The finished timber frame wood shed (sans siding)
In the fall of last year, I was contracted to build a small 8×16 timber frame wood shed and it was a great opportunity to get back to the ol’ chisel and mallet. I love this type of work — the materials, the scale, the tools, and the workflow feel so good. In my first post about the shed back in November, I shared some photos of the building process. Here are a few more pics of the raising and the finished shed.
Gears quickly shifted this fall when I was contracted to build a wood shed in town. Up until a few weeks ago, I was trying to squeeze in as much work as possible on the ol’ homestead projects — the light clay straw outhouse in particular. I did end up getting the little outhouse to a good point. (Plastering season is over… unless for some reason we get a 60+ degree stretch in December. You never know these days, sadly.)
Anyway, the wood shed I’m currently building is a proper timber frame with wood joinery, which is obviously very exciting for me. Getting contracted to do a timber frame anything has been my goal since moving to Berea a few years ago. Here are a few photos of the building process.
Light clay straw walls are a great surface for finishing using natural plasters. Because the straw-clay is tamped inside of a stud wall, you have a fairly flat surface to start with, compared to something like straw bale which needs a lot of trimming and often extra thick plaster to achieve an even surface.
Here I’ll give some tips and suggestions for how to prepare a light clay straw wall to receive clay plaster, using our recent outhouse project as our demonstration site. In this post, I’ll talk about how to make and install wood trim, which should be the first step in preparing your newly built wall to receive clay plaster.
There are a few tricks you’ll need to ensure a quality job. Read ahead for my method…
Check out this collection of beautifully simple animations of Japanese joinery in action. These are great little demonstrations of timber frame joints interlocking together.
One of our big wood scores this weekend… great for riving shakes
This was definitely the weekend for big wood. Big scores of big wood. First we saved some massive red oak logs from a local establishment with an eye for turning these big beautiful lengths of wood into shakes for a roof. (If we manage to save enough of the logs, we may even use the shakes on the upcoming roof of our timber frame pizza oven shelter.) And then by surprise, we found a local fellow who was advertising massively wide slabs of cedar… perfect for the kitchen counter we want to build.
Both of these are the kind of thing we may only find once or twice in our lifetime…
A ramp provides access to this funky little treehouse — I love how the underside of the roof catches morning light
SunRay Kelley may be one of the most “mythical” of the natural builders out there. He’s the builder known for saying the forest is his “Super Natural Store”, and his building designs conjure up feelings of the fantastical, magical, funkadelic. I had the privilege of seeing one of his creations in the making at the recent 20th anniversary Natural Building Colloquium at the Black Range Lodge in Kingston, NM — a whimsical treehouse nestled in ponderosa pine trees, featuring some signature SunRay touches. Check out the photos of this wild little building ahead…
We just accomplished one of the more exciting items on our remodeling to-do list — we raised a timber frame between the kitchen and living room. Before the frame went up, we methodically removed the original 2×4 wall. The intention here, of course, was to really open up the space and facilitate a better interface between the living and cooking areas, provide more light to the kitchen, and allow the heat of the (not yet installed) cook stove to move more freely though the house.
I’d say it’s lookin’ pretty good right now. I managed to capture a little video of the actual timber frame raising… watch the video above to see how smoothly the frame fits right into place in the opening we created by removing the stud frame. The video also illustrates some of the steps we took to ready the house for the new frame.
Click ahead for some photos of the new wall, as well!
The genius of Japanese joinery is a sight to behold. This video is an incredible example of the precision and strength of Japanese joinery in action from the Kobayashi Kenkou carpentry group. It’s not everyday you get to see such incredible timber frame joints come together like this… and so seamlessly. Okay, enough gushing. Check this out!
Feeling inspired now?
Using scrap wood to build this interior stair railing was a fun finish carpentry project
As I write this, the finish work is painfully close to complete on our straw bale home. The last leg of any project is the hardest part for me, as I’m so fixated on the end that the final push often feels like an eternity. But I digress. I had a lot of fun building this small interior stair railing in the second storey of our house. It was a great chance to do some finish carpentry and use some very pretty pieces of wood, many of which were scraps from other aspects of the house. No one will fall down the stairwell now, thank goodness, and this little wooden railing somehow completes the space much more nicely than I would have guessed. Check it out…
Finished shelves installed in the straw bale walls of our house
Installing shelves in the straw bale walls of your home requires a bit of forethought. With some advance planning, you can design some pretty sweet decorative shelves that are quite sturdy and can be adjusted over time. Here’s a relatively simple plan we came up with to build strong, attractive shelving in our house.
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.
