COB & ON

cob, tarp, progress

2012-01-28T20:58:00.000-05:00

Flying Rafter

2012-01-27T19:51:00.000-05:00

I cut and notched these custom 2X4 pieces to be used for attaching the "flying rafter" (the rafter that hangs past the edge of the stud wall to create the roof overhang).

Mike notched the existing rafters...

And then we put all the pieces together...

And the finished product!

Roof System

2012-01-26T19:26:00.000-05:00

Mixing up the first batch of cob! We have been blessed with very cob-appropriate soil. We are not adding any sand at all (because the soil already has enough), which means we can just mix straw into the excavated soil and throw it on the wall. It is the easiest cob I have ever made. Mixing batches takes less than half the time than it has at other sites.

"No more photos, mother!"

The whole reason that I integrated a north and south stud-wall into the design is to be able to get the roof up at the beginning. This way, we can have a building that is protected from rain as it is built up. It is already coming in handy; tonight the forecast is rain, and we were able to store a whole bunch of lumber and tools under the tarped rafters, safe from raindrops.

Progress at Anatoly's Cottage

2012-01-25T19:43:00.000-05:00

The urbanite/stone foundation is complete!

The concrete pads below were poured to create a level surface on top of which to set the stud walls (the north and south walls have been designed as stud walls to allow for a roof structure to go up quickly).

The sill plate was notched to fit around the stones, and then secured into the concrete via the J-bolts that were set during the concrete pour.

The walls go up!

One man's trash...

2012-01-20T19:24:00.002-05:00

Here's the hill from which we rescued all of our masonry materials for our foundation stem-wall (ironically located right across from Home Depot):

Just recently (a couple months ago), a building burned down here. The clean-up crew just left all the rubble and trash in big piles on the hill. Eventually, it might be taken to the landfill, or just overgrown. But we carefully picked through it and got 15 truckloads of rock/concrete/brick. There is plenty more, but we think we have enough for the project.

Lots of material!

You can see in the photo below how most of the materials looks like stone, even though almost all of it is concrete. Anatoly, our client, often comes out to check our work and ask questions:

Leo studying masonry techniques:

And doing yoga:

Another day of work, and the stem-wall will be complete!

New Project in Chapel Hill

2012-01-17T19:46:00.000-05:00

Mike and I just started a cob sleeping cottage for a family in Chapel Hill. Here is Day 1:

Just Shots

2012-01-17T19:34:00.000-05:00

Trying to play catch up, allowing the camera to speak for me...

(My parents are now living in the completed Part 1 of the house. I need to take some new photos of the finished product.... The final design for Part 2 is in the works, and almost ready to hand over to the city in an attempt to secure a permit.)

more to come...

Plaster Preparation

2011-11-26T20:49:00.003-05:00

The kitchen looks more and more finished as each day comes to a close. Mike installed the butcher block countertop below the mini-bay window yesterday, and we have the countertops and backsplash covered with concrete backerboard and ready for tile. The orange chair sits where the gas oven will eventually go.

There is a new shelving element built into the arch entranceway into the kitchen. Right now, the shelves are standard plywood and there is a base coat of plaster on the walls of the cubbies. It will be finished with red oak shelves and lime plaster cubby walls.

It is getting to be time to apply finish plasters to the interior of the building, so today we experimented with a whole bunch of different plaster tests, using clay, lime, sand, straw, and wheat paste. We are interested in several different plaster qualities: ease of application, durability, scratch-resistantance, dusting (avoiding dusting), beauty, and low-cost (all of them are pretty darn cheap, but clay is free, and wheat paste and straw are both very inexpensive). Here are some of the tests:

Here is the setup for making wheat paste:

The white flour is dissolved in cold water, while the rest of the water boils on the stove. Once a rolling boil is achieved, the flour/water mix is added slowly into the pot, while being mixed with the paddle mixer on the drill. The mixture begins to thicken until it turns almost translucent, which is when it can be removed from the heat; it's ready to use once cool. It takes just a tiny bit of wheat paste to make a plaster more sticky and increase durability. A recipe for wheat paste.

It's a good ideas to spray down the dry walls with water before applying a new plaster. Otherwise, the base coat of plaster will suck all of the moisture out of the finish layer, and the finish layer will have a much greater chance of cracking. I just recently bought one of these "chemical sprayers" from Home Depot for under $10 - it's operated by hand pump, and sprays a perfect mist (a lot easier than a spray bottle, and simpler than trying to snake a hose into the building). Mike demonstrates its use:

I took care of Leo for a while today, giving Danielle a chance to jump on some plastering and make up some of her own mixes.

Leo is becoming quite a proficient sitter and stander (with help). He's gotten noticeably stronger over the past week, and he seems to really like these new positions! He spent the day outdoors on the worksite with Mike, Danielle, and I.

A new roof, some new color.

2011-11-17T23:46:00.001-05:00

It was a drizzly, wet day today, and we were able to use the newly-dry deck as our power tool zone - what a luxury!

Non-Building Life

2011-11-17T23:33:00.001-05:00

Included in my non-building life is, of course, building. Danielle, Leo, and I went to a fundraising event at Circle Acres a couple Saturdays ago. Here, Mike and I are helping our friend Gray apply a mixture of "daub" to the chicken wire "wattle" on the house he's building (if you're curious, research "wattle-and-daub" and you'll find a lot of cool stuff). Gray came back to Durham the following weekend to take a big part in painting the house here. He was a professional painter at one point of his life.

This is for Jeremy more than anyone else. Sweet potatoes from the little neglected garden back behind the house! I still haven't harvested them all. They were delicious. I wish you could have enjoyed a taste, Jeremy.

Family! Here's a good capture of how pensive Leo can be:

We got quite a show of color this past weekend, especially from this one Japanese Maple behind our cottage:

Danielle with her new baby-wearing wrap. We've tried a couple different wraps so far, and this is by far her favorite because it allows her to put Leo on her back! So she can start doing things again :)

Leo didn't want to hold still for this one, but you can sort of make out that he's sporting his "born at home" shirt that the midwives left for him.

Inside Stuff

2011-11-17T23:20:00.001-05:00

I am so far behind in my posts (due to a current shortage of both time and internet access) that there is just no catching up in a proper manner. Instead, here is a bunch of everything:

The bathroom gets closer and closer to being finished.... The vanity light is in. Below it, the two horizontal pieces of wood are simply for attaching the mirror that Jeremy is going to build in Philadelphia, and bring down here.

The piece of plywood below the mirror zone is the first step in preparations for a tile backsplash for the vanity.

Tomato red tile! After the tile is grouted, then the last major step in completing the bathroom is to trowel a finish plaster onto all of the walls.

Here is the oven vent hood, with a cob-inspired cookbook shelf above it. The shelf will be made of a nice piece of finished red oak plywood, and the sides will be plastered with whatever finish coat the walls receive.

Today, we started to prepare the countertops for the tile job in the kitchen. There will be an in-your-face yellow (mustard) backsplash, and inoffensive tan counter tiles.

A layer of "thin-set" mortar goes on top of the plywood to start things off...

Concrete backerboard is then screwed on over this bed of thin-set. Soon there will be another layer of thin-set, into which the tile will be placed.

Mike was working on the bay sink area, getting it up to the proper height for tile:

And some random interior shots...

Concrete Shower Progress... and more first.

2011-10-25T22:06:00.000-04:00

The bathroom light/vent fan casts a warm glow on the tongue-and-groove ceiling.

I decided that I wanted to hard-wire in a vanity light, and so I got to experiment with cutting through the lime plaster/earthen plaster/ metal lath, and doing some retro-fit wiring. The top hole is for the light box, the middle hole is where I had to drill a hole through a wall stud to get the cable through, and the third hole is where the switch is to be installed. I was able to then fish the wires behind the plaster to get from one hole to the next, to avoid cutting away more of the finished wall.

I found it very easy to cut through the lime plaster neatly with a flathead screwdriver.

The light is now functional and ready to be mounted properly on the wall, but I'm waiting for the brown patch plaster to dry. Soon the bathroom walls will get the finish coat of plaster!

Here's Jeremy's vanity with the vessel sink installed.

Mike working on preparing the base cabinets for a future tile countertop. Here he goes the extra mile to knock a shim under the edge of the cabinet to level it.

Installing the metal lath:

And plastering over with the scratch coat of plaster:

The concrete shower has been quite a project. These photos are from the day after Mike and I labored for 8 hours straight, troweling yellow stucco around all of the sculptural details to complete the final layer of the shower walls:

You'll notice in the photo above that the bench and floor are not finished. This is because we wanted to do them in a different color (which turned out to be a deep purple). Here is the red and black pigments that I bought to add to the white Portland cement:

Dry-mixing the pigments and cement. The other ingredients that were then added were water and sand.

And here is the finished floor/bench stucco (and a beautiful stone that we mortared in): It's looking quite shiny and very purple in the photo because it is fresh. It will dry to be less shiny and more of a faded purple.

Now all the shower needs is a coat of sealant over the concrete (we're looking for the right product that is both non-toxic and functional), and of course a curtain!

Leo and Danielle making opposite-facing, similar expressions:

A little snuggler, he is.

Autumn video

2011-10-15T16:57:00.000-04:00

This is what's going on...

A house feel by the end of October?

2011-09-26T22:20:00.001-04:00

The first update is unrelated to building, but instead to my newest title of father/builder! Here I sit in front of this screen with my new boy, Leo. He was born on the 31st of August at 5:40 AM on an earthen floor of a cob house. Weighing in at 8 pounds 4 ounces (at birth), he is a strikingly handsome new member of the family. Notice below how in an almost chameleon-like fashion, he adjusts the look of his head to be camouflaged within his surrounding context.

Here he is at about 11 days old...

And here he is with Mommy on the building site.

To see more of Leo(pold), check out his blog.

There is a lot more going on at the work site than I have photos to show for...

Here is Mike showing our friend April how to apply earthen plaster, around the new glass blocks that he installed in the shower stall.

The house is starting to show signs of having cob and earth and curves in it...

Here is the loose fence system I've been using to sculpt with cob. It's a lot like making any other kind of sculpture around a skeleton of metal.

The start of a sculpted niche for a coffee mug or candle (or something less romantic, such as car keys).

The pattern of scratches in the plaster will allow the next layer to stick into the existing one.

Tongue-and-groove pine boards stained and polyurethaned, and waiting to make themselves into a ceiling.

A peek into the custom concrete shower stall:

And today a cut a big hole in the wall for a brand new bathroom window!

The main reason for this window is because I am going to install a baseboard heater along this wall as a temporary heating solution for the winter, and the heaters work best if they are beneath windows (as the cold air drops down, is heated up, and then spit back up into the room, creating a circular draft). And eventually after the addition is built, the door to the bathroom is going to be where the new window is anyway, so we're half a step closer to having a door. The window will of course have a curtain over it, for when one wishes to sit on the throne in privacy.

Water and Electric hook-ups any day now....!

Snippets

2011-08-19T21:05:00.003-04:00

Despite my negligence in keeping up with the blog posts, it would be a mistake to think that there isn't a lot happening on the building site. There has been a big push to install utilities, build a new "guest cabin" out back, and add some unique and crafted features to the house.

Starting with the new cottage... The cottage will be finished for under $1,000 (maybe 800?). It utilizes a lot of scrap materials leftover from other building sites as well as our own, and free natural materials.

The framing system for the walls is very traditional - 2X4 studs, spaced 16" on center. However, we spiced things up in a natural manner by filling the stud bays with what's called light-straw-clay. This is mostly straw, dipped in a watery clay slip, and then packed down between forms that are later removed. I wish I had some good photos to describe the process, but I don't.

An earthen sub-floor made pretty much from on-site dirt:

The metal, spiderweb-ish brackets supporting the back of the sink are from my grandma's basement (as is the wash basin hanging above the sink). Thanks, Grandma! The sink itself was saved from the dumpster. The roundwood was from on site. The countertop was an old kitchen cabinet door from my parents' house. The dowel was free from the side of the road. The window was $1 at the Habitat ReStore. And the orange plaster is colored with free clay. Unrelated to this photo: The roofing was scrap left over from the other building (plus free scrap that was left with the original roofing delivery), plus donated shingles; the wall fill/insulation is mostly straw and clay; the floor is earthen (mostly free except for some added sand); the ceiling is $24 worth of cotton muslin fabric; the bigger windows were given to me by a friend; a lot of the 2X4s were leftover scrap and/or demolition materials from another building, that we de-nailed; the pine slabs on the exterior were free from Craigslist; and so on and so forth.... Mostly the cost of the building was concrete for the piers, lumber for the floor/roof systems, and screws + nails.

Experimenting with fabric for the ceiling:

Lime-clay-sand finish floor:

Back deck!

The deck has been a godsend in terms of creating a nice flat workspace:

Outdoor sink I crafted for Danielle - it can be connected to a hose via the red "Pex" tubing:

The (beginning of the) creation of a custom, cement shower stall:

And a decorative (and functional), cement mortar threshold onto the back deck:

Testing out different plaster mixes to see which we like the feel of most, and which performs best over time/with weather/etc...

I learned how to do electric wiring finally (thanks Dan and Mike!). I have now passed the electric rough-in inspection.

And plumbing is done, too! (with the rough-in inspection just passed yesterday).

Here are the steps with the finished treads on top:

The cob wall in Elaine's backyard is holding up really well:

Dylan has been working a lot on his shed in the backyard:

Better than type. Better than a photo. It's...

2011-06-29T23:13:00.000-04:00

A sloppy edit of three quick videos taken in the past couple days on site. The plumbing explanation gets a bit long near the end, but the rest is a compilation of quick snippets detailing all parts of the project from street to backyard...

a FORMidable success (ha-ha!)

2011-06-29T19:46:00.000-04:00

Good form.

2011-06-25T19:07:00.000-04:00

Jeremy's Vanity

2011-06-22T23:56:00.000-04:00

Jeremy has been working in a woodshop much of the past week, with the beginnings of a fantastic bathroom vanity to show for it. The wood is ash. The joinery is a combination of mortise-and-tenon and dovetails (you can see the dovetails marked out in the first photo below). The vanity will have a large cabinet door on the left side, and four smaller drawers on the right (two deep and two shallow). I am planning to wheel-throw a ceramic bowl that will sit on top of the vanity as the sink (or hire a local potter to throw one if I fail). Jeremy has not decided on how the wood will be finished, but it is likely that he will stain it or use some technique/material to make it darker. A dark vanity next to a bright toilet.

I am hoping that Jeremy will be making the next post about his work. I can't go into any interesting detail and/or woodworker lingo, like he'll be able to do. The shop is a good ways away from the building site, so Jeremy is now commuting and gone for full days. These photos are the first I've seen of the work, and it's really impressive to look at!

Wednesday's Photos

2011-06-22T19:58:00.000-04:00

Moving Forward

2011-06-22T00:27:00.005-04:00

In typical fashion, a whole lot has been happening since the previous post! We have started digging the foundation trench for Phase II of the house. Here is Mike digging out the corner of a future bedroom:

This whole side of the house will be the two bedrooms. It is easier to understand in the Sketchup image below the photo...

The two bedrooms are at the bottom of this image. The portion of the build that exists currently is represented by the big peach-colored, thick "T" at the top left of the design.

Roof lines:

Front porch/patio (red = brick):

My good friend Dan (of Stony Creek Farm in Walton, NY) was visiting a couple weeks ago, to work for 10 days. Here he is on his first day digging the trench. Regretfully, this is the only photo I have of him. It was quite a bit busy week, and he was taking most of the photos (I'm waiting to have access to his shots).

Dan has been my main building mentor, and taught me pretty much everything I know about concrete work, framing, using screws, plumbing, etc... (essentially everything I know about building aside from cob stuff, and all of the things I learned from Legos as a boy). He is confident with wiring (and I am not), so he spent a lot of his time here wiring the house:

At some point, the siding was caulked and primed (it won't be white forever). I'm interested in thoughts from anyone on future paint color (but keep in the mind that the orange/brown plaster will be covered over with a white lime finish plaster)...

I spent a good deal of last week installing the plumbing: outgoing sewer and incoming water connections. Here are the two manifolds that I made up for incoming water: blue for cold, red for hot.

...installed down in the crawl space:

Each line has a shut-off valve so that water can be turned on and off in each "circuit" in case there is ever a leak, or something is not needed (for example, I put a line in for a future dishwasher, but my parents aren't planning on having one. If they were to sell the house, however, and the new buyer wanted a dishwasher, it would be really easy to add one with the connection already made).

The white PVC pipe is for outgoing graywater and blackwater:

This is where the kitchen sink will be hooked up:

On the floor you can see the circular flange for where the toilet will sit. In the stud bay is the vent stack - this is a pipe that connects to the sewer main line and will run out through the roof. Any harmful gases that enter into the line from the city sewer will travel up this vent and exit above the building - this is a required system, not something unique to this house.

Here is the end of the crawlspace, needing a door:

Ta-da! (the long 2X4 running across the middle of the doors is just temporary until I buy a barrel bolt and lock tomorrow).

In the backyard, one of the projects is what is being called a "meditation studio hut." This can be used for anything, from meditation, to reading, to pottery, to a playhouse for kids, to storing tools. One big reason for this outbuilding is to provide a good project through which to run a cob workshop. Jeremy, Mike and I are planning to offer a week-long cob workshop at the end of July/beginning of August.

Mike digs the trench:

As with all of my projects, there is a rubble trench foundation (with drain pipe inside gravel):

The little hut is a continuation of the longer garden wall. In the week-long cob course, we will be creating a cob/strawbale wall that runs the course of this stone foundation:

The grand entrance! All of this "stone" is really broken-up concrete from a demolition project down the street. It was going to be taking to the landfill, but we saved it and have put it to good use (a free urban material!). Mike and I did pretty much all of this stone work in one day. The "urbanite" is (genuinely) a pleasure to work with.

Another masonry project is out by the street. It's finally time to put in some entrance stairs to the site. Here Mike draws out where the steps will go.

Here's the start to a concrete form that Mike threw together. The steps will be poured concrete, and then a thin concrete tread (with embedded pebbles for grip) will be poured separately and mortared onto each step, to creating the actual stepping surface.

I can't manage to flip the photo, but turn your head left for this one. You can see how the steps will "fan" out in shape.

Mike and I spent part of today working on the forms for the remainder of the retaining wall.

Here are some random photos from the past couple weeks:

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Jeremy installing vents between the rafters, right below the metal roofing, to vent moisture from between the insulation layer and metal roof:

There is going to be a deck off the back of the house. Here is the start to the foundation pier setup:

Here is the entrance from the office/eating nook into the kitchen. The cob archway is partially completed.

Mud Brothers

2011-05-25T20:36:00.000-04:00

Now that Mike has been here for a week, the three of us have been able to get into a groove as a team. Most of the time we are all working on our own specific task, but there are some things that take two or all three of us. Whoever is on the ground is always called upon to act as a gopher and pass tools/materials up to the guys on ladders. We've been doing a lot of ladder and scaffold work so far this week.

Our organization is getting better and better. Like... A to-do list right on the wall, with a hanging marker, so that anything can be written down as soon as it's thought of, and checked off when it is completed.

The top exterior section of the kitchen is prepped for plaster...

And the west side, too...

I've been putting off working on this little triangle of space above the bay window because it's so hard to get to. I removed the metal roofing one sheet at a time, and built little mini-scaffolds (to hold one foot each) onto the roof structure so that I can sit up there and work.

I am almost done getting it prepped for plaster. After the plaster, the metal roof can go back on.

What's a day like in the life of Jeremy? He's been working on trim quite a bit this week.

Measuring:

Scampering with the cut piece (after a t-shirt swap, or a change of day):

Lining the piece up with the one above:

Top nail with the gun:

Checking for "plumb":

And then more nails... For the record, we are only using the nail gun for some of the trim nails. We originally borrowed it to do the trim pieces around the glass in our custom window frames. You can imagine how frightening it would be to attempt to nail in trim with a hammer within an inch of your custom, double-pane glass. The nail gun is much safer for the glass. Jeremy and I hand-nailed all of the wooden siding, the old-fashioned way.

Here, Mike applies the first blob of earthen plaster:

Here's the behind-the-scenes look prior to plaster. The white aluminum flashing is directly against the tar paper. Then the thin strips of wood. And then the chicken wire mesh. Ready for plaster.

We constructed a new set of scaffolds this morning, but they were not quite high enough for me to reach the top corner. Plastering that particular spot was quite unpleasant.

Photos of the roof for my father (he's been asking for a while now). It's tough to get a photo of the roof from on the roof, but you can get an idea of what it looks like from these window shots:

A photo through a window into the building, at the other windows:

Mike putting the final plaster touches around the windows. This is just the first coat of plaster. The next coat will be smooth and very fine.

I setup the scaffolds around the bend, and Jeremy and I plastered half of the west side before the day was through:

A lot.

2011-05-20T00:14:00.000-04:00

It's been far too long since posting anything about the progression of the house (and the lot). I finally have my full crew: Jeremy "Thunder" Curtiss and Michael "Arms" McDonough. Mike just arrived in town on Sunday, and began work on Tuesday. It's a really incredible experience to transition from working alone with two hands to always having six hands at the ready. Having tasks being done simultaneously is such a treat. This evening, for example, Mike was throwing up earthen plaster, Jeremy was installing the glass in the final two window frames, and I was attaching trim around the office window and back door. Three checks off the "to-do" list at the same time.

A couple weeks ago, the house was fully-sheathed with plywood, and ready for siding and windows...

Because the bay window in the kitchen turned out so well, I decided to also bump this west kitchen window out a foot into open space. It gives a really nice feel from inside to have this little window nooks. It takes away the feeling of two-dimensional flatness that is sometimes an unpleasant side effect of stud-framing.

Time for tar-paper! Notice how Tunk is frustrated at his lack of motor control, and therefore his inability to help measure.

The tar paper acts as a barrier to keep water out, if indeed any water makes its way behind the siding for any reason. It's performing the same function as Tyvek house wrap, but seems a bit more classic and much less offensive (who wants their house to be an enormous billboard advertising a plastic company for a week?).

Here is Jeremy's window-frame construction studio:

Below you can see the custom-cut double-paned glass that we ordered from a company downtown. It arrived on a glass truck, which was exciting (my nephew would have loved to see it!). Jeremy and I were actually pretty frustrated with some miscommunications with the glass people (about exact dimensions and fit), and so a really exciting day turned into a particularly stressful one, with caulk all over our hands and clouds in our eyes. But after some quick design work, we made some changes to our plan and were able to achieve success.

A horrible photo, but the only one I seem to have of some of these windows installed in the clerestory:

Tar paper almost complete...

West kitchen windows installed!

Long, skinny windows installed:

Here is a little detail of where I added three big lag bolts (where the tar paper is ripped), connecting securely the final two 2X10 floor joists (for added strength at the corners of the cantilevered floor). You can also see the little blocks of wood we used to shim the siding out to the to the same plane as the exterior sheathing (there was no plywood sheathing over this one end joist).

Our German-lap pine siding had been sitting in the middle of the backyard for over a month at that point (protected with tarps, but still in the way). It was very exciting to begin nailing it to the building... (check out the "urbanite" dry-stacked foundation wall in the background).

Like the shims in three photos previous, old shingles here are used to block out the three bottom pieces of siding to the same plane as the exterior plywood sheathing. It's hard to explain what I'm trying to say here. But the important thing to take from it is - when working with wood - it's important to consider all of the layers of material, and making each layer nice and flat so that the next is easy to install. I should have extended my plywood all the way down to the bottom of the floor joist system, not just to the bottom of the stud wall. I'm used to using earthen material, which is a shape-shifting material, and therefore very forgiving (and great). I am learning a lot about carpentry, and also learning a lot about why the potential marriage between wood and mud is so perfect (because wood can be needy).

More wood siding:

Jeremy and Tunk, enjoying a break in the shed.

The cotyledons of the lima bean plants. Jeremy and I went out of town for a day a week ago, and came back the next morning and the lima beans were just shooting out of the ground, as if the world was theirs for the taking!

More garden life. Everything except one bed of spinach is doing really well. Watermelons just came up, most recently.

The rain barrel is working really well. It fills up easily in one night of rain, just from one half of the shed roof. Notice the little 18-inch roof coming off the back of the shed. I decided that we needed an addition on the shed to store digging tools, and thought it would be appropriate to extend this roof; the building of this addition is covered in photos below...

Here I dug 18 inches down, and build up urbanite piers to hold the weight of the new extended roof:

Two piers:

Roof skeleton:

Walls, too. This is all using scrap lumber left over from the concrete forms - nothing new. More on this project later...

Siding and trim details around the bay window:

Time to get some mud on the wall. Here is the second generation of an "earthen siding" support system. The first generation was on the shed, and utilized heavy-gauge fencing and a 2-inch layer of structural cob. The idea here is to eliminate the need for cob (which is very labor intensive, and heavy). Instead, I wanted to just do a quick 3/4" layer of messy plaster, and then a couple finish coats of plaster to make it really smooth and beautiful. Chicken wire is super-cheap, and so is earthen plaster, so this is a very economic alternative to other siding methods/materials.

Scratch coat (the first coat of plaster, over which another smoother one will be applied later):

Notice all the texture in the plaster. This texture/unevenness will make it easy for the next layer to grab hold and stick, once this layer is dry.

What a beautiful urban lot!

Mike and Jeremy, throwing up plaster. These scaffolds were the ones Mike and I constructed at Pickards Mountain 2 years ago. Still going strong.

It's finally time to cut out the bathroom window. First I needed to remove the tar paper, and take out the screws holding the plywood sheathing into the stud.

Then cut the window shape out (which was much more complicated than the photos make it look):

Then install the window. It looks a little weird, and I admit that I didn't really consider it much from the outside. The location made a lot of sense from the inside. I think when the earthen plaster is complete, it will please my eye a bit more.

Another photo of the dry-stack urbanite:

Mike's first task on site was to dig out the other side of the trench, for the continuation of the urbanite foundation:

He came across a 5" steel sewage pipe, that's probably been in the ground for half a century. And a large root to go with it. We dug down deep enough to allow the perforated pipe to travel beneath these obstacles:

Then, like usual, filling the trench in with drainage gravel. Here, Jeremy tamps down the top layer of gravel, to get it to settle into place.

Mike and Jeremy worked on the urbanite stacking for this side of the foundation. It looks great!

Here is a door that Jeremy built for the garden shed addition, and the start to the pine slab siding. I got a bunch of pine slabs free from a guy 10 miles away who owns a sawmill in his backyard. Slabwood is the pieces of a tree that are initially cut off a log, when a miller is cutting dimensional lumber. It has one flat side, and one rounded side with bark.

Here I am installing the siding and window:

And the finished addition. This will be great to put tools in and free up some storage space in the house:

The scratch coat of earthen plaster is making its way around the house now to the back:

Here's a little gravel path out of the backyard so that we aren't always tracking in mud when it rains (which has been quite often). It's amazing how much the little changes (like a gravel path) can make a big difference in the flow of the work day, and the satisfaction of being on site.

This window received new trim today, as the old trim was flaking and dented and generally falling apart. I like the reflection of the shed in the window at sunset:

Urbanite Steps

2011-05-09T07:41:00.001-04:00

Jeremy and I spent our Sunday at Danielle's cob house, building a mini-staircase out of urbanite so that she could more conveniently reach the cantilevered wood steps up to her outdoor porch and second floor. For a week now, she had been using an overturned bucket as a first step. These stairs are not only a better, sturdier solution, but were a great project through which to use up a lot of the big pieces of urbanite that Danielle had gotten a long time ago, but was never able to use for her foundation.

The steps turned out to be surprising pleasing to the eye, even the back side:

Success!

Jeremy has arrived.

2011-05-03T23:59:00.001-04:00

My friend Jeremy arrived a couple weeks ago, and will be here for 6 months to help finish the project. We've been quite busy turning the space into a semi-habitable facility, so that we can cook our meals, wash hands, take naps, and store all of our things on site. Here's Jeremy at the stove, cooking up lunch:

We've gotten some quality organization done lately. There is no longer little chunks of wood and insulation scattered everywhere on the site. Things are in piles, organized, and easy to access.

Even the tools got organized...

And the rope....

And the fasteners...

Below is a photo attempting to visually describe the new water-catchment system off the shed. It's tough to see, but there is some angled flashing acting as a gutter along the edge of the roof that will direct rain down into the plastic trash can. We can then use this stored water for the nearby garden.

This is shot from the perspective of a tomato plant, looking out over: other tomatoes, sweet peppers, sweet potatoes, watermelon, cucumbers, lima beans, spinach, basil, lemon balm, parsley, and zuchinni plants. Some of these things are still seeds underground (ideas of plants), and some are actual transplants that we bought from the farmer's market.

Here's a seemingly emotional shot of Jeremy and his dog, Tunk. It's been great to have Tunk around, and he seems to enjoy watching the action, and sometimes taking part in it. He's a really sweet, playful pitbull. Strangers take him to be a guard dog, which I don't mind.

One of the greatest accomplishments has been finally removing the forms from the exterior of the concrete foundation wall. After form removal, we dealt with the drainage design around the perimeter of the house. Here Jeremy spreads gravel underneath the cantilevered kitchen floor.

We just started to think about a backyard cob garden wall, which will serve three functions: 1. please the eye, 2. separate yard space from garden space, 3. catch water runoff from the back of the lot, and direct it away from and past the house.

We dug down a little over a foot, dumped in some drain gravel, laid the perforated pipe, and then filled in with more gravel on top.

Before the day was over, we were able to start using some of the urbanite chunks (that I had collected long ago from a demolition project down the street) to begin the foundation for the garden wall. Below you can see where the entrance gate will be.

Tight:

Garden!, and some windows to see it through.

2011-04-17T23:59:00.000-04:00

I installed the "bay window" in the kitchen yesterday:

Today, I decided to take a break from the house, and beautify the backyard a little bit. Clearly it's a stretch to call any of this a "garden," but it's a start. I'd like to get soil as soon as possible, and then plant some collard greens, radishes, arugula, lettuces, and beets (and sunflowers).

I experimented with ways to make raised beds. My first attempt is with the piles of limbs I had lying around. Despite the gaps between everything, and the looseness of it all, I feel like it will hold soil fine - we'll see...

I had fun working with urbanite (a clever name for urban concrete waste), and old bricks that I had collected from a neighbor's building project long ago.

I've been holding on to these really weird pallets for a while now. I picked them up free when I got the free doors. They turned very quickly from a pile of pallets into a compost bin (which still needs slats in the front, clearly).

The Doors

2011-04-14T18:28:00.001-04:00

I finally framed out the rough opening for the front door today. I found a very fitting front door in my free pile. The bottom of the door had begun to rot right along the edge, but I was able to cut off 2 inches and find myself well into beautiful, rot-free wood. Now it's a 78" door, rather than an 80," which is more cozy-feeling anyhow. Hopefully you can feast your eyes on it in a photo tomorrow, as I'm planning on installing it in the morning.

I installed the first window. Actually, I didn't install it. I just tapped in a couple nails and sunk a couple screws to hold it in place. It's one of the windows that my parents found in Syracuse, NY and brought down to me in their minivan. I really love the aesthetic of it (especially from the inside - look two photos down...). I need to replace some of the exterior trim, and nail it all in properly. But I couldn't resist just getting it in for the sake of having a window.

I've never made a proper door jamb (frame) before. The door in the shed has a made-up jamb, and the bathroom door in the house (the one I installed yesterday) utilizes the studs as a jamb, which is not proper (the reason that I did this is that the bathroom door is just temporarily in that location - eventually it will be accessed from the North side of the room). And all of the doors I've hung at the farm are on studs as well; I think it's a fine procedure, but some people like a more finished look (and by finished, I mean clean, white, with trim, no nails/screws exposed, etc...). One of the points of this whole project for me is to do most of the things the accepted, "professional" way, so as to think critically about what makes sense and what doesn't - after building a whole house this way, I will have gained a lot of knowledge, and I'll be able to justify to people why I do certain things one way, and why I might do them another. Here's the start of my first attempt at a conventional jamb...

Cutting the mortise joints in the uprights:

Making sure the size is just right for the top piece in the jamb:

And locking it together, ready for screws:

I need to buy a sill from Home Depot tonight, as well as some more dead bolts - I want to install both the front and back door tomorrow (at which point all of the doors will be in!).

Windows, almost.

2011-04-13T21:10:00.003-04:00

The house is looking very much like a house these days! I have been working hard to finish the exterior sheathing (which has forced me to decide on where I want all of my windows to be). Below is the Northwest corner. This North side has just a few, small windows for two reasons:

1. passive solar - The sun shines from the south, and so the north side of a building (in the Northern hemisphere) remains in the shade. It's not efficient to have a lot of glass on this side. You will see later on how much glazing (glass) I have designed into the south side, to capture winter sun (yet block out summer sun with roof overhangs).

2. With Part 2 of the house in mind, I don't want to waste my time installing windows in places that are going to end up inside of the finished house footprint.

The aesthetic of the house is looking rather modern, now that the rough window openings are in place. I feel like what has determined this aesthetic is not a desire to be modern, but rather a combination of two things: being restricted by what windows I can come by (that are inexpensive, not ugly, and the right size), and my desire to obtain certain views.

WINDOW BUDGET:

1 Anderson Window - $222 (a splurge for the perfect window in a special spot)

1 small casement window for bathroom - $15

a bunch of window sashes that I will make frames for - $1 each

and free windows collected by me and my parents

I found out the other day that I can order custom-cut window glass (double-pane) at a local store, and that it is not as expensive as I would have thought. So for some of the windows (most notably the small 14”X20” windows that I will tuck into the stud bays between the two roof lines), I will order these custom rectangles of double-pane glass, and then will make frames for them. This will probably add another $600, for everything else I want (that’s a very rough estimate).

So this is easily under $1,000 for all of the windows for this part of the house! I've heard that usually people spend $8,000-$10,000 for windows on even a reasonably-sized house.

DESIRED VIEWS:

When I am inside my ideal house, I want to look out and see beauty. In the country, this is pretty easy. In the city, much of what is present is other houses, power lines, the road, cars, and lawns. Other than well-framed views of other houses, I don’t wish to see any of this. On the other hand, Durham has some fantastic sunsets, and beautiful clouds, and my lot is well-endowed with large trees. These are the things I want my windows to frame!

I like the play between the main roof lines and the much steeper pitch on the bay window roof:

I had a bit of an execution problem with the first round of metal roofing that I bought and transported to my site. The installation wasn't going quite how I wanted. The style of metal wasn't exactly what I was looking for, and the overlaps weren't looking as seamless as I had hoped. After a day of stress and thinking, I decided that it was best to research other options, and stop for the time being. It turns out that a much better product exists for this particular application, so I ordered it, and it should be delivered this week. In addition to being more appropriate for this pitch, it also allowed me to order painted metal (and therefore, a color), and custom lengths (so there won't have to be two end-overlapping sheets for each section of roof). I was able to take all of the original roofing back to the store (other than what I had begun using and screwing down...).

I "re-used" some of the metal that I had already put screw holes in to finish off this mini-roof above the bay window:

This isn’t the best representation of the view on the West side of the kitchen, but it’s the only photo I have. When moving around the kitchen, these windows will give a great view of the sunset, and also provide an interesting snippet of the roof and gable ridge of the yellow house.

Here are some window locations in the kitchen:

And some of the same windows from the outside:

Here are the layers of the roof, starting above the rafters: 2 layers of 7/16” OSB sheathing, 1” rigid foam insulation (R-5), 1X4” purlins (lumber, spaced 5 inches apart), and then metal roofing on top of it all.

My mother was interested in maybe having me install a solar tube somewhere in the house (see here). The solar tubes that I’ve seen for sale are really expensive and ugly (they look like something that should be on a lunar rover). I am going to try making “the $1 solar tube.” It’s not really going to be just a dollar, but the window sash was a dollar, mirrors are free, and I'll have to play around with materials to mimic the "diffuser lens." I'll need some lumber, and other supplies to make it happen. Here's the window opening:

Here I cut away the floor of the loft:

I'm going to install the window, and then install a mirror at a 45-degree angle to direct the light that comes into the window down into the pantry. This should make it so that one does not need to use an electric light to find things in the pantry during the day (obviously at night one will need to flip a switch).

Here is a really nice butcher-block-style countertop (will the sink hole already cut out) that I found at the Habitat ReStore (which is where I've gotten half of my windows, too) for $40. It needs to be sanded, re-finished, and then just cut to the size of the bay window. It's hundreds of dollars worth of wood and time, already done for me!

Today I decided that I want to have an enclosed room in the house, with a door that I can deadbolt - to expand my tool/material storage area to more than just the shed. So I framed out the door to the bathroom, and sheathed the interior bathroom wall with 1/2" plywood:

Then I picked through my pile of doors that I had gotten free when a local salvage company went out of business, and found this one to hang as the bathroom door. The door is in really good shape - solid as a rock. And it already has the hole for the deadbolt in it, so I just need to buy the hardware and install it. Eventually this will be the bathroom, but for now: storage.

I was thinking of putting a big triangle window up here above the bay window, but realized that the roof gets too much in the way of any view. I decided to put just a skinny rectangle window in the left part of the triangle instead. The following photos shows the area framed out, and then sheathed (you can see the space I left for a vertical rectangle window):

The weather is beautiful this week!

Here is the same angle, but with the sheathing complete. This side of the house (the South side, facing the backyard, is looking especially modern, with the long, skinny windows). The doorway in the middle will have a big glass door (already picked out and on site). There will also be a window in the bathroom (on the right side of the house in the photo below), but I don't want to cut the opening for it yet, because I want to use the room for safe storage).

The view from inside the office (the central space). I like skinny windows, whether vertical or horizontal, as they give a really interesting peek at what is going on over a broad spectrum of the world outside.

_____________________________

Here are some older photos that never got posted:

These are the triangle supports that I made to hold up the two extra rafters on either side of the taller, kitchen roof (the two rafters that provide overhang). You can probably spot these supports in some of the photos above.

In thinking about how much weight the center wall is going to bear (with both shed roofs bearing down on it), I doubled up a lot of the studs, as you can see here:

Here's the revised "header" for the kitchen doorway - a double 2X10" on edge.

The 1/2" plywood sheathing on this wall provides a lot of additional support (in addition to doubling the studs).

I love the play of the sunlight through the purlins.

Roof Details

2011-04-05T20:39:00.001-04:00

Time for a blog post about the details that made up my day, rather than just glory shots of the house.

Here is the pink foam insulation that I referenced in the last post, taped with Tyvek tape along the seams. This kept the rains out this morning:

This is the fastening method for the insulation. A screw with its force spread out with a "fender washer," driven down into the OSB beneath the foam:

The first thing I did today was put up two new rafters, each one creating the desired overhang on either side of the lower roof (this might be easier to understand as the photos continue below...). Because the roof is a shallow pitch, it's really easy to walk around on and place tools down on (without them sliding off). Instead of cutting my rafters on the ground, and then heaving them up, I just set up my cutting station on the roof. You can see the black Sharpie mark that I've drawn on the rafter below. This is one of the three notches that needs to be cut out so that the rafter will sit properly on its supports.

This is a triangle support that I made to hold up the end of the rafter, sticking out from the edge of the house):

Here's the rafter sitting up on the triangle support. This is before the rafter was notched (and placed properly in line) - I set it up prior to notching so that I could locate where exactly to make my Sharpie notations for the notches:

Here is where I cut through the plywood for the other end of the rafter to sit on the stud wall:

I didn't extend the OSB and foam onto these new rafters, because I don't want to be able to see OSB or foam when I look up under the eaves, when the house is finished. I just want to see the underside of the metal roofing (and besides, insulation isn't necessary on an overhang). So before laying the purlins (which you'll see later on...), I had to make up in height for the 1 7/8" of material that is on the other rafters (2 sheets of 7/16" OSB, and 1" foam). I used Ken's table saw to rip 2X4s down to 2X 1 7/8"-ers, which you can see below:

I started to screw them in along the top of the naked rafters:

And the ends...

Then I began to bring up the purlins, which are strips of wood that run perpendicular to the rafters, upon which will sit the metal roofing.

Installing the purlins:

Done! (for the lower roof)

Here's are some good shots of the triangle support, the installed rafter, and the purlins:

____________________

And here are some other thoughts/photos....

Look at this view! This is looking up towards the Eastern sky in the kitchen. I'm still waiting patiently to find the perfect windows to stick up in these stud bays (at least 3 or 4 of them). These kind of special views are very rare in houses, from my experience. When you walk into most homes, you are forced to experience the world at just one height, which tends to be the eye level of the average human. This doesn't make sense to me. I want to see ground, sky, tiny views, big views, winter views, and summer views. Windows are incredible devices, that determine how we experience the outside world from in our homes. Having them all match in aesthetic, size, and height is a design failure.

Here's the roof over the bay window that I finished up last evening. Some day this will look out onto a flourishing garden, not piles of materials.

And here's a shot of the backyard from up on the roof:

New Perspectives

2011-04-05T09:46:00.002-04:00

I spent yesterday adding a second layer of OSB roof sheathing on top of the first (so now it's 7/8", which feels a lot stiffer than 7/16"). I proceeded then to install a 1" layer of pink rigid foam over the whole thing. This will act as an full-coverage insulation layer (each rafter represents a thermal bridge for heat to leave and cool to enter; insulating only between rafters thus is not as efficient as having a continuous layer), and is also acting right now as a water-impermeable membrane. There was a huge storm last night, and it's back at it again this morning, so I'm glad that I had enough time to put up the foam before it all started. All of the seams between sheets of foam are taped with Tyvek tape, so no water should be able to get into the house from above. I need to get some more detailed photos of things I did during this whole process...

I also was able to build the little roof over the bay window, as you can see below (with the same double-OSB + foam layers). There are still 4 more rafters to put up (to create the overhang I want on each side of each section of the roof). And then it's time to install the metal roofing!

Below are some photos from new perspectives:

1. Mrs. Leathers' driveway (my next door neighbor)

2. Back of the lot (where the garden will be)

3. The backyard of Ken's yellow house (the foreground of the photo being his pile of refuse waiting for a dumpster to arrive)

4. And to really humble the house.... the Down-the-street-view

Roof Sheathing

2011-04-02T20:50:00.004-04:00

Another be-a-u-tiful day in charming Durham, NC...

This end of the house is my main access point onto the roof, for both body and materials:

You can see the rafter hanging off the edge. I slid each one up over the eaves, and then heaved it with as much force as I could muster so that it would land on the roof and wait for me to scramble up the ladder after it.

Here you can see the big beam that cuts the span for the lower rafters in half:

The beam is a double 2X10, with 2X4s (on the flat) wedged above it. So the beam acts as a 4X14 would, more or less.

The stud wall between the upper rafters and lower rafters delineates nicely in this photo where I want to have some small windows. Maybe not a window for every stud bay, but 3 or 4 would be nice to let morning sun into the kitchen.

I think the polo shirt has a lot to do with it, but Ian is looking more and more like a man, and less like a little boy. If it weren't for the chubby little legs and Toy Story, velcro kicks...

It seems like most times that my sister has the camera, she decides to capture an "artistic" shot. Here's her best attempt at "OH MY GOD! THE HOUSE IS TIPPING AND SLIDING INTO THE DUMPSTER! WHY DIDN'T WE TALK TO THE INSURANCE COMPANY SOONER?!?!":

More rafters

2011-04-01T22:31:00.000-04:00

I took all of these in the same 3 minutes, so there is no progress shown. At this point, all of the rafters are up, and I've started to put the roof sheathing on! More photos tomorrow...

606 Carlton: Rafters!

2011-03-30T17:03:00.000-04:00

Thanks to Dylan for the extra hands and the photos...

606 Carlton: More Photos (Bay Window + Sheathing...)

2011-03-28T20:45:00.001-04:00

View of the shed through the future bay window:

606 Carlton: Photo Update (more walls up!)

2011-03-25T10:13:00.002-04:00

The scaffold makes life much easier at the building site:

Roof drop

2011-03-23T22:23:00.002-04:00

Upon putting up the first wall today, it makes me think that my roof is just way too tall. I'm going to leave the kitchen as the tall room. I like the idea of having one room with a dramatic, open feel; it seems like the kitchen could benefit most from this, as it is a standing area and could use a lot of good, old-fashioned, natural light.

This desire for a lower roof has led me to drop mostly the entire roof by 2 feet (aside from the kitchen, and the bedrooms - the bedroom ceiling dropping just 6"). I am now planning to use traditional 8-foot studs, whereas I had designed the walls with 10-footers (hence, the two-foot drop). This will result in the house sitting a little lower to the ground - a little more settled and relaxed of a feel. It will additionally result in a lower heating bill, and a great reduction in the amount of materials I will need (fewer courses of strawbales, shorter posts, less plaster, etc...).

With this drop, I've altered the form of the roof. The kitchen now has its own shed roof that stands tall above the rest. It's a slightly more dramatic, modern aesthetic.

Old roof design:

New roof design:

First Wall

2011-03-23T19:58:00.000-04:00

After working on the DBDB project with Dylan this morning, I hopped over to the house site in an attempt to finish the subfloor. I didn't quite finish, because I ran out of adhesive (again! what poor planning, I thought I bought much more than enough this time...). There's just a little corner left to do. With the leftover daylight I had, I was able to put up the first stud wall! This will be the North wall of the kitchen, where a big, walk-in pantry will be.

In hindsight, I'm glad I didn't build the earthen oven under the overhang of the shed yet. This area is functioning very well as a window storage spot. The window that you see is one of triplets. I'm going to install two of them side-by-side on the south side of the kitchen, bay-window style.

I'll definitely be finishing the subfloor tomorrow, and continue framing!

DBDB garden shed

2011-03-23T14:59:00.002-04:00

In the last couple weeks, Dylan and I have gone out to work on the shed 3 or 4 times, and have now finished it to the point at which Ash and Giovanna want to take over with the cob sheathing layer, and exterior earthen plaster. Check out the DBDB blog for more detailed posts. Here are some spoiler photos below...

When I bought my Makita cordless drill, I was less than pleased about the LED light that activates every time the trigger is pressed, thinking of it as a gimmick. After 2 years of owning the drill, I can't even begin to count the number of times that I've appreciated this gift of light - anything from working in a dark barn, to using it as a flashlight for walking through the woods, to simply working into the night (thanks, Makita). Here I am attaching the metal roofing after dusk:

Door installed, steps for getting in, and walls ready for cob!

This was my first chance to use the new truck rack for carrying ladders! Taz, Giovanna's dog, was a great companion for us throughout the entire project.

606 Carlton: Update

2011-03-22T18:38:00.000-04:00

My documentation of the house project has been sorely lacking as of late, due mainly to the lack of charged batteries I have had in my camera. The last house-related blog post gave you the impression that the house looks like this:

This is no longer the case...

The concrete truck came two Fridays ago, for a very eventful pour. My parents were in town that weekend, and have photos of the pour on their camera, which I need to get. I could go into a great amount of detail about what happened that day, but the most important thing to note is that I experienced the terrifying occurrence of a form-break! I made a rookie mistake on my form design, despite how stiff and rigid it looks in the photo above. I will explain this another time, with a diagram. A picture is worth one thousand words, and so:

The beautiful, organic curve of the wall (in the right side of the photo) was not intended, but instead was a result of my form bending apart with the force of the concrete. Luckily, it didn't totally bust open, or I would have been in big trouble. The emotion I felt welling up inside of me when it happened was quite memorable - hearing a huge "crack, crunch, whooooosh," and looking over to see your form twisting, and stakes popping out of the ground, and concrete squeezing out the bottom - the number of gray hairs in my beard doubled that day. I intend to write a poem about it when I have time.

Anyways, more on the pour later....

I haven't yet removed all of the forms. Here's the pile of form lumber thus far, which I need to sort through with a hammer and drill, to get the screws and nails out, and then stack up properly.

Floor joists up!:

The crawl space:

I spent today putting up the subfloor sheathing, which basically means covering up the floor joists with 4'X8' sheets of OSB. Tomorrow I'm going to finish this subflooring job, and frame in the crawl space doorway (which you can see in the photo above). There will be a human entry door, and then a double-wide door for shoving materials into the space (like plywood, lumber, pipe, etc...). I can't wait to have the crawl space completed enough to start storing things there!

Truck Mod: Almost done...

2011-03-22T17:58:00.001-04:00

Here's what it looked like the day I made it:

The panels can easily slide on and off, depending on whether they are needed.

The modification happened just in time. I've been utilizing it quite a bit - both the rack, and the raised bed. This morning I had to get 11 sheets of 4'X8' subfloor sheathing. This is pretty heavy stuff. The Nissan took the load like a champ (even though I didn't - I very awkwardly tipped my cart over in the Home Depot parking lot and spilled everything on the ground: sheathing, lumber, bolts, caulk, etc...). I bought 2 new ratchet tie-downs so that I can secure my lumber properly to the rack.

Things to do:

1. add some hooks in strategic places along the sides of the rack to attach the ends of the ratchet tie-down to

2. paint the wood with deck stain for durability and water resistance

3. add a lock, so that I can store tools in the bed in watertight containers (?)

Photographic Update: Pickard's Mountain Cottage

2011-03-22T17:43:00.000-04:00

Danielle and I squatted at the Pickard's Mountain cottage on Sunday night, after a long afternoon (and evening) of lime plastering at her house (which I have to get some photos of...). Margaret, who recently moved out of the cottage, was nice enough to have left plenty of candles and fire-starting supplies next to the wood stove, so we enjoyed both light and warmth. The cottage is now about 2 years old, and looking no worse for the wear. Of course, the earthen plaster is becoming slightly weathered (which is expected). The green roof is looking better than it ever did (thanks Margot!).

The Eco-Institute is moving, and so the garden beds have been moved, and the fence taken down. The space feels a lot different without the high deer fence. It makes for great photos of the North side of the cottage. Can you spot it in the photo below?

The lime mural has held up really well:

I hadn't seen much of the floor for the past year, as Margot's bed was on top of it. It is in great shape, and feels so good to walk on with bare feet!

The brick entrance pad is still one of my favorite parts of the cottage. The bricks are dry-laid (no mortar or grout), and haven't moved a millimeter.

It looks so nice now that the grasses and flowers have gotten a chance to take over around the cottage - it finally doesn't look like a work site!

Preparation for Concrete Pour #2

2011-03-10T23:13:00.000-05:00

I've been continuing work on the form for the foundation wall. I had to push off the arrival of the concrete truck for a couple days, but it is now scheduled to come tomorrow (friday) morning.

Some photos of the form:

Vertical and horizontal runs of rebar:

Interior bracing, to combat the force/mass of the concrete:

Exterior bracing:

I ran some PVC piping through the form. One of the pipes will be for the black water, and will connect to the sewer. The other two are just there for when I want to run electric and water into the house through the foundation (and whatever other lines I might need to run).

Truck Modification

2011-03-09T01:22:00.000-05:00

Despite it already being (arguably) the most useful tool I have for building, I think it's time to modify my pickup to allow for a greater variety of loads. My solution is to add a lumber rack, and a flat deck on top of the bed. There will be a permanent "U" of wood around the edge of the bed that is bolted into the metal (as shown below):

The rack will bolt into the "U" when needed, and will allow me to carry really long items (lumber, rebar, roundwood, PVC, etc...):

The deck will allow me to carry large, flat things without the wheel wells getting in the way (such as 4X8 sheets of anything). The deck will be made up of 3 light-enough-for-one-person-to-maneuver panels that slide on, and lock in place.

The space underneath the deck can be used to transport tools. The idea is that eventually I will put a locking mechanism on the tailgate, and then I can store tools in rubbermaid containers (safe from rain and/or theft) in this space.

The whole setup should be really useful, and can be taken off if ever I need to transport a load of dirt, sand, gravel, etc...

In the next couple days, there should be photos for viewing, if all goes well.

DBDB - Garden Shed, part 2

2011-03-07T22:47:00.000-05:00

Dylan and I ventured out again to the land of Ash and Giovanna, to continue work on the shed. Durham Backyard Design/Build has its own blog at this point. To avoid having to blog the same thing twice, I'm just going to post a couple photos here, and link to the other blog, for those who are interested in more detail.

DBDB - shed design

2011-03-05T23:57:00.001-05:00

Here are a couple Sketchup images of the rough design for the shed project that is briefly chronicled two posts previous to this. The power of Sketchup is great - I was able to create this model and series of images in one hour, to show our client.

Door access under the gable to the 6X10 enclosed portion of the structure:

On the opposite side, the roof overhangs 5 feet, and the two side walls continue, creating a protected space to store tools, wheelbarrows, firewood, etc...

The post and floor joist system:

Breaking Ground(level)!

2011-03-05T23:49:00.001-05:00

It's a pretty satisfying step after weeks of digging and doing foundation work to finally beginning to work above ground level! I'm right now in the middle of creating the forms for the second (and final, for a good while) big concrete pour. This concrete form will be the foundation stemwall for the house, and will also function to define the crawl space underneath the house, through which I will run plumbing and electric, and store materials.

The form is taking shape:

This whole part of the form won't be taken down after the pour, but will remain as a stud bay into which I will put fiberglass insulation to keep the temperature of the crawl space moderated. I am curious about the potential to circulate air through this crawl space to cool the house in the summer. I must research/think more about this. You can also see the pink foam insulation that I installed around the form. The concrete will rest directly against this insulation.

I taped seams and used spray foam around the edges of the insulation to prevent concrete from pouring out through gaps.

Here's the rebar starting to go in.

At this point, I've completed the rebar, and gotten a whole bunch of the outside part of the form done. The truck is scheduled to arrive on Wednesday to make the pour.

Side Business

2011-03-05T23:30:00.001-05:00

Today was a big day for me, as it marked the start of a new business venture. My new housemate, Dylan, and I have embarked upon the classic "weekend business," with a plan to build sheds, fences, chicken coops, playhouses, and studios for people in need of these sorts of things. In regards to my housing switch this past week, it's important to note that Dylan lives in the house right next to my sister, so I still have instant access to my nephew (without any of the guilt associated with being the bum uncle who sleeps on the couch in the home of a nuclear family). Our first project is a garden shed for a young couple, Ash and Giovanna, who live 20 minutes north of Durham and are starting a food forest on Giovanna's family's land. The shed will be a hybrid of conventional materials and very custom, natural elements from the land - cedar posts, stone piers, a cob exterior sheathing coat, and an earthen plaster finish coat.

The initiative for this business came from the thought that all I want to do is build, all day, every day, so I might as well make some money off this desire every once in a while. This doesn't at all mean that I won't continue to enjoy really loose work-trade relationships with my friends - come help me out digging for the day, and I'll come work in your garden for a day next week, and so on, and so forth. That's my preferred way to work. But especially now that I have rent to pay, and want to start a garden, and because I am becoming very interested in expanding my tool collection, I need some expendable income.

The logo is below. We like to say the acronym really fast, because it sounds like one is speaking in an alien tongue.

Here's the truck packed to the gills, mostly with concrete piers. These concrete forms are the same ones that I made for the piers holding up my shed. I've been storing them at the site, waiting for the chance to re-use them. Last night Dylan and I re-built the forms and then poured concrete in the street until 11:00 PM. After that, we talked about game plan, materials list, and so on until after midnight. Then we woke up at 5:30 and headed to our client's site. If there is one thing that has stuck with me from my years in the Syracuse University Industrial Design program, it is how to devise a painfully hectic and sleep-deprived start to any good project.

It took a good amount of time this morning to excavate for the piers, get them out of the truck (what a trying experience! Each pier in its form is almost 300 pounds), and level them all on the same plane.

This is a capture-the-entire-moment-photo. Dylan is talking to Ash, it looks like. And we have gotten the floor joists in place at this point.

Here are some rocks that we harvested, with help, from the creek bed down the hill. These will be used to create mini-piers under the mid-point of the main runner beams, to cut the 12-foot span in half, and add a nice aesthetic.

While Dylan was at Home Depot for 2 hour this morning picking up the materials (a job I do not envy), I was harvesting a couple cedar trees for our four corner supports. I cut down two trees, and got two appropriate-diameter lengths out of each. These trees were slated to come down anyway to make space for a perimeter deer fence that will be going up soon around their food forest. Look at the gorgeous, Van Gogh-esque patterns on that far post, from all the limbs that were removed! A showpiece, if I ever saw one. Ash and Giovanna shaved the bark off to the level that they liked. It's a gorgeous aesthetic.

Here Dylan is toe-screwing (driving a screw at a diagonal to connect two pieces of lumber) the connection between the top plate (the long piece above his head that connects that top of the studs) and the cedar post. Before the sun went down, we got another wall frame up, as well as a second post at the other end of this top plate, but it was too dark at that point to shoot a good photo.

We expect that the rest of the project up through the cob part could get done tomorrow, if not for the forecast of rain. We were very pleased at how well we were able to stay on schedule. It makes it seem like this business is actually viable as a weekend operation (not every weekend, I don't think), and a source of income that I can feel good about. More photos to come, as things progress...

Retaining Wall, Revealed.

2011-02-27T12:43:00.000-05:00

Here's the footing, peering at it from the East. The little blue foam caps are stuck on the rebar so that people are aware of them and don't accidentally trip/fall.

This is a beautiful sink that was about to be thrown in the dumpster next door. I also collected two stainless steel sinks, but this one is a very heavy ceramic (or cast iron with enamel?), in great condition!

I have hired Dylan to move "urbanite" (broken up chunks of concrete) to my site from down the street. They just recently jackhammered down a 4-foot-high retaining wall two houses down, and so there are a couple big piles of concrete chunks. I'm hoping to make a short, dry-stack retaining wall with this material somewhere in the backyard.

And here's the form beginning to come off of the retaining wall:

This is a spot at which concrete leaked up from the wall's footing, up from behind the form. When I saw this concrete spilling out during the pour, my immediate thought was that the wall had blown out somewhere, and my brain was scrambled to pieces for 10 seconds until I realized that it wasn't a form-break (and consequently not a huge problem).

This is the cavity in which the stairs will eventually go:

A look from down the sidewalk:

Concrete Pour

2011-02-26T23:39:00.003-05:00

A lot has happened since the last post! After having sat in front of the computer for 3 weeks while my finger recovered, I was just itching to get back to the site (and the computer has been terribly unappealing since). Below is an update of the last week and a half of work...

This is what the site looked like during those three long weeks of recovery:

Last Saturday, I was blessed with the presence of my friends Dylan (my sister's neighbor) and Ariel (a student at NC state). We did a pretty good job of transforming the site in the previous photo to the site below. It also took a good chunk of Sunday to finish all the details of the excavation, and get it down far enough below ground level. Dylan and I dug until 11:30 PM on Sunday night, with worklights (and a delivery of pizzas).

This past monday, my first official employee (ever!) showed up. Jeremy will be working with me on most Mondays and Tuesdays over the coming month. He has had a great deal of experience with conventional construction in California, and also has done some strawbale work in Virginia. He convinced me that we should install "batter boards," which is the system of posts and strings that you can see in the photos below:

The whole idea with the system is to locate a level, "square" (meaning perfect 90-degree angles) rectangle. Most people do this before digging the footing trench.

Below is the footing form that Jeremy and I made for holding the poured concrete. The footing is essentially a thick, wide, concrete perimeter that will hold the weight of the house.

Because the ground is sloped, I designed the concrete footing to have two levels (like a terrace, or step). Here is the part of the form where the one level transitions into the other:

I got one load of gravel in my little truck, and then decided that it would be a ridiculous waste of time and gas to drive back and forth to bring the additional loads that I needed. So I ordered a big truck to come dump a big pile of it for me to conveniently take from. The gravel will be used for drainage purposes - underneath the footing, beside the footing, around the retaining wall out near the sidewalk, and so on. Whereas clay expands and seals itself off when it gets wet, gravel creates a whole community of little negative spaces through which water can drain and safely leave the underbelly of a building.

As the house footing project was beginning, I simultaneously decided to take down the retaining wall in the front of the lot (as it was old, poorly crafted, and falling over). I was able to push over all of it just using human power and a 5-foot, steel dig bar. You can see the remains of it up on the lawn.

After knocking down the old, it was time to make space for the new. This was another couple days (and nights) of digging.

This past Tuesday, Jeremy and I began building the form for the retaining wall. Every single retaining wall in this neighborhood was built vertically (and are all seemingly about to fall over any minute), so I decided to design the wall so that it tilted back against the earth at a 15-degree angle. Think about how much easier it would be to push over a wall that's standing in a vertical position, versus trying to push over a wall that's leaning against you. In the first scenario, you just have to tip it enough to let gravity take over. In the latter, you have to overcome gravity just to get it to vertical, and only then will you be able to heave it over. This is the challenge that I am setting for the earth behind the wall.

I continued working on these forms through the week...

It is important to get all of the details very tight and clean, so that I can eventually get the forms back off after the concrete is poured (and reuse the wood). If they aren't built meticulously enough, then concrete can seep out and entomb the wood for all of time with its gray, cold grasp.

Dylan volunteering some form work, in his I'm-going-to-the-moon jacket. The trapezoidal shape of the form around which he is working will be the space in which I will build stairs (probably concrete with brick steps):

The form is ready for concrete (finished the morning of the pour - phew!):

The night before the pour, Dylan and I again got out the worklight, ordered pizza (and beer this time), and set up for a long night of gravel-dumping and rebar-setting. I never ended up getting a great photo of our work, but here is one that my brother-in-law, Doug, took the following day of both Ian and the rebar (the rebar is the steel rod sticking up out of the gravel - it acts like a skeleton inside the concrete, so that if the concrete breaks or shifts with the earth, it still holds together).

My future digging partner in action!

The truck has arrived. It's quite a logistical nightmare to figure out how to pour. It's especially stressful because of timing. The truck can only stay for so long (so that the concrete doesn't set up inside of it). The chute can only reach so far. The truck can only back up so far. And so on...

On the afternoon of the pour, I had more help from Dylan, and also had my friend Danielle out (she's the builder of the two-story cob house that I have featured photos of before), and also my nephew! Doug generously offered to pick up Ian from school to take him on a personal field trip to see the pour. He's a big fan of heavy machinery - diggers, trucks, you name it. Below, Dylan and Danielle are pulling the concrete through the form.

For the second tier of the pad (which the chute couldn't reach), Dylan and I devised a wheelbarrow plan, involving two wheelbarrows and a precarious ramp.

First, the truck would fill the barrow.

Second, the driver would lift the chute (and stop the flow of concrete), and I (or Dylan) would begin pushing the barrow underneath the chute (through a shower of concrete droppings), and up the ramp. By the end of the pour, my hat was covered in concrete, as was my left arm, my shoes, and my whole backside.

And thirdly, we would strategically pour the material out wherever it needed to go (or, in some particularly stressful instances, we would tip the barrow and spill the concrete all over the pad where we didn't want it - you can see one of my spill spots in the photo below, to the left of me).

For the retaining wall pour, I adjusted the chute to the right length and angle, and then the driver was able to slowly drive the truck along the road and pour as he went. Danielle held a sheet of plywood across from the chute the whole way, to re-direct any escaping concrete down into the form (like a really stressful game, almost).

9 yards of concrete later, and the pour is complete!

Today I began to remove the forms, which was very much akin to the feeling of opening christmas presents when I was seven. Tiana, below, is one of the neighborhood kids who have been consistently interested in visiting the site to check on the progress of things.

And the footing after the form has been entirely removed. I was really pleased with how the pour went, despite how rough a start we had (for any number of reasons). I will admit that it was probably the most overwhelming building experience I've ever had (aside from certain teaching experiences), but was very satisfying to get mostly right.

Tomorrow I'm excited to remove the form from the retaining wall!

How do we communicate ideas?

2011-02-13T10:12:00.002-05:00

A lot of what I have been doing on the computer is creating a collection of images with four viewer groups in mind:

1. the city planning department (givers of permits)
2. an engineer (to approve the structural integrity of my design)
3. my parents (the clients)
4. myself (when I want to look back at this project in the future and remember exactly what I was thinking)

In a lot of cases, the same image can satisfy all four groups. In some cases, it helps to first make a technical drawing and then a more visual image, both representing the same thing, but for two different sets of eyes.

In any case, it's interesting to think about visual communication. The benefit to being my own boss and not being tied to conventional construction is the freedom I have to design a unique visual identity for expressing my projects. If I was an engineer or a general contractor, I'd be drawing things up in the same way, by the book, for every project. Consider this: the planning examiners at city hall had offices around the perimeter of a room full of cubbies - and all of the cubbies were the same size, and were filled with very similar-looking scrolls of drawings, which look less-than-stimulating (void of color, mostly void of the third dimension, etc...). It's very obvious why the common aesthetic for new residential construction in this country is as terrifying as it is - check out this song (this is the original, and the best - there are versions by countless other artists, including regina spektor, if you want a different voice), and consider its meaning.

Even without getting into building ethics, it's very interesting to think about communication. For example, in my head I can say "I want my parents to understand that from this hallway, these rooms can be accessed, and because it is high-traffic, the hallway has a wood floor, while the rooms have earthen floors, and the outlet in the hallway is for a lamp that can be turned on by it's cord, or by a switch at the other end of the hall, etc..." - but I don't want to say all of that over and over to every person I talk to; I want an image that says it all. (I am pretty happy with the "mini floor plans" in the previous post, as a way to explain important information about the layout that cannot be gleaned from looking at the unadulterated floor plan alone). Below are three things that I've been working on, and am going to continue with today. I'll post the updates later on...

Here is the same image from the previous post, but with the simple addition of arrows and 2 quadrilaterals (which represent planes in space, corresponding to sides of the building). Instead of using words, like "south side" and "west side," and encouraging the viewer to match the corresponding words, maybe this is a more visually-competent solution?

Here is my latest attempt to provide structural information about the details in the post-and-beam framing that are difficult to understand in the larger context. Playing with the transparency of certain structural members in the smaller images has allowed me to show all of the details around a complex construction point, and then reference the dimensions of each member.

Here is the first (and rough) draft of my wiring layout. There will additionally need to be a more schematic-like diagram to show all of the circuits, but this image is more appropriate for the client, in order to open up a discussion about where certain outlets are, what switches need to be operable from different points in a room/hallway, where appliances should go, and much more (like the location of outdoor outlets, dimming switches, details, details, etc...). The whole floor plan has been altered since making this drawing - this was pre-post-and-beam, even - so I will make some drastic changes to this today).

Revised Floor Plan

2011-02-12T20:06:00.000-05:00

Through a design conference with my parents, it was decided that switching the kitchen and office spaces might be an improvement so that the office (where my parents quite a bit of time) could be very near to the house's heat source (the gas stove). In playing around with this, I happily came upon countless other reasons to make the switch:

1. Kitchen will get morning sun through the horizontal line of windows between the two roof lines
2. The office is a great "through" space (like a hallway), and it's more efficient to have through-spaces in the middle of the house, versus around the perimeter
3. The kitchen will feel like a destination, not a through space
4. The exterior door from the office will now be a more central exit into the backyard, and can lead on to a deck tucked neatly between the kitchen and bed cubby
5. The office, where my parents spend most time, will be in the physical center of the most popular places for my parents to be during the day (the kitchen, living room, bathroom, and backyard)

Here's the new roof line (I wanted to keep the kitchen ceiling pretty high to make it feel spacious - it's about a 12-foot ceiling):

Below is the revised floor plan:

Following are 4 mini-plans that detail certain types of spaces within the floor plan:

And here is some updated work in regards to the post-and-beam framing design:

Happy Birthday DAD!

2011-02-04T16:48:00.000-05:00

The post-and-beam framing design is pretty much complete! (until the engineer challenges the structural integrity of it, that is...)

I made the following diagrams to explain the components of both the green roof and foundation in greater detail than can be gleaned from solely looking at the computer model:

I collected three rather large windows from Craigslist years ago in Syracuse, NY (my hometown), and they have been sitting in my parents' attic ever since. My father will be coming to visit in March, and bringing these gems with him. I don't want to have too many windows on the North side of the house, in order to avoid unnecessary heat loss, but I thought two of them would look nice together and provide a liberal view from the living room. The eyes of the house, if you will. Will you?

Floor Plan

2011-02-03T18:43:00.001-05:00

This afternoon, I fleshed out the details of the design/layout a bit more - here's the update.

Floor plan:

Back of house (facing away from street - South side):

Front of house (the Northwest corner, to be exact - the front patio is facing, and parallel to, the street):

UNDERBELLY

2011-02-03T10:53:00.001-05:00

In order to get a building permit for PHASE II of the house (the cob/strawbale/post-and-beam phase), I will need to submit my plans to an professional engineer so that he can consider whether it is structurally sound and - when he deems it so - can imprint his stamp of approval onto my design.

For the past week, I have been home-bound, due to a finger injury incurred by a Japanese pull-saw. It cuts very smoothly on the pull stroke. Right through the wood, and then quite a bit past it, I discovered (see photo at bottom). My time away from the work site has given me a chance to work on my plans for the engineer. I expect that the four main components that I will be justifying to him will be:

1. post-and-beam framing

2. rubble trench foundation (a concept that is thousands of years proven, popularized in the states by Frank Lloyd Wright)

3. strawbale infill walls (as insulation)

4. green/living roof design

Last night I was playing around with the layout for the post-and-beam framework. It's important to understand that I have not represented the ground in this model. The man is not floating on a deck, he is standing on a brick entrance porch (equal to ground level):

I especially love the view from the bottom, like looking at an insect from underneath and realizing how delicate the structure supporting its exoskeleton is.

The underbelly shots:

And the finger: