JOURNAL September 01 2008 How the time flies. Babies change your life like nothing else. All for the better of course. Well, I am almost there by now. All my inspections have gone well. The next inspection will be the "Final". I am getting so close. All the electrical is done. The drywall, paint, light fixtures, fans, switch plates, outlets, etc. are all complete. The toilet is mounted. The shower is tiled. Next on my list is the glass shower doors. Then the bathroom vanity and sinks. Then onto the kitchen. Amazingly enough we still have to plaster the strawbales! They have been protected great by the porches and big overhangs. I have had only a coat of clay slip in them and they are holding up just fine. I will be posting lots of new photos starting tonight and I will try to keep on top ot the website better than I have in the past YEAR! Holy cow time really doesn't stop for anything. July 29 2007 Well things are moving along well. It is defintely summer and the heat is terrible and taking it's toll. I have put up lots of new pictures. Be sure to look at Strawbale 2 and 3, Family 2, Windows and Doors, and one new pic on the Cedar Siding page. Sorry for the lack of information this time, but too busy and trying to get this house done by beginning of December for the arrival of "New Baby". Enjoy! May 12 2007 Busy, busy, busy. I have updated the photos and rearranged them. Now the newest photos are at the top of the list. I am trying to make things easier! So the roof is done, the floor is done, and the framing is done. I am working on the siding, windows and the straw bale walls right now. Once this is all done, I will move on to plumbing and electrical, and then all the finish work. I am excited to do all the interior surfaces, as this is what should really set this house apart from what we normally see. Thanks for looking! February 18 2007 Well, finally an update! Check the framing photos for the latest work. We just got our metal roof delivered the other day. That should be going up this week. I have been busy finishing up with some framing details and bracing etc. Aly has just finished with all the staining work on the exposed post and beams on the porches. It looks beautiful! Soon it will be time for windows, doors, siding etc. Then when the rains are gone for summer we will get to the straw bale part of the house. Thanks for looking! December 09 2006 Hello! Well the post and beams are going well. My plan for raising the beams is working quite well. I use the scaffolding and just walk one end up at a time. Then once I am up to the top level I only have to pick up the beam about waist high and set it in the bracket. Not as easy as it sounds, but not as hard as it could be. This is certainly a two person job, so don't try this alone, you will most likely fall off the scaffolding. Not much to say this time, just busy working and trying to get the roof up before the heavy rains set in, so time to go to bed and get ready for work tomorrow, yes Sunday, no rest for me! Had plenty of rest last winter waiting for my engineering and permits! November 21 2006 Been a framing fool these days. I have all the walls framed for the house, and have been standing them up along with various posts. I have 4 posts up and 8 walls. I have 6 walls to go and 22 more posts and 26 beams. Not too bad. Trying to work around the rain with the drill and router work. I used hand tools for all the stud wall framing, yep handsaw and hammer. Old school style. Much nicer working that way, and barely slower when working alone. Quieter for sure. I really don't like working with the generator running, can't think with all that racket and it makes me feel stressed like I have to work too fast so I don't waste gas and pollute too much. The posts are quite heavy. The routering and drilling is taking longer than expected and each post needs its own template due to the brackets being placed in the concrete at slightly different heights and angles. Not much different, but enough to send it out of plumb if I don't mark each bolt hole uniquely. I bought a nice new ratchet at sears for the 216 bolts that I have to put in. It is a 1/2 drive called the "thin profile". It is a really nice tool, just thought I would mention it. I also ordered a back support belt from www.schiek.com . I figured with all the heavy lifting I am doing, and only having one back available, it is a good idea to "support" it! These belts are made in Wisconsin (!) and are very comfortable and well made. I got excellent customer service from Chris Koth. He was super helpful and very generous. I will put up some action shots soon Chris! Thanks for looking, until next time... November 08 2006 So now we have a foundation and today I started framing. Things never work out as planned. I really had planned to start construction in Spring and be "Dryed in" by now, meaning I should have the framing done and the roof up. But as they say, when life hands you lemons, make lemonade. The foundation process went fairly smooth. A few mishaps here and there, but nothing that can't be dealt with. The concrete pigment color we chose looks really nice. It is always hard to tell from a small tile, what 1872 square feet is going to look like. Luckily, it looks just like we expected. I went and picked up all my post and beams, two loads on Friday, then three more loads on Monday. Heavy suckers. I then went and picked up a load of framing lumber today for the brace walls. I also got started on painting all the Simpson brackets. I have 26 8x8 Column Caps and 12 bases that needed painting. I am ordering my concrete block tomorrow, and hopefully will have that delivered in a day or so. I would like to get that stem wall up before it gets to cold for the mortar to properly cure. I have been real busy, as you can tell, so the info is going to be straight and to the point for now! Got to get to sleep so I can get up and get back to work! Thanks for reading.... Make sure to look at the Photos section for new pictures... August 18 2006 Well the planets must have aligned or something, because I finally got a building permit! After much work on the plans, several vollies of engineering and review process, I can build a house. Now to see if I can get it up before the rain comes! I hope to at least get the foundation in, frame it, roof it and probably do the straw work in spring, but we shall see how fast it goes. I will be updating the site more frequently with progress of things. I also have some new photos of a fun little pump house I built and the interior of the little cabin. These will be posted in the coming weeks as time permits. Thanks for hanging in there with me and thinking of us! Till next time... December 21 2005 Happy Holidays to everyone. I have posted some pictures of the cabin in it's for-now-finished state. I am going to be taking a break from updating the website until I actually get the house under construction. I will have more to take pictures of and more to talk about once I get a foundation, and start framing. I have just had the energy calculations done on our house, and it passed the code! I also have our trusses designed and quoted at a local truss manufacturer. I will be going down to meet with a structural engineer soon. Also, I am trying to arrange to get a percolation test done for our septic system, as well as having a well put in! As you can see I am busy. So I will be focused on all of these things for a while. We have had some problems with the grading that we had done. Lots of standing water, so we need to put in French drains or re-grade the land. We shall see. Thanks to everyone for checking out the site and you will all hear from me again in a little while. Over and out for now... November 7 2005 It has been raining all week. Really puts a damper on things. On the positive side, I am getting much closer to submitting my plans for approval. Still have some details to work out however. I have been working on the little cabin as well. The door is made and hung. I still have to put a finish on it, but I am waiting for the rain to stop so it will dry correctly. I also have two of the four windows installed. Yesterday I went down to a booksigning in Nevada City, CA. The authors of the new book Econest were giving a presentation. I am still getting used to the travel times. It ended up being a three hour drive each way. I did get some great tips and also got to reconnect with a few people that I had previously met at the earth plastering workshop that I attended. Human help is so valuable. One can read a book a hundred times, but to have another person tell you from their own experience directly is so much more direct and assuring. I wish that we lived a little closer to the Grass Valley/Nevada City area just for the resource of all the like minded people in that area. I am grateful that this group of people are as close as they are. On another note, I need to pick up the steam again. I feel that as we moved out here it was full charge ahead. I am kind of getting bogged down with the details right now and I need to make more progress. I will make a list and keep on it. The learning curve is slow when you have not done any of this before. I would love to here some comments on the house plans that I have posted. Email me with your thoughts! Just so you know, there will be a wood fired earthen oven in the breezeway in the middle of the house, as well as permanent seating. I am also going to put a vertical trellis of 2x2's in the rear of the breezeway for a more cozy feeling. There is only small space behind the house on the north side due to the natural terrain so no need to have access through the breezeway. The trellis will also allow air to circulate through. In front of the long sections of windows will be planters. Maybe with herbs for cooking. The foundation actually extends two feet past the wall of windows to line up with the straw bale walls that are on each end. You can see this better on the floor plan. I can draw it better than explaining it. The rectangular pattern you see is borrowed from Frank Lloyd Wright. This is the 2x4 module that he used in his Usonian homes. This is incredibly handy for designing, and will keep material waste to a minimum. The pattern will be v-grooved into the concrete slab. Then, when I am building, I can just count over the appropriate number of squares and know just where things will go. Pretty nice idea. Thanks Frank. We want to have plenty of counter space. Now that you know the scale of things (by counting the rectangles) you can see that the counters are ridiculously big. I have never had enough space when cooking. I hope this will solve that problem. We are making our counters out of concrete so material cost is cheap, but labor is labor. I want to be able to make pizza dough on one end, have Aly cutting up toppings on the other side, and still have room for a vase of flowers, mail, groceries and everything else that gathers on the kitchen counters. This also equals tons of storage underneath as well. The small return at the far end of the kitchen is for a small computer/bill paying area. Also handy for looking up recipes on the web while in the kitchen. That's all for now... September 26 2005 Sorry for the delay in updates.I just found out that many people have been asking around as to why I have not updated lately. I did not know so many people were actually looking at this site! Good to hear that you are. Well as you will see in "Cabin photos 3" I have been busy. I actually am just finishing up the trim work and battens. I still need to build the door and put in the windows. then I will finish the inside. Not sure on what to do yet. I may just go with some horizontal pine boards. I have been thinking about doing some clay straw mixture and packing the walls, then putting an earth plaster over it. I attended a plastering workshop a few weekends ago in a town called "Rough and Ready". I am serious. It was great and the people were great as well. Oh, and the food was outright amazing. I expected spaghetti, and we had gourmet fixings. Fresh avacado, hummus, pita, roasted zucchini, mozzarella, marinated tofu, fresh fruit, and on and on. Real good cookies too! Ok, enough about the food. The plaster we used was a mixture of clay slip, chopped straw, sand, horse manure (fresh and aged) and elbow grease. It was so nice to get into a big group of people, most who did not know each other, and work like a team and get so much done in a weekend. Unfortunately, I hurt my back on Sunday morning lifting some scaffolding, so I was useless on Sunday. I was better by Tuesday, thankfully. The earthen plaster goes on so thick. About an inch and a half thick! I was the strangest thing to mix up natural materials and smear them onto a straw bale wall. The straw bales had been previously covered with a coating of clay slip as well as a sort of primer layer. If you were to just read about this process and do it, you would not feel confident at all. But having someone else tell you that it is right is somehow much more comforting. The plaster actually dries to a pretty hard consistency. It does require large roof overhangs to improve the longevity, and you will have to put a maintenance coat of clay slip on a yearly or bi-yearly basis depending on your climate. The labor intensity is traded out for the fact that it is a practically free material. It also looks so cool. Just like living in a mud hut. I am sure this appeals to almost everyone, right? I don't know how I talk my wife into these things. Good thing she loves me. I got my first permit the other day. My grading permit. That will be done soon, just waiting on the contractor. The house plans keep changing, so I have not posted anything on here about that. As soon as we get a final design I will put some drawings on the web site. We have decided to go back to our original plans of doing a two sided house. I hear it is called a Chapparel, Dog Trot, or Shotgun Shack. Depends where you are from. We have decided this for two big reasons. To keep the heat in the kitchen and out of the livng and sleeping area in summer. Also, to allow a natural covered area where we can spend time outdoors without being blasted by the sun, and we don't have to plan an additional porch or sun room to do this. We will just cut it out of the middle of the house. Kitchen, dining, bath and utility room on one side of the house, and bedroom and living room on the other side. This also keeps all the plumbing real close too. Well that's all for now. Until next time... August 31 2005 Things are moving along well. I have applied for my grading permit and will hopelfully have that done next week. Then we can really start moving. I updated lots of photos so make sure to look. I have seen so much wildlife so far that I had to go buy a book on California from Audobon. It is pretty neat to identify all the different creatures out here. We have seen a male and female Praying Mantis. I have not seen a Praying Mantis since I was a kid. Just working on the small cabin lately, so not too much to write about. Better luck next time. August 23 2005 First entry. Only here for a few weeks and things are looking positive. The building inspection department in our county is shockingly friendly and helpful. I have had two great meetings so far with lots of great information and nothing but help. I hope I am not cursing myself here! I found that we are allowed to build a structure up to 120 sq.ft. without a building permit. This is good. I have already begun contstruction on a one room 14x8 cabin that I will use for sleeping in while working on our larger structures. I can also lock my tools up in this little cabin until I get the garage built. Perfect. Later on this cabin will be a nice guest cabin that visitors could sleep in. I have decided to go with a timber rim foundation (6x6) on top of concrete piers (10"). Then the floor was made of 2x6 framing lumber, much cheaper than the tongue and groove option. I spaced my 2x6 joists at 16" on center, this floor is super solid. We are thinking of doing a brick floor with mortar to keep the bugs out and give a real rustic look. I will post pictures soon of this progress. Digging the holes for the six concrete piers was one the hardest things I have done. The earth was nothing but rock and bone dry clay. Mostly rock. I had to use a 17lb. digging bar and go about an inch or two at a time then try to pick out the crushed rock with a posthole digger. Oh, and by the way, did I mention that it was 105 degrees out the whole week? 22 days in a row over 100 degrees! We're not in Wisconsin anymore! For the rest of the cabin we will use large timbers for the walls and to support the roof, size not decided yet, having trouble finding them. We are also going to build an earth roof with seedum planted on it for the arid climate. We are following a design by Rob Roy from Earthwood Building School for the roof. Not too sure on what the siding is going to be yet. Some sort of Cedar. Cordwood Masonry would have been a great choice, but the floor space is already very limited on this cabin and we need to save as much interior room as possible and stay under the 120 sq.ft. limit. I am going to build my own door and windows as well. Should look pretty nice when it all comes together. A lot of effort for such a small building, but I really want everything to have a permanence to it. There is no sense in wasting any effort or resources on a structure that we will not enjoy looking at and using.