Like Making a Casserole

"I can't believe what you guys are doing!" 

"I am so in awe of your building your own home." 
"You never cease to amaze me . . ." 
"You guys are awesome!"  
"You're amazing!"

Now I don't think I've ever been called amazing before but I get that a lot lately. And it has been food for thought.  While we ARE amazed at what we are doing, we don't feel amazing. It IS amazing to wake up in the morning and look out the window at our house that we're building! (This time last year we had just started putting up the framing.)

But do I FEEL amazing? No. I just feel like someone who has had a dream, researched how to make that dream come true and has taken the steps to make it happen.

It's a lot like making a casserole. Or designing a sweater. Or sewing an outfit.  Or building a model railroad. You decide what it is you want to make. You make a "parts" list. You define the steps and in what order. Then you start with step one and take it one step at a time from there. Really! It's that simple!!! And that's what we've done.

About 6 or 7 years ago I singed up for and took a number of adobe building classes at a local collage. We are fortunate to have one of the most knowledgable adobe builders in the US in our little community (Quentin Wilson).  One of the many things I learned from him is that building a house is not rocket science. He really helped demystify the whole process for me.  And gave me the opportunity to experience the process first hand.  While I've been around builders all my life, before I took those classes I had never really used a power tool! Now I think I'm pretty handy with all the power tools we have!

He also impressed up us the thought that we should always be willing to ask for help. While we've done most of the work ourselves we have had the help of wonderful friends when we've needed it.  That's been a lifesaver!!!!

What I'm trying to say, I guess, is that we're really not that special or "amazing". We're just doing what folks have done since the beginning of time. We're building a house to live in!  It's exciting, it's challenging and it's stimulating! But it's not rocket science! It just takes the willingness to say "what the hell" and take that first step.

We may not be amazing but this experience sure has been! And continues to be!  What a ride!!!!!

And at the end of this ride we'll have a wonderful house in which to live, work and play!

Amazing!

Continuing Inward

When last I wrote, we had just finished putting up stakes and strings for the inside walls for the bedroom, bath and pantry.  I've spent the last three weeks trenching and building forms.

First trenching done.  

Forms in place. They only go so far because trenching for the plumbing needs to be done before the rest of the forms can be put in place.

This pictures shows the footing where the three foot high adobe wall separating the sun space from the bedroom will go.  There will be a wooden post at the end of the adobe wall that will go up to the ceiling.  The post will be some more wood from the old bridge. There will be an opening into the bedroom but no door.

Here you can see the trenching I've done for the plumbing.  The shallower trench on the left is for the cold water from the pressure tank that will be in the garage.  Hot water will also go in this trench from the on-demand hot water heater in the bathroom back to the washer in the garage and forward toward the kitchen. I know this trench looks shallow but there will be maybe 6 more inches of dirt for the floor once the trench is filled in.

The deep trench toward the back of the picture is for the gray water.

The closer deep trench is for the black water.

Trenching done I can now finish the forms.

Forms are completed and rebar is in place.

The biggest challenge here has been dirt management.  The soil is very dry and loose and I had to be careful where I put it. More than once I realized that I had piled dirt over a spot where I was going to have to trench. Often I would add to the pile only to have it roll down the mound back into the trench! Thought about running a hose into the house to wet down the dirt but with all that exposed straw, I felt that would be tempting fate. We will just have to live with the loose soil until we can refill all the trenching - after the plumbing is installed - and the concrete footings are poured.

We are currently waiting for an estimate on the plumbing.  We have to have a certified plumber install the propane line but we have always thought we'd do the rest of the plumbing ourselves.  We decided to see just how much it would cost to have the guy doing the gas line do the plumbing, too. We'll see. We may end up doing the plumbing anyway. We cannot pour the footings until the plumbing is roughed in and we cannot build the walls until the footings are poured so we are in a bit of a holding pattern.

While we're waiting for the plumbing to be resolved we have moved back into the garage to finish the east end.  We will be installing two non-opening windows plus a small access door. Quite a while back, we picked up some double pane windows at the Habitat Re-Store and this past week Rick built frames for them.

They have been stained red and look really nice.

This is where one of the windows will go.

This picture shows the two windows with the access door in the middle. Straw bales will be stacked on this wall once the windows are installed. The outside will then be covered with underlayment like we did on the roof and corrugated siding. Should look pretty cool.

Onward & Inward

Days are starting to warm up but work continues inside.  We have done just about all the bale stacking we can for the time being.  The last we did was above the adobe wall.

We still have to stack bales at the end of the garage but Rick must make some windows and a door for the wall above the garage doors that will allow us to store wood in the "attic" before we can get to that so it's on to digging the footings and making forms for the inside walls.

I decided to start with the wall between the office and studio as it was the least complex. Here you see that the ditch has been dug and the first form board installed.  The footings will be 8" deep and 8" wide so I had to first set a string at the height of the grade beam. Then I dug down to give the depth that I needed.  Then, using the string as a guide, I started setting the forms.  The notch on the left is the step-down for the door into the office.

Here the form is finished and the rebar is in place.

Then it was on to the wall between the studio and the rest of the house.  This was a bit more difficult as there is a diagonal. The wood for the forms needed to be cut so that we'd have a nice, sharp edge where the diagonal meets the other two walls.

Here you can see the strings that have been laid out.  The wood is there so that I didn't trip over the strings.  It sort of helped <g>

Forms are done.

Our new fur-baby, Lucy, checks it out.

A detail showing the rebar.

Bird's eye view (and we've had birds in the house!)

Since our floors are going to be earthen, while digging the footings, we also have to trench for the propane and water.

Here you can see two PVC sleeves - one for the water and one for the propane.  We will have a sink in the studio with an on-demand hot water heater plus a small propane back-up heater in the office.

This is just to the right of the photo above.  This trench will follow the wall around the perimeter of the living room to the kitchen, bath and under the bedroom to the water pressure tank in the garage. Trenching will also have to be done for the black-water drain. All of the plumbing will have to be roughed in before the footings can be poured.

Next is on to staking the walls for the bedroom, bath and pantry. But first the space needed to be cleared out.

In order to get the level of the top of the footings the same height as the grade beam, Rick got to use his nifty laser level.

There have been many times over the last year and a half where we have marked out these walls - just to get a sense of what the spaces were going to "feel" like.  This time it's for real! We have done some futzing with the room sizes and wall locations and finally feel we have them the way we want them. (If you click on the picture you will get a bigger version of it that will allow you to see the words marking the rooms.) The wall between the bedroom and the sunspace on the right (where Rick is walking) will only be a 3 foot high adobe wall so the bedroom will be open to the sunspace.  It will be nice!

Good progress is being made and if we can get the plumbing in and inspected soon, we will be right on course to pour the concrete footings as soon as the nights warm up.

Winter Work Continues

As winter continues and the snows fly, we are cozy in our house of straw as we continue with the straw bale stacking. We've had strange winter weather. Dry but cold nights. A lot of pretty mild afternoons with really cold ones thrown in here and there. In other words, see-saw weather.  Inside our house, however, has been pleasant. All the plastic we put up has worked like a charm keeping the snows out and most of the wind at bay. We can just imagine how cozy it will be once the windows and doors are in and the plastering is done.

Things I've learned: splitting and stacking bales is DIRTY work.  There is straw EVERYWHERE!!  Years from now we will probably still be picking tiny bits of straw out of work clothes.

I've also learned that stacking bales makes one stronger <g>  I was amazed at how easy it was to lift my suitcase up into the over head storage bin the last time I flew!

We've spent the last month or so filling in straw up to the roof.

This is the wall between the house and garage. This is Rick attaching the bales to the trusses with bailing twine.

Here it is done. Still have to do this to the wall at the end of the garage.

We have also finished constructing and installing all the boxes above the windows and doors. This is the box over the large window in the office before and after bales were stacked.

Looking toward the studio and office - the pile of bales is smaller!!!

The living/dinning room.

99% of the bales are done! And enough room has been made so we can start on the next phase: digging the footings for the internal walls and trenching for the plumbing. The next immediate chore is to move bags of straw and plies of wood to make more room so digging can begin.

Work is progressing as well as we'd hoped during these cold winter months.  So well, in fact, that we are starting to feel comfortable setting a "move in" date!  Our goal is to be able to move in and celebrate Rick's 70th (!) birthday in the house in November - so mark your calendars!  Lots yet to do in the next 8 months but we're starting to see a tiny bit of light way out there at the end of this tunnel.

Adventures of an On-line Auction

Winter continues as does the work on the house - all be it slowly. Along with the work we are also collecting bits and pieces for the inside of the house. Rick gets notification of a monthly auction that takes place in Albuquerque. Most of the items are usually things from Los Alamos or Sandia Labs - pallets of computers, electrical equipment, etc. This month there were lots of new Pella windows and doors listed! We have had great fun at auctions in the past so we saw this as an opportunity to have some fun and maybe get some windows for the house at a good price. The auction was scheduled to start at 9:30 am which meant that we needed to leave home no later that 6:30 if we were to get down there in time to be able to view the items we were interested in before the bidding started.

The morning dawned dark, COLD and snowing AND windy! The thought of a 2 hour drive in nasty weather was not appealing so we decided to not go. The auction house does, however, offer the opportunity to bid on line. Something we'd never done but as they say, nothing ventured, nothing gained. While I took off to get grocery shopping done, Rick stayed home and started following the auction on line. As it turned out, it was a good thing we did not go down.  All of the things we were interested in didn't come up for bid until well after 3 pm which would have made for a very long day.

So - our items come up and the bidding is fast and furious. We didn't get some of the things we wanted but we did get quite a few things we wanted - and some things we didn't know we wanted!  It was pretty confusing and at one point Rick bid on - and got - a door. The pictures were not very good so we weren't sure what kind of door we got!  Another thing we bid on was something that was listed as a "three part door" but the picture was clearly of a large window.  We got that as well.

Finally the bidding is over and we are sitting here wondering just what it is we got!  At one point it even looked like we got SEVEN French doors!  What would we do with 7??  Both of us spent a restless night wondering about that one!

The weather was much better the next morning so we were able to drive down to see and pick up our items.  What a surprise we got!  The two large windows we got were BEAUTIFUL!  And just perfect for where we wanted to put them.  One of them even has the blinds in between the glass - snazzy.  The door we weren't sure about is a front door that is gorgeous!  It's solid wood in the craftsman style.  The final tally was two large windows, two French doors (not 7) and the front door.  All new except one of the French doors AND the cost was way less than we would have paid for ONE of the windows.  It was quite a score and very exciting!

These are the two large windows.  The one in the back will go in the living room and the one in the front will be in the office.  AND they fit perfectly!!

This is one of the French doors.

This is another.

And this is the beautiful front door!  We can't wait to install it!!

And work continues.  The north and south walls in the garage are now done.

And I've started on the walls in the living room.

Slowly, slowly, little by little...

Winter Has Arrived

After a very mild fall, winter has arrived cold and dry. While we do have 3 or 4 inches of snow on the ground, it's a lot less than normal.  It has, however, been colder than we're used to - lows below 0 and highs below freezing.  We've been staying very close to home and praying that our pipes don't freeze. So far so good!!! The good news is that the plastic we wrapped the house in is doing a great job of keeping the walls safe and dry!

We have had some days, though, that have warmed up into the 30s and I've tried to take advantage of them by working at least two or three hours on the house. I have begun working on Phase 2 of the straw bale walls.

Here is the window above the trombe wall in the garage.  There will be two double hung windows here.  Still have to hang the box above the windows for the straw.

The north wall in the house with boxes installed above the windows ready for more straw.

We still have to hang the ceiling for the bedroom and bath so straw is up to the bond beam. Once we get the internal walls up and the ceiling hung, we will finish the straw on this wall.

Window on the north side of the garage ready for more straw.

Day one....

One more course to go!

Straw on north wall of garage done!

This phase is turning out to be very labor intensive. We at first thought a full bale might fit vertically between the trusses but that space is 22" give or take, and a bale is 18" wide so the bales have to be split and loose straw stuffed between them to fill in the cracks. And while half a bale is much lighter than a full bale, it's still challenging to get the half bales up there and in place. At the end of a couple of hours, I am totally covered - inside and out - with straw!

The forecast for the coming week is for highs to get back into the 40s, which is normal for this time of year. With any luck, I'll be able to get a lot done before the next cold snap arrives.

Happy Holidays!

The holidays are upon us and along with them comes cold, snowy weather.  The good news is that all the plastic that we put up around the outside of the house is working.  It keeps most of the wind and snow out and makes for a decent space in which to work so the work is continuing.  All be it more slowly.  It's still cold so afternoons are just about the only time comfortable enough to get out there and work.

We have started on phase 2 of the walls.  In order to continue stacking bales, boxes have to be built to go over the doors and windows.  That's what we are currently working on.

First we attached chicken wire from the bond beam to the soffits.  This will help hold the straw in place as a lot of it at this stage will be flakes. (This was subsequently covered with plastic. We found that the wind - and some snow - was being blown in and the sound of the wind through the chicken wire made it sound like a hurricane was blowing outside.  The plastic stopped that!)

This is one of the boxes ready for instillation.

Here it is installed over the bedroom window.

While we are doing that, our electrician, Samuel, has started running the wiring.

Pretty exciting!

This time last year all we had up was the large adobe wall.  It looked more like an adobe ruin than the beginning of a house.

It's looking more like a house now!