshop. I love to see a pile of wood and realize the potential for a completely new life for that material!
You can still be a part of that team of builders that turns these logs into a lovely timber frame. We’ve got a mere 3 spaces remaining. Check out the Timber Frame Workshop 2013 details and be sure to register!
Mmm….
I am feeling very fond of our new live edge oak siding. Very fond. The stuff looks great. The Amish sawyer did a fantastic job, and the material came out of the planer super clean, and super beautiful. We are finally installing it, and it’s a dream come true. These may be flowery words, but I’m just darn excited to finally see things coming together on the exterior of our porch.
We’ve got black walnut trim to accompany the siding, and the contrast looks rather nice, I’d say. I’ll put up more photos once our walls are done, and the scaffolding isn’t in the way of taking a good photo of the wood! More later…
Shiny new scaffolding
You know what really sort of stinks? Working at heights. You know what is even worse than working at heights? Not having a good way of doing it safely. Last year, we borrowed scaffolding for a big chunk of the building season, but this year, we needed to find a new scaffolding option for our construction needs, which includes a lot of work high off the ground.
Turns out we ended up deciding to buy our own, since no one in the area has an adequate setup that can reach the heights we need. I dreaded having to buy our own set of scaffolding, but I think it was the right choice to make.
Could it nearly be July already? Good gracious. Half the year is gone. Well, so it goes. Here’s a photo of Gobcobatron as of a couple weeks ago, during one of my favorite times of year for the little cob house — right at that time when mud is not so prevalent, and the sky begins to get a little bluer, and the grass on the living roof really comes into its own. The garden, though not mature at this point, shows signs of abundance to come. Ah yes… these are the little moments during the year that I enjoy the most.
Well, have a good weekend, doing whatever you may do.
Our light clay straw (slipstraw) porch walls are on the way
The north porch of our straw bale house has been occupying most of our construction time these days. As of only a couple of weeks ago, the porch was still largely open, with only framing and a few windows installed.
We decided to go the wall & windows route, instead of just screening the space in, because of how exposed this part of the home is to the north and west weather. Also, the space is much more versatile this way, too. We decided to do light clay straw (a.k.a., slipstraw) infill walls.
It’s been an enjoyable process thus far.
Live edge siding from white oak… mmm…
Wow, our Amish sawyer really pulled through. He gave us a call a whole three days after our visit to let us know he had completed sawing up the white oak live edge siding we had requested. Amazing! And he did quite the job, too. The wood looks great. The quality of the material is high, the sawing is very clean and accurate, and I am super jazzed to finally have the material in my possession.
Am I picky, or stubborn, or just in a really impoverished area? Maybe all of the above. It’s somewhat crazy what I have had to go through to try to get a particular type of wood siding sawn up for me. It started off simple, I thought — calling a mill I’ve used before to see if I could have some live edge siding sawn up out of white oak. I slowly learned that this would be harder than I thought. Well… many weeks later, I think I finally may have someone both willing to do it, and with access to the materials.
Is it normal to go to these great lengths for a building project, or what? Please do chime in, and please tell me.
Hi there, I’m Ziggy. In 2008, I launched The Year of Mud while building my first natural home. This blog is a collection of personal stories and experiences building with clay, straw, and wood over the past 15+ years. A few of the things that get me fired up are natural plasters, timber framing, & Japanese architecture. Since 2012, we’ve been hosting Natural Building Workshops so you can learn essential skills to build your own natural home.
