Monthly Archives

July 2013

You Call That a Roof?

By Recycled Materials, Design
Recycled Boat Roof Shed

A boat for a roof. By Alex Holland.

Rain may not fall on one roof alone, but strangeness just might. I’ve occasionally heard stories and seen images of the, well, unique items that eventually become the recycled roof of a home or shed. I was amused by the above image, a shed built by Alex Holland in Machynlleth, Wales, which features an upturned 100 year old boat as a rooftop, as one great example.

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There’s Beauty Under That Surface

By Carpentry, Strawtron

scrap-to-trim

For whatever reason, we have access to a lot of black walnut lumber around here. A lot of twisted, knotty, warped, split 1x black walnut, that is. Hell, at least it is cheap, but you definitely get what you pay for. The stuff is sort of a nuisance to sift through, and oftentimes, up to half of any given pile later becomes firewood.

But I have been using this stuff almost exclusively for making window trim, and baseboard, and other finish work. I’ve gotten a lot of practice picking through piles, and hopefully finding that one piece that will actually work. Under that sometimes ugly surface, there is some really gorgeous wood.

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The Roundwood Timber Frame: Coming Soon

By Natural Building Workshops, Timber Framing
Roundwood Timber Frame House

Coming soon!

In less than a month, we’ll be fearlessly led by our maestro Tom Cundiff in assembling the beautiful timber frame that you see above during our 10 day workshop. This is going to be a particularly slick design, and rather unique for several of its features. The foundation plan is highly irregular — read: non-square, also read: organic, wild and crazy, funky. It’s a small structure, about 300 square feet in size, and a great learning model for folks interested in small house living.
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A Magical Transformation of Wood

By Natural Building Workshops, Timber Framing
Black Locust Roundwood Timber Frame

This will soon become a long-lasting timber frame house…

This pile of wood will soon undergo a magical transformation. With a team of builders, the timbers will be laid out with squares, levels, and chalk lines. The wood will be cut with saws, and struck with axes and chisels. Later, the once seemingly random logs will be snugly fit together like a giant puzzle. And then, what was once a big pile of raw logs will become a magnificent timber frame, the skeleton for a small house.

Yup, all of these locally harvested black locust trees are material for the roundwood timber frame we will build during the 2013 Timber Frame Workshop. I love to see a pile of wood and realize the potential for a completely new life for that material!

You can still be a part of that team of builders that turns these logs into a lovely timber frame. We’ve got a mere 3 spaces remaining. Check out the Timber Frame Workshop 2013 details and be sure to register!

Live Edge Siding Sneak Peak

By Strawtron
Live Edge Oak Wood Siding

Mmm….

I am feeling very fond of our new live edge oak siding. Very fond. The stuff looks great. The Amish sawyer did a fantastic job, and the material came out of the planer super clean, and super beautiful. We are finally installing it, and it’s a dream come true. These may be flowery words, but I’m just darn excited to finally see things coming together on the exterior of our porch.

We’ve got black walnut trim to accompany the siding, and the contrast looks rather nice, I’d say. I’ll put up more photos once our walls are done, and the scaffolding isn’t in the way of taking a good photo of the wood! More later…

Highs and Lows of Scaffolding

By Strawtron
Construction scaffolding

Shiny new scaffolding

You know what really sort of stinks? Working at heights. You know what is even worse than working at heights? Not having a good way of doing it safely. Last year, we borrowed scaffolding for a big chunk of the building season, but this year, we needed to find a new scaffolding option for our construction needs, which includes a lot of work high off the ground.

Turns out we ended up deciding to buy our own, since no one in the area has an adequate setup that can reach the heights we need. I dreaded having to buy our own set of scaffolding, but I think it was the right choice to make.

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