more house

 outside

inside, living room

island w sink, cabinets

kitchen floor

pantry door left, bedroom door right

homemade bits

Ella

more house

ella and i

backside of cabinets with the kitchen sink set on locust countertop, and a view of the ironwood post, on right

ollie

ceiling around the stovepipe

a table i built. crepe myrtle legs and a maple top, mortise/tenon with walnut wedges
this one is a coffeetable with a 'curly'-grained cherry top. that's a pretty wood, and pricey, too!

my woodstove

homemade doorsills of barn oak transitioning kitchen to foyer and foyer to bedroom, poplar flooring on the left, 1 1/4" wide oak flooring on right

mahogany doorsill to bathroom

my pantry door made of pecan flooring (identical to hickory), trimmed with oak


Window and spice shelf by the stove. made of crepe myrtle. Window trim is American chestnut, taken from an old barn.

Interior house

This is the juicy stuff! I've had a great deal of fun, latenight time building interior spaces, trimming windows, plumbing my sinks, doing simple rustic carpentry, generally being creative and dreaming about sleeping, reading, lounging, eating, watching movies, meditating in my home, my primal shell without the dust, drafts (cold!) frozen pipes, and constant "do!do!do!" of the building flow. Moving into an unfinished building is a well-tread path toward incompletion ('proper finishing' the Buddha suggested) Yet, I have moved in, and will finish!!!!!!

my homemade back door. Salvage flooring, barnwood, cedar trim, heavy brass handles and lock plus OSB, screws and wood glue. That door is heavy! and thicker than the average: I had to rout the openings for handle hardware many times before the spindles would reach eachother! The exterior face is completely different, oak flooring and yellow pine, sorry no pic!
A roundwood locust walkway up the hill to the back door, a railing will be there soon. Hard to see the ext. window trim, but it's round, too! split 3" poplar shoots from the woods.











Kitchen floor, bathroom floor (sideways, cock your head 90 degrees) clawfoot bathtub and homemade sink stand of mahogany slab and locust, black haw, grapvine and honeysuckle rounds. The cabinets are barnwood pine and oak (beautiful!) maple flooring from an old gym and a locust countertop all painted with Tung oil.

Roof, windows, insulation

Some more pictures of my house for the benefit of family, friends, and continually unfolding joy of life on earth.

I am indebted to Kate O'mara for snapping so many photos of my house from August to December 2010. Mostly on her way down to milk a cow or two, including her own cow, the sweet May, who's due to have a calf at any moment.

Kate and Kevin are building a house, too. Right up the hill from mine. Check out Kate's blog: http://homemadeinmarshall.blogspot.com/interior walls

Kevin and I break in the shade, probably talking about houses

Here's kate and kevin and the view from their house on our farm:















Teleported to the winter!

The view of my house. from kevin and kate's.
I am grateful to my mother and step father for helping to install the roof on my house

the house has a roof, insulation, windows, doors, and some siding, board and battons from the sawmill.

There is still much work to do on the exterior of the house, but with the winter coming on strong, it hurts to be out-of-doors in wet wintry weather. These things include:
1.) digging a 2' wide x 2' deep french drain on the embankment above the north side.
2.) pouring a footer and building stud walls to box in the basement and provide extra foundation support
3.) building a front and back deck. The front door is a 8' tall full glass, french (double) door, and actually steps out to nowhere right now, hehe!
4.) finish the siding and two minor roof details.



I can work outside when it's above 35 degrees no problem, so long as it's without wind and preferably dry and sunny.

Building my house, the frame

In August 2010 I began building my house in Marshall, NC.

Those are the first trusses raised on a platform 37' x 19' east to west longways. My 10 full trusses and 6 half trusses are made of 10 1/2" wide by 1 1/2" thick sawmill poplar.

The 'truss' consists of 4 lengths of poplar connected with 3/4" plywood 'gussets', essentially sandwiching the joints from both sides with gobs of nails and the strength of plywood. You can see gussets are the peak of the truss and the joints that make the gambrel roof. A gambrel roof is what you see: two pitches, one steep one shallow, designed for barns long ago to accommodate more hay than a simple gable. Additionally, my trusses have 'collar ties': rough-cut 2x4's spanning the distance between trusses to resist the force of gravity and prevent the trusses from kicking out off the platform.

1o days to assemble and half a day to raise. Andy helped me raise each one, brace it to the platform and one to the next!

This photo shows part of the foundation: 12 locust posts and 3 oaks post in 3 courses of 5 supporting beams that hold up poplar floor joists.

Building trusses on the ground in addition to the truss being both wall and roof made for a quick house frame.

Once the trusses were up, there was more framing to do: 4 dormers, 3 on the south side for windows and 1 on the north side. The trusses did not complete the roof, the dormers would and be designed as i went along. Actually, I didn't start with a definite design, but liked the gambrel and went with the rest of it. Andy helped me design and build the frame.








See the 3 half trusses? ---> they're missing the collar ties and they 'die into' a header plate that also carries 5 rafters resting on the dormer wall. There are two walls like this in my house each with a window.

The big open space in the middle would have a vaulted ceiling between two more dormer walls, a little higher than these two pictured.






another view, two small dormers with windows, rough-framed.






A view of me from a hazy summer day skinning the roof with OSB (oriented strand board).

There's the big southern dormer wall up too! Without the rafters yet......

but....




There's the finished frame! Vault ceiling in middle. Went up pretty dang quick. looks, feels, smells very rigid and strong, too!
It looks so beautiful at this stage I almost want to stop and be done! So skeletal and clean and shiny with the OSB panels. Course it would rot to shreds without a roof....