Our collection of handmade pottery suddenly expanded overnight last year, and cabinet space was tight. Enter these pottery shelves, which I built over the course of a few cold nights in the workshop. We didn’t want to hide the bowls in cabinets so these are pretty simple open shelves to display them. Plus it’s easy to grab one off the shelf, though I sometimes spend an extra couple seconds deciding which one will be juuust right…
Pug dons a dog cone in 2011... but that's not terribly related to the here and now...
2011 has presented us with a wide mix of events and emotions. It’s been everything from momentous, to extremely challenging, to gratifying, and everything in-between. Just like every other year, I suppose, right? Each year is not so different from the last, but at the same time, each year is full of its own unique experiences.
This was the year we experienced some significant health challenges, decided to build a new home, continued to do major renovations to Gobcobatron to correct some of its moisture and heat issues, made some advancements on our kitchen construction, hosted our first mini building workshop, began organzing two major natural building courses, got some rewarding nods in the media, and ultimately, just like last year, kept incredibly occupied.
Here I present the top 10 news and posts from The Year of Mud in 2011.
The mighty central bent in the Wabi-sabi kitchen
A bit over a week ago, we raised our mighty giant of a bent for the kitchen. It’s the bent we’ve been working on for weeks and weeks – an assembly of three posts, and a beam with a scarf joint. The beam in question is a gigantic, curving sycamore joined to a cannon of an oak, supported on the south side by a stout poplar, in the middle an oak with a coped shoulder and through tenon (that runs through the scarf), and on the south another oak post. Put together, we guessed that the bent weighed in around 1800 pounds. No joke!
Our freshly raised black walnut bent
In this post, I’m going to rewind back to June of this year when Wabi-sabi hoisted its first timber frame bent to vertical. (A “bent” is a cross-sectional assembly of posts and beams, part of the framing of a timber frame structure.) This particular bent was composed of two roundwood oak posts, and a hewn black walnut beam, with a span of around 18 feet. No small feat!
Timber carriers have become one of our best tool friends during the construction of our roundwood timber frame kitchen. With a few friends and a couple of carriers, you can easily move hundreds of pounds worth of wood without straining your back.
Thomas recently had this awesome little peg-making setup made by a friend, and we had the opportunity to try it out last weekend during our timber frame workshop.
It’s super simple and results in very uniform pegs, as long as you have straight grain wood to use. In this case, we were hitting white oak splits through the bench.
It’s essentially a bench with a sharpened rod projecting through the top that cuts through the wood as it is driven through from above with a mallet. Once the wood is hit all the way through, you have a 1″ peg at your disposal!
Check it out!
Dave works the chisel and mallet
This past weekend, my sub-community at Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage hosted a timber framing workshop weekend. The savvy Tom Cundiff of Edgeworks came out and instructed us how to design, lay out, and join roundwood timbers. It was a lot of fun, exhausting, inspiring, and definitely educational.
It’s spring, and the building season has officially begun. I’ve been a bit consumed with thinking about building lately — between doing some work around the house, planning for the next building season for the cooperative kitchen, thinking about a new home design, and serving on Dancing Rabbit’s new Common House design committee (we are a group of five tasked with designing a new common house intended to serve a population of 150 people), I have plenty to think about in the building arena. Sometimes it’s exhausting.
But as soon as I am able to actually do work, and not just think about it, it feels a lot better.
Here’s a little slideshow of the sequence of construction activity on the Wabi-sabi kitchen. It’s from fall 2009 through the present. Notice that we’re up to the timber frame (and that’s why we need help from inspired carpenters, timber framers, and builders alike!) Here ya go:
The Wabi-sabi kitchen foundation
UPDATE (3/22/2011): This position has been filled – thank you to all applicants!
The Wabi-sabi sub-community (Ziggy, April, Thomas, and Ali) at Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage are seeking individuals to help with building our cooperative kitchen and maintaining our organic vegetable gardens for the summer of 2011.
Hi there, I’m Ziggy. In 2008, I launched The Year of Mud while building my first natural home. This website 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. In 2012, we started offering Natural Building Workshops, so you can learn essential hands-on skills to build your own natural home.
