Amazing House Blog

So, I’m thinking of what color to paint the exterior of the house. Our cabin is stained in a red, which is really nice, but I think I’d like something more vibrant. I’m thinking soft yellow, with a white trim…. what do you think? It would stand out nicely against all the green around us, and the colors on the living roof.

The windows are going in as we try to close up the house. The thing that will take the longest is the cordwood. But, if we can get the rest of the house closed up, we may be able to seal up the cordwood holes with plastic and get a wood stove in to heat the house. Then we will be able to do more cordwood when it is cold.

Here’s another picture of the insulation. This is upstairs, looking into the stairwell.

Here’s the wall to the right of the front door. The little dots in the wall are glass nuggets. We put a shelf in there (see the big rectangle piece of wood sticking out?)… maybe a little plant will sit on it once the house is done?

Here’s the dining room wall.

Here’s a close up of the cordwood above the dining room window. I’m proud of me for that little sunny design

This is the wall to the right of the dining room window. It was a very cloudy day when I took this pic. You should see how that red bottle shines on a sunny day!! We put another shelf in this wall too, and the bottle above it to let light through to whatever we put there. We may put the glass chicken on one of these inside shelves.

The insulation went in yesterday. Easy-peasy! They just spray it (icynene) into the walls in a very thin layer and it puffs up to fill the wall space. We would have loved to use something totally sustainable, but this was the closest we could get for what we needed. Icynene is a petroleum product, but it is supposed to be more air quality friendly and non toxic. It’s also more energy efficient.See the thin, white spray on the upper left wall…

Here’s what it puffs into:

Cool, eh?

The Structural Engineer came out today and said we are good to go! He sees no problem with our house and sent a letter to the inspector. So, we will go ahead with insulation on Monday! Yeah! The power company is also coming out next week to run a line to the house. It’s been too cold to lay cordwood so we are doing other things to try to get the house closed in, like putting the windows and doors in.

We had our big framing inspection yesterday. It was really nerve wracking ’cause this inspector hadn’t been out to the house since we poured the foundation! So, we didn’t know what he would say. But all in all he really liked it. He kept talking about articles that he’d seen for alternative building and that he’d love to try something like this but didn’t have the guts, or a wife that would live in a alternative structure. But, since he doesn’t know a lot about this kind of building he’s asked us to get the structural engineer back out to sign off on it. He said “I think everything looks great. I just need him to send me a letter saying it’s structurally sound… it’s a CYA (cover your ass) move you know…” So, we hope to have the engineer out this next week.

We are going to finish framing up all the windows and getting prepared for insulation, which happens on the 19th. We are also busting ass to try to get all the cordwood done by the end of the month. (So, if you are a local and want some experience laying cordwood, come on out!! We could use the extra hands and would love your help!)

We’ve laid cordwood all day yesterday and today and we are making good progress. We had 8 people come out and help!! It’s so much more effective to have at least 4 people working at one time. That way, someone can be mixing mortar, two people can be laying the wood, and someone can be pointing the mortar that has hardened enough to ‘finish’. We are probably about half way done. So, if we can get a few more cordwood work days in before the weather is consistently cold, we may be good to go!!

Here we have laid ‘big bertha’ in her place in the wall. It is the only large round piece that we have. They tend to crack, so we didn’t want to risk it with too many large pieces. But she seems to be holding up well.

And here is ‘big birtha’ a few hours later. Kaia said it look like she has bottle hair I love the way it turned out!

These are the kitchen walls. We worked on the left section today.

We did this section yesterday and today. On the inside there more bottles making a pattern up the wall.

This is the living room area. The 2 sections to the right of the triangle are almost finished now!