132

found

Home Building Entries

Skylight Window Trimming

Sunday, June 26th, 2016

For the past ten days, we've been in a self-inflicted exile from our home as our earthen floor slowly dries. During this time, we've gotten pretty good at breaking into our house. We usually enter through the kitchen window and tiptoe along the cou...

Straw Bale Cottage Exterior Finish Lime Plaster Coat

Monday, June 20th, 2016

Next on the docket, Chad and his crew tackle the finish plaster on the outside of our little straw bale cottage. Go, plasterers, go! By the end of day one, most of the house is plastered! ...

Earthen Floor Installation, Part Two

Thursday, June 16th, 2016

Layer one of our earthen floor basecoat has begun! ...

Earthen Floor Begins

Wednesday, June 15th, 2016

Though we just came back from California, it's already time to leave again. This time, we'll be vacating our little cottage for about six weeks as Vermont Natural Homes installs an earthen floor. Despite what we had originally hoped, we will not be...

Indoor Eave Trimming

Saturday, April 30th, 2016

When building our little cottage, we didn't stack straw bales all the way to the roof. Instead, we left an open, angled channel running along the eaves. The base of this channel is a "bale stop" that compresses the straw for increased wall strength...

Pulley System Drying Rack

Sunday, April 3rd, 2016

We've had tons of improvements to our quality of life recently: first the movie theater, then the ladder and railing, and now, a drying rack. For ages, we didn't have a good way of hanging wet clothing and towels indoors. After collecting photos a...

Loft Railing: Complete

Saturday, April 2nd, 2016

We're finishing small house projects left and right. Most recently was the loft railing. We're still trying to decide where to mount wooden handles on it for easier climbing, but for all intents and purposes, it's finished. We're pleased with how i...

Life Summit 2016

Friday, April 1st, 2016

We recently held a “life summit,” a semi-regular event where we sit down to review our life plan. We've canonized our hopes and dreams in a document that starts in 2008 and currently runs to 2026. Most of the time, reading our plan is a life-affirm...

Our Ladder in Motion

Sunday, March 27th, 2016

Here are some crappy pictures taken with a phone, showing how we decided to tackle the raising and lowering of our ladder. We may graduate to some sort of pulley mechanism at some point, but for now, our system of walking stick + spray-painted PVC ...

A Tiny House Movie Theater

Friday, February 26th, 2016

I have planned to build a music listening station and movie theater in our cottage since day one. At long last, this dream has come to fruition! When we were raising the bale walls, I ran speaker wire and HDMI cable through them to prepare. H...

A Tiny House Loft Ladder

Monday, February 15th, 2016

Tyler and I have been searching for the perfect ladder/staircase/firepole/anything to reach our loft bedroom for years. Before we actually built our cottage, I was dead-set on having some kind of staircase (inspired by a cob house we visited in Iow...

More Fascia Installations

Thursday, December 24th, 2015

'Twas the day before Christmas, when outside the house... Two creatures were stirring, a man and his spouse. The fascia was hung on the roof with much care... In hopes that Grace Triflex soon would be there. The r...

Finishing the Outhouse

Sunday, November 15th, 2015

For the past couple of weeks, I've been working on the outhouse, finishing tasks that remained after we bade farewell to our friends Shlomy, Britney, and Nehemiah. While it seems that winter should really be on its way by now, we've recently been t...

Building a Woodshed

Saturday, November 14th, 2015

I am pleased to report that Tyler and I have just set a new homesteading record. We designed and built a pretty sizable structure—a three-sided shed to protect our newly-sawn lumber—in three measly days. This was by far our least difficult build ev...

Shlomy Builds an Outhouse, Part Three: Dutch Doors

Thursday, October 29th, 2015

Shlomy and I have been working on a dutch door for the outhouse this week. We started by spending a lot of time puzzling over the instructions that came with our plans. But, after much head-scratching, we decided to forego the designs and just make...

Cleaning, Clearing, Merging, Purging our Stuff

Sunday, October 4th, 2015

Tyler and I spent most of the weekend on an autumn cleaning mission. We started by organizing the ever-growing collection of remnants from completed projects that were scattered about our land. Pieces of plywood, rigid foam insulation and all manne...

Live Edge Siding for the Workshop

Sunday, August 9th, 2015

Ever since I saw Ben Law's cottage, way back in 2011, I've been enamored with the idea of putting live edge siding (also called adirondack or waney edge siding) one one of our buildings. At long last, we have a building where it would make sense to...

A Stone Facade for the Cottage Pony Wall

Monday, July 6th, 2015

The plan for the exterior of our cottage has always been to lay a facade over the pony wall, made with stones carefully picked from the ramshackle dry-stacked walls bordering our property. We wanted to tackle the project ourselves, but knew it was ...

Workshop Progress Update

Saturday, June 20th, 2015

We have dry drywall on the west side of the building: The pony walls are basically complete: The rough framing for the windows is underway: We've disassembled, stained and reassembled most of the windows: Things are comi...

Workshop Framing Continues

Saturday, June 13th, 2015

For the last few weeks Tara and I have been chipping away at the rough framing we need to complete before our strawbale workshop attendees arrive. We're still having a lot of fun with the process—not having the quality of your life depend on the ou...

Building our First House

Thursday, January 1st, 2015

Throughout the construction of our house, we often jokingly wished that our lives could be a movie montage…. because building is so much easier in montages. Hell, a trio of goofy teenagers can carry building materials to a remote location and const...

'Twas The Night Before Christmas

Wednesday, December 24th, 2014

It’s the night before Christmas, and we have a house. A real house. I can barely even type those words without tearing up, without being completely overcome by a cocktail of emotions that include relief and joy and a sense of hope. Our kitchen, whi...

Nesting

Tuesday, December 23rd, 2014

Though it's a bit premature, I cannot curb my unstoppable desire to nest, nest, nest. For the past few weeks, I've been going to our storage unit and bringing home (I have a home!) boxes of the things that remained after our numerous Great Purges, ...

The Kitchen, Part Three: Drawers & Other Progress

Saturday, December 20th, 2014

Most of the kitchen cabinetry project has been easier than I thought it would be, but there is one task that has been difficult since the start: making drawers. Despite Ana White's insistence that installing drawers is an simple job, it has not bee...

Building Cabinets with Lian

Sunday, November 30th, 2014

After my parents headed home from our Thanksgiving week, my brother stayed for a couple extra days to hang out and help with construction projects in the house. I was a little hesitant about this, mostly because a) while we care very much about eac...

The Kitchen, Part Two: A Counter

Friday, November 21st, 2014

The quality of our lives is rapidly improving now, and one reason is this: we have a counter! This may not seem like a big deal, but considering our camper had zero counters, and it is really hard to make anything or prepare food without a horizont...

Three Cheers for Charlie

Sunday, November 16th, 2014

There have been so many times during this house-building process where we would have loved to have had more help. The trouble with this was, we didn't have the wherewithal to organize said helping, nor necessarily the skills needed to show said hel...

Productive Snow Day

Friday, November 14th, 2014

We awoke this morning to find that it had snowed! Our first snowfall in our new house! I spent it inside, cleaning sawdust off of things and staining our loft floor. Tyler spent it outside, working on our cistern/water situation. ...

Cleaning Our Timber Frame Cottage

Monday, November 10th, 2014

We've spent countless hours cleaning this place. There is continual sawdust sweeping from cabinet construction, and a giant plaster clean-up operation to finish. Entire days have passed where I'm on the ladder, scraping tiny bits of plaster off of ...

The Kitchen, Part One: The Sink Cabinet

Wednesday, November 5th, 2014

Gods bless Ana White. She's the building maven who lives in Alaska and posts tutorials for constructing anything from mud room organizers to kitchen tables. Eventually, I'd like to be building with our own wood while using traditional joinery, but ...

A Functional Range

Monday, November 3rd, 2014

It's official: we have a fully-functional stove and oven! Thank you, delivery dudes. Thank you for hooking everything up, Rich! ...

First Night in the House!

Saturday, November 1st, 2014

Well, I've been saying that I didn't want to move in the house until it was finished (I couldn't bear for life to become less comfortable than it already was in our camper, and I desperately did not want to live in a construction zone) but here we ...

The Chimney Saga, Parts Two, Three, Four, Five, Six & Seven

Wednesday, October 29th, 2014

This was originally drafted as a seven part series recounting the maddening tale of our first chimney installation. However, we're writing this months after the fact, and neither of us has the energy to do the thing justice. So, here are all the pi...

Trimming the Cold Roof

Sunday, October 26th, 2014

This afternoon, we trimmed the cold roof sheathing which was overhanging the eaves by an extra two feet or so. On paper, the process looked quick and easy: just snap a chalk line and cut the extra plywood off. In practice, most of actual work was s...

Laying Lodgepole Pine Flooring

Thursday, October 23rd, 2014

It's high time we had a floor in our loft. We've been making due (inadvisably) with 1/2" plywood scraps for the last several months. After chatting with the folks at our local building supply store, I decided on "lodgepole pine" tongue-and-groove b...

Life is Horrible

Monday, October 20th, 2014

We are exhausted. Bone-achingly, depressingly exhausted. It feels impossible to have a full time job and build a house in time for winter, as Tyler is trying to do. It feels impossible to have a full time job building a house, as I am trying to do,...

Skylights, Part Two

Sunday, October 19th, 2014

Donavin came by today to help me install one of our skylights. As he promised, the installation was incredibly simple—for the most part, all we did was put it over the hole and nail it into place. It took a bit of fiddling to get it lined up correc...

Autumn Cold Roof Construction

Sunday, October 12th, 2014

Autumn has always been my favorite season—moving to Vermont has only bolstered my conviction that this is the absolute best time of year. The explosion of color in our front yard right now is so awe-inspiring, it's almost enough to move me to tears...

Here I Go, Here I Go, Here I Go Again

Saturday, October 11th, 2014

Whenever it's time for a new step in the process—another batch of plaster to be mixed, another giant job to be tackled, learning how to do yet another thing we don't know how to do—I have to get myself geared up, like a boxer preparing for another ...

Skylights: Part One

Wednesday, October 8th, 2014

I have been procrastinating for months but it cannot be avoided any longer. It is time to cut holes in our roof for the skylights. I know it is an unrealistic fear, but I'm terrified that I'll install them wrong, and that somehow our roof will rot ...

Finish Plaster Begins!

Monday, October 6th, 2014

Today we successfully completed the finish plaster on one section of wall! Here's what we learned from our first foray into the art of finish plastering: Once again, we were nervous about working with a new material, and once again...

Strawbale Cottage SIP Panel Cold Roof

Sunday, October 5th, 2014

It wasn't until our roof panels were installed that I learned we would need to build an additional "cold roof" on top of them. A few months ago, I had no idea what a cold roof even was. The physics of it make perfect sense, though. When warm air in...

Off Grid Above Ground Water Storage

Saturday, October 4th, 2014

Tyler: There is a drilled well on our land, and a large clearing next to it. This area is obviously where the previous owners had planned to build a home—it is also one of the few places on our property that gets a good deal of sun. Rather than b...

Getting Sand For Lime Plaster

Saturday, October 4th, 2014

For our plaster, we are using a sand comprised of several aggregate sizes. The grains range from very fine to extremely coarse. This type of sand has different names from region to region; at our yard it's sold as "double wash." When we say "...

Into Fall

Monday, September 29th, 2014

Fall is here. The brown coat is in progress. Sunsets on cloudy days set the woods alight with deep reds and golds and muted greens and greys. Our house is looking house-like. Our hot tub is a comfort. Right now, at this moment, all is good. We're ...

Plaster Faster: Finishing the First Coat of Lime Plaster Indoors

Wednesday, September 17th, 2014

For the past few days, Tyler and I have been applying the first coat of plaster inside the house. Each swipe of the trowel is hurried along by a growing sense of urgency. Winter is fast approaching, and I'm anxious about our upcoming trip to Illino...

This is Carl & Anaïs

Wednesday, September 10th, 2014

A few months ago, Tara was contacted by Carl, an avid reader and cyclist. He and his partner Anais would be in our area for the Green Mountain Stage Races, and were wondering if they come visit, and leave their truck at our place while they went on...

Pre-Plaster Trimming in Strawbale Cottage

Tuesday, September 9th, 2014

Now that the exterior of the house is mostly taken care of for the year, it's time to really focus on the inside so we can get it plastered. That means trimming out the pony wall... And making window seats... ....

It's Getting Better all the Time

Saturday, September 6th, 2014

With an actual house-looking object up there on our ridge, and a beautiful wood-fired hot tub to compliment it, life is getting better. With each bit of progress we make, our daily existence gets a little bit easier, a little more comfortable, and ...

New Chapters & Random Thoughts from the Airport

Monday, September 1st, 2014

Right now, I'm sitting in the Albany airport, waiting for a flight back to the midwest to see my family. My dear, sweet grandma Jeanne had a heart attack and is in the hospital, and every ounce of my being is ringing with impatient need to be there...

Finishing the Exterior Brown Coat

Sunday, August 31st, 2014

Below, a summary of the week of August 23rd, which was mostly spent working on the exterior brown coat (the second coat of plaster) for the house. "I'm tired, but oh my god, this is so cool! It's so much prettier than the scratch coat!" ...

Book Nooks

Friday, August 29th, 2014

When Will came over to talk with us us about spray foam insulation, he suggested we use the space in our eaves for some kind of nook, since they wouldn't be completely stuffed with the blown cellulose we had originally planned to fill them with. Hi...

Our Hearthstone Arrives

Thursday, August 28th, 2014

Our slate hearthstone is done—we picked it up from Ed's Masonry today! ...

We Have a Wood-Fired Hot Tub!

Wednesday, August 20th, 2014

When we were living with Tyler's mom, Jodi, both before and after our big bicycle tour, we took full advantage of the fact that she had a hot tub. In winter, Tyler would shovel a tunnel through the feet of snow on the deck to get to it, and we'd ru...

Exterior Scratch Coat Completed! And Karina & Ivica Visit!

Monday, August 18th, 2014

High atop our scaffolding, Tyler and I stood with hawks and trowels in hand, applying a scratch coat of plaster to the last section of the last exterior wall. We had about an hour’s worth of work left when two of our favorite people rolled up the d...

Plaster Master

Wednesday, August 13th, 2014

As it turns out, I really, really like plastering. Sure, it has downsides: it is tiring. Lime turns my hair into a grey rat's nest. It chaps my hands and dries them into rough, old-person appendages, and makes it so that the slightest of bum...

Manic Monday, Part Two: Spray Foam Insulation

Monday, August 11th, 2014

I am mid-plaster stroke, and positively covered in plaster, when Tyler comes running up the rocky ridge towards our house, followed by Will, a man we met a couple weeks ago a party we attended with Charlie and Becky. Will works at Vermont Foam Insu...

Manic Monday, Part One: Solo Plastering

Monday, August 11th, 2014

This morning, Tyler starts a couple batches of plaster going in the mixer, then heads down to the camper to program for the day, leaving me to tackle plastering by myself. I'm reeling from the sudden change of pace: Tyler took the last couple days ...

Pressing Back & Scarifying

Sunday, August 10th, 2014

Once the first coat of plaster is leathery (has dried enough to be pliable, but won't stick to our fingers when we poke it), it's time to "press back." This is where we go over the wall with our trowels, pushing with all of our might to compact the...

This is Kevin & Joy: Part Two

Sunday, August 10th, 2014

Sunday morning started with coffee and plaster in equal measures... Kevin Joy: Sunday, we spent the morning and afternoon plastering. Once we got the plaster mixed, it was time to smash it into the wall. It's not like spreading fr...

For Better or For Worse: Plastering Begins!

Sunday, August 10th, 2014

Our entire home-building process has been full of unknowns and steep learning curves, but the plastering part of it has loomed largest and most daunting of all. While everything about our project feels vitally important, the plaster is most critica...

This is Kevin & Joy: Part One

Saturday, August 9th, 2014

Kevin and I spent the weekend at Tyler and Tara's homestead ostensibly to help plaster (which we did do), but mostly to ask approximately a million questions. Joy Kevin: Visiting Tara and Tyler on their land is something Joy and I ...

Dad Visits

Friday, August 8th, 2014

When I was a teenager, my Dad restored/rebuilt a dilapidated farmhouse in rural Minnesota. Like Tara and I, he'd never done anything of the sort when he started. I remember coming along to lend a hand a few times, but mostly, I was too busy being a...

Winter is Coming

Wednesday, August 6th, 2014

With each passing day, our cottage is looking more and more like an actual home. It is with a bit of trepidation that I can finally say: if we were to plaster tomorrow, I wouldn't freak out about all the things that aren't good enough yet. It's not...

The First Pancake

Sunday, August 3rd, 2014

Lately, in the mornings, I've felt like the first shitty pancake in a new batch: the one that gets stuck to the pan, is gooey in the middle and burnt on the bottom, and falls completely apart. When I told Tyler this, and explained that he'd have to...

Quilting the House

Saturday, August 2nd, 2014

Tara: We've arrived at the stitching phase of our building adventure! Like pretty much every other part of this process, I've had a looming fear about it. I was afraid that "quilting" the house—attaching the exterior wire mesh to the interior wir...

A Blur

Friday, August 1st, 2014

The past couple of weeks have been a blur of post-baling, pre-plastering tasks. As usual, emotions have been running high, vacillating between the extreme "total meltdown" and the more moderate "miraculously keeping it together" levels. Most recent...

Installing Range Hood Vent

Wednesday, July 30th, 2014

Today, we installed our range hood duct, and a wall cap that Tara ordered and painted. Once everything was in place in the wooden box we made in the strawbale, we filled the gaps around the duct with expanding foam. ...

Heat & Water

Saturday, July 26th, 2014

Today, I arranged a meeting with a master gas fitter to see about hooking up a propane regulator on the outside of the cottage. Our current plan is to run our oven and on-demand hot water heater with a pair of 40lb tanks. Someday it would be nice ...

Making Window Reveals

Thursday, July 24th, 2014

It feels like we've been saying we are "almost ready to plaster!" for ages now. And by "ages" I mean a few weeks, back when Pete and Natasha finished installing straw bales in the gable ends of the cottage. Ever since, there has been a non-stop sup...

We're Doing It

Saturday, July 19th, 2014

A few years ago, when we were dreaming of our homesteading adventure, I happened to read a blog post that completely floored me. It was about a young Vermont couple that was in the process of building their own home. And it wasn't just any house—it...

Trenching Power from Solar Shed to Cottage

Friday, July 18th, 2014

For at least a year I've been telling myself that getting electricity from our solar shed to the cottage would be a piece of cake. "All we need is a beefy extension cord—we'll just plug that in somehow and voilà, we'll have power!" Each time I ment...

Progress

Tuesday, July 15th, 2014

Farewell Cardboard Model

Sunday, July 13th, 2014

It was with great pleasure today that we realized the cardboard model of our house has served its purpose. Since we now have a life-sized version to work with, it is no longer necessary. For the last few months it has done little more than take up ...

Hi Ho Hi Ho

Saturday, July 12th, 2014

It's off to work I go! ...

Mole Face Morning

Monday, July 7th, 2014

Ever since last week's freak out, we've been getting up even earlier than usual. This lets me spend more time on the house with Tara before I have to go to work, which makes her feel more supported and less like our house-building project is never ...

Chainsawing Kitchen Niches in Strawbale

Sunday, July 6th, 2014

This morning, we chainsawed niches in the kitchen wall to hold spices: ...

Affixing Wire Mesh in the Rain

Friday, July 4th, 2014

A Freak-Out Kind of Day

Wednesday, July 2nd, 2014

Lately, building a home feels impossible. Even so, I keep slogging along, not out of hope or excitement or joy, but because I feel shackled to the task. It doesn't feel like I'm living out my wildest dreams, it's more like my life is being held ho...

Weekend Work

Sunday, June 29th, 2014

After saying goodbye to Pete and Natasha (we miss you already!), "normal" life resumed, which means pretty much one thing: construction. Even though P & N completed the baling on both gable ends of the cottage (THANK YOU!!), we still have load...

This is Natasha & Pete

Saturday, June 28th, 2014

After our first meeting in Southeast Asia, Tara and Tyler have made yearly trips to Tennessee to visit. When they bought their land, we were super excited for them, partly because it was the beginning of their homesteading dreams, but mostly becaus...

Picking Out A Faucet at 1:30AM

Friday, June 27th, 2014

This is our weird life right now. It's 1:30AM and Tyler is on a bug-slaughtering mission, swatting fiercely at the millions of insects large and small that populate the walls and ceiling of our camper. "Not over the—!" I say, a moment too late. "…...

Thank You Hartmans!

Wednesday, June 18th, 2014

So, our dear friends were a wee bit modest in the journal entry they were kind enough to write for us. First of all, they really did drive sixteen hours through the night with a SIX MONTH OLD BABY to come see us. Damn. And then, as if that wasn't a...

This is the Hartman Family

Tuesday, June 17th, 2014

Julia: The week after I finished school (I’m a music teacher), right in the middle of my husband Dan’s busiest time at work (he's a musician, who also engineers stuff), we traveled from Illinois to Vermont in one very long trek with our 6-mont...

A Picnic Table!

Sunday, June 15th, 2014

During the second half of June, our calendar is jam-packed: we're looking forward to not one, not two, but three sets of friends visiting from out of state. In celebration of "guest season," I decided it was high time we had a picnic table. See, ou...

SIP Roof Delivery & Installation

Tuesday, May 20th, 2014

After months of planning our roof, today was the day we'd been waiting for—bright and early this morning, a crew showed up to deliver and install our SIPs! As with any big project, the challenges began immediately. First off, their boom truck had ...

Getting There

Friday, May 16th, 2014

When we first embarked upon this homesteading project, we were naively dreaming of an idyllic lifestyle in the woods. It's safe to say that after two and a half years of focused effort, barring the blessing that is our friends and neighbors, we hav...

Building Plaster Stops

Wednesday, May 14th, 2014

The next task in our building project is assembling plaster stops. These are pieces of plywood covered in tar paper and diamond lath (also called blood lath, for the razor sharp edges it leaves when cut). We'll be affixing them anywhere plaster mee...

Working in the Wee Hours

Tuesday, May 13th, 2014

"Tyler!" I hiss, roused in the middle of the night by an unmistakable plunk-plunk-plunking sound on our camper roof. "What is it?" he mumbles sleepily. "It's raining!" I reply, a touch of panic in my voice. We only tar-papered half the roof yesterd...

Cottage Roof Drywall Installation

Sunday, May 11th, 2014

For the past few days, Tara has been painting huge sheets of drywall for the roof of our house in the safety of our grindbygg workshop. I was really pleased that we had a place for her to do this—one of my original motivations for building a worksh...

Cottage Roof Decking

Saturday, May 10th, 2014

It's amazing how much we can accomplish on a non-rainy weekend—with Tyler having two entire days to work with me on our house instead of his programming, we're able to make a ton of progress! Today, we focused on installing roof-decking, a task to ...

Building A Pony Wall

Thursday, May 8th, 2014

For the last few days, we have been framing a pony wall around the perimeter of our house. The main purpose of this framing is to raise our strawbales above grade so they can't get wet, but we're also going to use portions of it for storage. Every ...

Designing Our House: The Roof

Wednesday, May 7th, 2014

For the past few weeks, I've been doing loads of research about roofing. Our main goal for the cottage is to have something with substantial r-value. Living in a trailer for two winters has made the importance of insulation abundantly clear. Our se...

General Contractor

Monday, May 5th, 2014

Last summer, Tyler was the general contractor for our road building, foundation laying, and grindbygg timber framing efforts. It seemed like he was always on the phone, planning the next stage of our projects. This year, with his new job consuming...

Building a House is Hard

Sunday, May 4th, 2014

I am so tired of fighting to keep things dry on our land… It's a never ending battle, and we pretty much always lose. I have forgotten what it is like to see a forecast for rain and not be filled with dread. I know that everything...

Timber Frame Cottage Ridge Beam & Rafters

Monday, April 28th, 2014

After everyone left yesterday, I had a panicky feeling in my stomach about all that we had left to do. The king posts needed to be installed, as did the ridge beam and the rafters. How on earth would we be able to do this by ourselves? I was re-li...

Timber Frame Cottage Frame Raising: The Big Day, Part Three

Sunday, April 27th, 2014

After lunch, we finish raising the last bent and place the two wall plates. Next up, we check to see if the assembly is square. Our first measurement shows we're out by a whopping five inches from corner to corner. At this point, Rick and Charlie...

Timber Frame Cottage Raising: The Big Day, Part Two

Sunday, April 27th, 2014

Shortly after raising the first bent, our dear friend Jenna arrives bearing a gorgeous loaf of wood-fired-oven-baked bread, and her tiny, bleating lamb, Brianna. We pause to greet her, and to hold the lamb, cooing at its perfect adorableness, buryi...

Timber Frame Cottage Raising: The Big Day, Part One

Sunday, April 27th, 2014

As I arrange bananas, a water jug, and several containers of snacks on a makeshift plywood table this morning, I do so with a feeling of peace. With the stress of non-stop preparation and the uncertainty of assembling the first bent of our home be...

Timber Frame Cottage Raising: The Dress Rehearsal

Saturday, April 26th, 2014

It's a clammy, dark afternoon. I just picked up Tyler from the airport after his week in California, and we've been home for less than an hour. Already we're at the house site, going over final preparations for the frame raising of our little cotta...

Timber Frame Cottage Raising: Preparation

Friday, April 25th, 2014

While Tyler spent the week working in sunny California, I held down the fort and got us ready for the long awaited frame raising of our little timber frame cottage! I set a date, invited some friends, and then proceeded to obsess about the weather ...

Thoughts on Building and Learning

Monday, March 10th, 2014

After a productive planning session with Charlie, Becky treated us to a fabulous supper of homemade pizza topped with spicy merguez sausage, arugula, parmesan cheese, and pickled red onions. As we settled in for the meal, our conversation turned to...

Planning with Charlie

Monday, March 10th, 2014

With Tyler working full-time at Bocoup, I've taken on the role of contractor for our house-construction project. We're still going to work together on the building process, but I'm doing the vast majority of the scheduling, calculating, ordering, a...

Designing Our House: The Windows

Thursday, March 6th, 2014

Over the past few months, I've been researching, planning, and gathering materials for the construction of our little cottage. My first area of focus has been the windows. Initially, I went through a phase where I was dead-set on having wavy glass ...

On Starting a Homestead from Scratch: Lessons from our First Year, Part One

Sunday, February 16th, 2014

Over the course of the past year, we've chatted with many folks who are hoping to start a homestead. Like us, they've been dreaming of going "back to the land," of living a simple, self-sufficient life in the country. Quite often, they've sought o...

Workshop Retaining Wall

Wednesday, July 31st, 2013

Today, Chris and Pete showed up to assemble the final piece of our workshop foundation: a retaining wall form for the west side of the building. The setup only took a few hours. When they were ready, we called in the concrete. This ...

Roundwood Spruce Rafters

Tuesday, July 30th, 2013

With the workshop slab ready for our timber framing course, it's finally time to shift our focus to something other than building foundations. Today, I am picking up rafters logs from Capital Sawmill in Nassau, New York. I have to thank John, ove...

Workshop Slab Concrete Pour: Part Two

Friday, July 26th, 2013

Immediately, I am brainstorming places we can use the extra concrete. Maybe we could pour another slab somewhere? Tara doesn't think we should make rash decisions that we'll be stuck with, but I'm able to convince her when I remember a spot along...

Workshop Slab Concrete Pour: Part One

Friday, July 26th, 2013

The day we've been preparing for is finally here. The workshop foundation is being poured! Our masons, Pete and Chris are the first to arrive, at 6:30AM. Next comes Rick, and then the concrete trucks, right on schedule at 7AM. Though we've only ju...

Ready to Pour

Thursday, July 25th, 2013

With concrete trucks due to arrive at 7AM tomorrow, we spent the day putting finishing touches on our workshop form. Somehow, the final details always seem to stretch on forever! The first job of the day was to snip all the ends off the zip ties ...

Workshop Radiant Heat Tubing

Wednesday, July 24th, 2013

Today, we finished putting radiant floor heat tubing in our workshop. Holy shitballs, we're nearly there! ...

If I Start Screaming, Don't Mind Me

Tuesday, July 23rd, 2013

Tyler wraps me in his mud-smeared arms, and I bury my face into his sweaty, grimy neck, whispering, "We can do this, right?" He's trying to keep it together as much as I am—we're both outwardly calm and inwardly teetering on the brink of total melt...

The Dump

Monday, July 22nd, 2013

We recently visited the local dump to get rid of some construction debris from our workshop. When we pulled in, they weighed our truck, told us to hurl our crap into a nearby pole barn, and informed us that they'd measure us again on the way out—w...

Workshop Rebar Installation

Thursday, July 18th, 2013

On this hot July day, we spent the entire morning and afternoon at our workshop site, laying reinforcing rod inside our concrete form. The plans called for a grid two feet on center over the entire slab, as well as additional reinforcements along ...

My Construction Nightmare

Tuesday, July 16th, 2013

It's time to pour the concrete floor for our worskhop, and we have like twenty people here to help. For some reason, the form is really long and skinny, like a lap pool. Tara and I have been running around with the attendees all morning, doing la...

In-Floor Outlets

Monday, July 15th, 2013

Every morning, around 7AM, my brain starts yelling at me to get something "productive" done. I swear this nagging voice has carved a literal groove (or fifty) in my cerebrum over the years. Generally speaking, I acquiesce. I know that if I haven...

Raking Rocks

Thursday, July 11th, 2013

After finishing my indexing quota for the day, I headed "downstairs" to help Tyler rake the stone that was dumped in our workshop's concrete form yesterday. Using Peter's slab plans as a guide, we shaped the material into a flat mound with carefull...

French Drains and Fill

Wednesday, July 10th, 2013

Today, we received thirty tons of 3/4" stone: Rick scooped most of it into the concrete form for our workshop: After that, we made a french drain around the back wall: First, we put down a layer of stone: Then, a layer of st...

Road Building

Monday, July 8th, 2013

Our alarm sounds at 7AM, ringing in another day of construction here on our homestead. Eyes barely open, I fumble around for the phone, ready to get started. Half asleep, I ring our truck driver, Richard, confirming that he is still available to ...

Do-Over

Sunday, July 7th, 2013

Tara Tyler wants to do a daily journal. Just a paragraph, he says, about anything he says. We won't even edit it! My eyelids droop. So much to say and so little energy to say it. I'll write more tomorrow, about the blazing sun and the torrential ...

Our Cottage Foundation, Wing Insulation & Backfilling: Part Seven

Thursday, June 27th, 2013

Yesterday, we removed the form bracing and laid the wing insulation for our cottage's frost-protected foundation. Today, Rick brought his excavator up to the site and helped us back-fill over it. It was an easy job—the whole process took all of t...

Our Cottage Foundation, Finishing the Slab: Part Six

Tuesday, June 25th, 2013

After about an hour of chatting, Pete encourages us to put our hurricane straps in before the concrete is too dry. I'm surprised—I assumed it would take ages to reach that stage! Together, Tyler and I climb up the ridge to the house site, and sur...

Our Cottage Foundation, Part Five: Pouring Concrete

Tuesday, June 25th, 2013

At long last, the day has arrived—we're pouring the foundation for our cottage! Things kick off bright and early with Rick pulling in at 7AM. He's here to check on us before the cement truck, pump truck, and masons arrive. Right off, he spots th...

Our Cottage Foundation, Part Four: Radiant Heating Installation

Monday, June 24th, 2013

The final major detail in preparing our cottage foundation for concrete is to lay PEX tubing for a radiant heating system. We don't have immediate plans to use it, but at a cost of about $100, it seems foolish to leave such an efficient heating op...

Our Cottage Foundation, Part Three: Adding Reinforcements

Saturday, June 15th, 2013

In order to support point loads from our timber frame posts, the outside edge of our cottage's concrete foundation will be roughly 12" deep, while the central portion will slope up to 6". To create this shape, we filled most of the form with 3/4" ...

Our Cottage Foundation, Part Two: Moisture Barriers

Friday, June 14th, 2013

With our concrete form built, and its interior foam over 6mil plastic installed, we applied two additional moisture barriers. First up, we filled any gaps between our 4'x8' sheets of EPS insulation with minimally expanding foam. The kkkhschhhhh o...

Our Cottage Foundation, Part One: Concrete Forms & Insulation

Thursday, June 13th, 2013

Last month, after we cleared the building site for our cottage, we started work on our foundations. With some instruction from Rick, we built our first-ever concrete form: a wooden frame to contain the frost-protected slab for our house. After me...

Rain Rain Go Away

Saturday, May 25th, 2013

It's been raining non-stop for a week. As a result, we haven't made any progress on our our foundations. Boo! Our driveway and clearing are becoming a mud-pit, too: The only upside to all of this is that we've been able to sleep in a ...

A Mountain of Foam

Friday, May 24th, 2013

We received a small mountain of EPS foam for our shallow frost-protected slabs today, and getting it home was a bit of a fiasco. Our shipment was supposed to arrive on a box truck, but instead, it came on a seventy-foot-long semi. Tyler did his b...

Insulating Our Shallow Frost Protected Foundations

Thursday, May 23rd, 2013

Assuming everything goes to plan, we will be pouring two shallow frost-protected concrete slabs next month. One for our grindbygg workshop, and the other for a small timber frame cottage. We've chosen this style of foundation because our land is ...

Building Sites

Saturday, May 11th, 2013

So, I've been meaning to write an exhaustive journal outlining all the pros and cons of various foundation styles, why we've chosen to build frost-protected slabs for both our workshop and cottage, what they are, how they work, why we chose EPS foa...

Permitting Our Projects

Thursday, May 9th, 2013

This season, we're starting four structures: an 18'x24' timber frame workshop, a 12'x16' timber frame cottage, a small shed to house batteries and electronics for a future solar array, and another small shed to enclose our wellhead and water storag...