Without Much Fanfare

A sugarhouse / tool shed / tractor garage / soap making shop, is being born. We’ve had many projects lacking dry space. I’m barely documenting anything, I also have to post some pictures of how incredible the garden is this year. This has all become less than extraordinary: growing awesome gardens, putting together buildings is simply what we do now. A sign of the completeness of the transformation we undertook 8 years ago. In a lot of ways we feel like we don’t need to achieve anything anymore while looking ahead to several large projects for the coming years. Maybe all we had to achieve was making this who we are, everything else follows naturally without fuss.

3 pillars which will be buried to support the lean-to part of the building

Site prep day, truck got stuck

Concrete pouring day, I’ll skip the stresses of dealing with contractors

12′ walls are no joke

He can help more and more but it’s still hard to have him around the site for all the dangers

Not the most conventional framing method but the computer model says it’ll work and I’ve grown accustomed to not questioning what the computer says. I braced the building because there won’t be shearing rated sheathing on the walls and we do get high winds. The roof line will be broken by a sizeable cupola. 20′ rafters also are no joke.

Starting to look good 🙂

Thermosiphon Butterflies

The thermosiphon has been proving itself this whole Winter. It’s quickly becoming one of the best features of our house design and it’s not hard to imagine why. 100% passive & efficient air circulation taking heat from the stove to every nook and cranny of the house. No power, no fan, no duct.

As a bonus, it animates decorative butterflies. Now I don’t really care about the butterflies; I only like seeing them as an indicator of the free work our house is giving us. They’re a great analog anemometer.

Bunk bed, shelving, flooring and many other things

Custom shelves are popping up left and right

Custom means maximizing space all the way up to the ceiling. I figured out a nice building technique that is a good mix of simple, study and good looking. It also lets me use a lot of extra lumber from previous projects.

First I grab any extra 2bys I have laying around and I rip them in slices of 1.5″. It essentially gives me 1.5″x1.5″ square rods which I build the basic frame with. Then I “dress” the frame with shiplap or tongue & groove. I always have some on hand since I cover every square inch of the house with this stuff. Finally, I make it look nice with cedar trim which also happens to be a mite repellent.

The forest saved me a trip to the hardware store for a coat hanger rod.

A bunk bed in the making

building rule of thumb: if it can support my monkeying around, it’ll support my kids’.