The Cordwood on Pinewood

A Homestead

2011-06-26T07:58:00.000-07:00

Hi! I'm back. We've been busy working on the place. Here's what it looks like now. A true homestead!!!!

The blue barrel is our rain collection system. It is gravity fed down to the garden. We kinda lucked out with the garden being downhill from the house.
The lean-to has been a great place to hang out in the shade! Our plan is to close it in before winter.

The Garden

It is made of leftover cordwood material. I am even mulching with cedar bark from the cordwood. I hope to add two new garden beds a year. That's enough to keep me busy for a season.

Compost bins
The outhouse.
The interior
Upstairs tongue and groove finished!! Even the trim around the windows!
The ladder to the loft. Cory milled it out of jackpine.

Now we're ready to spend some much needed time on the water in the breeze!

Come On In

2010-11-28T11:25:00.000-08:00

Welcome to the inside of our home:)

The sun from upstairs.

The ladder is genuine aluminum and is full of dried mortar, an original.

Thanksgiving in our construction zone!

Smoking the Thanksgiving turkey.

Now we are getting back to our regular lives that we had before we started building. Just in time for the lakes to freeze over too!

Our plan is to slowly work on interior details over the winter, so stay tuned.

And Then Your Done

2010-11-04T11:30:00.001-07:00

Well not really. But we did officially move in Nov 2!!!! It was amazing to wake up in our own home, custom built by us (and a lot of friends and family).

Now details details details. Cory and I are both taking some R&R for about a week. I headed home to my parents for deer hunting. Cory is embarking on a wilderness deer hunt for a week too. Sorry no pictures this week. I just couldn't publish a picture of the pile of boxes/tools/everything we own. Stay tuned for those photos of our soon to be organized space that is our home.

Propane and Propane Accesories

2010-10-28T16:40:00.000-07:00

The wood stove, back up propane heater, and oven are in!!!!

The break in fire.

The supports for the stove pipe still need to be put up.

We also built our front door and hung it. The hardware is still a work in progress, do to the extra thickness of the door.

Also the trench was dug for the power line to the house.
The countdown begins to move-in day!!! Only a few more days.

The Times They are A- Changin'

2010-10-21T18:05:00.000-07:00

Progress progress progress. Pictures speak a thousand words for the past few weeks.

Check our that floor!!!!!

So many people helped out the last couple of weeks, Thanks!!! We couldn't have done it without you folks. Even this little guy:)

Not only have we made great leaps foward on the house but we even had time to help out some other builders with a timber frame raising.

And, I was sent on a 6 day fire assignment in the wilderness.

Soon to come, installing the wood stove, propane, making a door, and probably snow.

The Roof, The Roof, The Roof is on Fire!

2010-09-26T19:28:00.000-07:00

We are finally doing it, roofing.
Cory is marking where the rafters will sit on the ridge board.
This was interesting and heavy!
Fall came in a hurry. The colors are peaking here already.

Yeah!! look at all the room in the loft!
Here we started framing the overhangs.
Next weekend, finishing the roof.

Here Comes the Sun

2010-09-19T17:14:00.000-07:00

We did it. The cordwood is done. Hooray!

Finally we were able to work on other projects. Like cut those trees that have been leaning towards the house. We probably should have cut some of them down before we built the house. But where is the fun in that right?

We also bought our wood stove. We had been waiting for it to go on sale.

Soon to come our roof!

Cordwood on a stick

2010-09-08T16:54:00.000-07:00

Another great weekend of cordwood building. Lots of help again. Thanks!! Great to have you out.

We finally got some scaffolding set up. It makes a huge difference.

We are inching closer and closer to that 10 foot mark. The top plates were put in the wall. They are 4x12s. A local mill made them for us out of spruce. Cory cut them so they would overlap and fit together.

North side East corner done!!!!!

The plan is to finish up with cordwood this weekend, weather permitting. Come one come all put something in the cordwood wall!!!

Family Matters

2010-08-30T17:03:00.000-07:00

I love it when family visits me, especially when they want to help. One family member even traveled from NYC! Thanks for everything, we couldn't have had that much fun without you guys.
We worked on getting 4x6 peices set into the wall for our floor to rest on and just plain building up the walls. We are building up to 10 feet and we are soooo close.
Here they are working away. The youngest cordwood builders on our place so far!

Sunday I got sick and had stay home. Luckily a friend rescued us and took my place. Thanks MT! While I was at home sick Cory finished the last of the corners. Now all we need to do is build up the walls to them. Yeah!!!!! One maybe two weekends of cordwood left. Can you believe it.

Log Jammin

2010-08-23T19:37:00.000-07:00

Weekends come and go so quickly. We took one big step over the past couple of weeks and put the loft floor joists in the wall. Of course with a little help.

The crane isn't even fully extended yet!

Joists waiting to be put in the wall.

Joist number one. Cory and I stood on ladders to guide the joists into the sweet spot. We screwed on some 2x material to prevent the straps from slipping. This process went really quick. I am really glad we hired him. It sure saved us a lot of sweat and tears.

We were battling off and on rain that day. Somehow it stopped raining at just the right time.

The rest of the weekend was spent building up the walls around the floor joists and working on the well. My father was around to work on the water situation. He thinks that we collapsed a pipe, broke a coupling, broke the sand point, or everything is fine. Either way we need to take the pipe out and take a look. Something just doesn't seem right. If we would have been thinking we would have had the crane guy yank it out. But we weren't. A number of attempts at getting the pipe out failed. Now we are at a stand still again with the water.

Another addition to the land happened. A chicken coop! Someone was looking to get rid of it and I was willing to take it off their hands. Free is a tough price to beat. Now I am set for next summer's chickens.
Here are the weekend end pictures from two weekends ago.

Everybody's Working for the Weekend

2010-08-19T16:26:00.000-07:00

Another weekend has come and gone. Thanks to my cousin and her friend we reached our goal and then some this past weekend!! Yeah These ladies were the quickest cordwood builders yet. They even put us to shame. We really couldn't have done it without them

Between mixing mortar batches every 20 minutes, Cory found time to work on our tamarack floor joists. They got all cleaned up with the log wizard and milled flat on one side.
The logs are ready to be set in the wall. We hired a local guy to bring his boom truck with a crane to set them in the wall. It's going to be well worth it.

We worked on filling in above the window frames.

I thought it was going to be slower with no windows to work around. But boy was I wrong. My cousin and her friend flew through it. This picture is from Saturday night!

On Sunday Cory and I set in the 2x6 pieces that the floor joists are going to sit on. It was raining off and on all day. That is always unfortunate because if it were pouring all day we would just take the day off. But nooo, we worked under the big tarp until dark.

Hopefully the weather holds out for this weekend.

Coming up next week....floor joists in the wall!

Moving on up

2010-08-10T19:50:00.000-07:00

The walls are really starting to take shape. Lots of help again this weekend, thank guys!! There is a lot of ladder work.

Our goal was to get the walls just under the window frames. We accomplished that and got a little done above the window frame! That is really exciting.

Here are some interior shots

This maple leaf bottle came from maple syrup. I butted it up against mason jars. It should let in some light.

The metal pipe in the wall is for the back up propane heater.

Looks like the door frame is holding up:)

Coming soon, we will talk about those huge tamarack floor joists!

Hammer Time

2010-08-04T16:04:00.000-07:00

Rain...argh. We got a little rained out this past weekend. Tarps on, tarps off, tarps on, tarps off. Then we were even working under tarps. By the way that is not fun. Mosquitoes love it under the tarp! I am itching like crazy this week.

When it wasn't raining my mom and I were working away at the walls. Cory and my dad were working on getting water. My dad built a cribbing to work in the hole. It looks like were are mining for gold.

First they dug as far as they could. Then we rented a jack hammer in town and they went to work on driving the sand point. We all took a turn on the hammer. It'll rattle your brains out. I had never tried it before.. now I can put that on my resume.

After a lot of hard work here is what we got at about 15 feet. Listen carefully.

Water!!! It was a very exciting moment. Then that moment ended, we broke a pipe and another piece we needed and it starting raining again. To be continued.... Keep your fingers crossed.

My dad also brought up some arrowheads to put in the wall.

Hopefully this weekend the weather will corporate with us.
Till next time

Four Feet Hight and Rising

2010-07-26T15:54:00.000-07:00

Walls walls walls. We wouldn't be this far if it wasn't for all the help. Thanks!!! You know who you are :)
Pictures speak a thousand words this week.

The Wall Volume II

2010-07-19T16:20:00.000-07:00

We were working machines this past weekend. Thanks to all the help we made some real progress.
First thing we did was get the rest of the downstairs window frames in. They are really heavy. Good thing these guys could handle it without me, so I could take pictures;)
West window

Then the big south window.

We stuck an old moose paddle under the south window as a bird feeder.

Helpers showed up in numbers!! Plus we finally fired up that cement mixer. We did have some rain surprise us. Luckily we had the tarps ready to go and it was lunch time.

Well here is the product of all our hard work so far...

Next week... we're moving in!
No not really. Walls walls walls

The Wall

2010-07-14T05:46:00.000-07:00

Yep I said it, walls..... actual cordwood walls were constructed this past weekend. But wait, before you scroll down to just look at the pictures, read what all had to happen before the walls were even started.

First we got started on gathering all the supplies we needed for building the walls, minus the wood of course. The mortar is a mix of portland cement, hydrated lime, masonry sand, and sawdust. We already had plenty of sawdust just from cutting up the wood and also from the sawmill that milled out our windows, door, and corner pieces. The rest of the mix we picked up from a local place near town.

Once we had all the materials we needed, we got to work on cutting the corner pieces, windows, and door frames. We didn't own the right tool for cutting the frames. So, we set out to borrow, rent, or buy a miter saw that could cut a true 4x6. We bought a 12" miter saw with the impression that it would cut through our frames. It didn't. Wrong tool and we just couldn't afford the bigger one. We made it work, but it is very unsatisfying when you buy a big expensive brand new tool that doesn't even do what you want..argh. To make matters even more frustrating we still didn't have an outlet to plug into at the land. So we had to haul all the pieces to our place 15 miles away and we don't have any work space there. All the pieces had to be cut on the driveway.

Our plan for our five days off was to gather needed materials, cut corner pieces and window and door frames. Then start with the walls. We had our hopes a little to high for the walls. We are learning that most projects take twice as long as we estimate, therefor the walls were not started on our five days off. Even though we didn't start the walls a lot was accomplished and learned through experience.

The window and door frames were assembled

Like usual we had lots of help.

We drilled rebar into the slab for the door frame.

Then we made an impression of the rebar in the bottom of the frame and drilled a hole to fit.

We placed roofing felt under the door frame to protect it from moisture in the slab. Also the 30lb roofing felt is acting as our moisture barrier between the block and the walls.

Now lets talk walls. Fast forward to the next weekend (last weekend). Once we finished all the prep work we could think of, we started with mixing the mud (mortar mix).

Then we started our corners.

We are using fiberglass insulation tucked into the cavities. So far that seems to be going really well. After the mortar has been laid, we add the insulation then the logs. The next step is to wait for the mortar to harden a bit (but not too much) and then smooth and tuck the mortar. It creates a smooth finish and helps the mortar bond better. We used a bent butter knife.

Next we set our door frame

My dad got his hands on a huge tarp, that was going to get tossed out, for us to cover the cordwood at night. We think it is a 30x40. It's hard work to even move the tarp around but such a great asset. Can you believe my whole house fits under a tarp!

The next day we had some more helpers with the cordwood and placing the giant window frame.

Floating the window frame was a challenge. We just didn't know what to expect. Luckily we had lots of strong folks to help.

My dad worked on getting us hooked up to power. He put an outlet on the post and also assembled a 100' extension cord with outlets too. So we can take that extension cord basically anywhere near the building and plug in!!!! Even in the house, I can have electricity in the house. Cool

He also put together a few things for a potential shallow point well. So far rocks are in the way of that. We'll just have to see what happens.

Well that's it. The plan now is cordwood walls, walls, walls, and walls. The road ahead will be such a journey and well worth it.

Laying Block

2010-06-30T15:27:00.000-07:00

This past weekend we laid up our block. We went with one row of block 8 inches high.
The outside 4 inch block is a decorative piece, then 2 inches of insulation, then a 6 inch regular cinder block on the inside. Like usual we had lots of help. We really couldn't have done it without them.

Here we are snapping the chalk lines and mixing the cement. You'll notice in other photos that we do have a cement mixer. We just don't have an actual outlet yet. So for now we will use our wheelbarrow.

The outside corners were the first to be put down. Then came the striking.

Everybody was helping out it was great!

Day two: we laid the inside blocks, insulation, and drilled rebar into the slab. The rebar will also stick up into the walls a couple of inches to tie it all together.

Last block!

We just had to set some cordwood on it.

The walls are so close now I can hardly wait. So much work has been put into the building already. Laying up the cordwood walls will be so rewarding. This weekend we will have 5 days off!! Most people will be out celebrating the 4th of July but not us. Our plan is to start with the actual cordwood walls this weekend!!!!!! Woo Hoo

Power and the slab

2010-06-18T12:46:00.000-07:00

It's official we have power!!

Now we just need to hook up an outlet on the meter so we can use it.
Work has been keeping us really busy but we are still finding time to work on the house.
We finished up our prep work and......

Then we poured our slab with a lot of help. We couldn't have done it without these guys!

Just after we made some finishing touches to the slab, a tree snapped. It was coming right for the slab. The winds were 30 mph! What timing huh. Luckily it got hung up on another tree and we had some time to pull it out of the way of the uncured slab.

Soon to come, THE WALLS!!!

We built this shed

2010-05-23T19:47:00.000-07:00

We built a shed. It's turn key ready for our stuff to move in! The shed was a great way to get some experience in building something. We even did the roof the same way we will do the roof on the cordwood house. A lot of valuable lessons were learned.

It sure feels good to have a completed project checked off the list. We are planning on covering the shed with a board and batten siding when we get the chance. (so sometime in the next couple of years)

Work has been keeping us busy for the last month and the building projects are keeping us even busier. A lot has happened. We received both are septic and building permits!! Yeah!! Also we should have power to the building site any day. The most exciting project was getting our dirt work done. You can see in the photo that the woods really greened up. It's a nice change.

When the dirt work guy was as the land Cory compacted a sand pad with rented power compactor. The soil on our land is full of boulders the first couple of feet down and then after that it is mostly sand and clay. So we had him dig a hole 6' deep to get us started for our sand point well. He dug the hole where the witcher found a vein.

Next we dug the footings. Our footings will be 8" thick to support the load of the heavy cordwood walls and the rest of the slab will be 3" thick.
Now that we are back to work, we can only work on the weekends. Rain or shine, bugs and all.

Our window and door frames were milled out for us by a local sawmill. Here is one of many sawmills this place has. The quality and the price is unbeatable. The frames are milled out of local white spruce. They also had free clean cedar sawdust for us. The sawdust will be used in the mortar mix. More on that later.Next... Our concrete slab!

Peeling is History

2010-05-04T08:12:00.000-07:00

Well we did it. We are done peeling, cutting, and stacking our wood!!!! It feels sooo good. Our pile of stacked cordwood is 172' feet long x 5' high x 1' deep. Those numbers equal 6.7 cords of wood. We calculated that we would need about 6 cords, so we are sitting comfortable now.
Above and below is all the cedar stacked up. Doesn't it look great.

This spring has been one of the driest on record. There has been extremely high fire danger in the area and we even had a fire close to the land. But we are not complaining of the warm and
dry weather for working and drying our wood. We finished the wood processing, got our piles stacked and covered, and then the rain came. We sure are lucky. A local guy in town had this tin for covering our piles and it works great.

Since all the wood was cut and stacked and it was raining, we took a couple of days off from the land. Cory found these on his days off. I think we will incorporate them into the house somehow.

Next in line is to start our dirt work for the concrete slab and get our right away cleared for power. We have also been working on an 8x12 stick framed shed but more on that later.

This and That

2010-04-25T08:29:00.000-07:00

We have been so busy peeling, cutting, and stacking wood, I have neglected to update the blog. So here's whats up. Since my last post a lot has happened. We picked up two more trailer loads from the log home builder. He has been an incredible resource for us. He has even hooked us up with more loggers that have hundreds of cords of dry cedar lying around!! This load of cedar on the left was a bit tough to peel. It probably took us about 6-8 hours. Which really isn't too bad except when you compare it to other loads from the guy that only took 1 or 2 hours. Here is video of me peeling the easy stuff. I love cedar that is 4 to 5 years dry.

These two extra loads put our cut and stacked pile at 140' long x 5' tall x 12" deep. Those numbers equal 5.4 cords. We think we will need about 6 cords plus a little extra to play it safe. So we called up a logger that was suggested and it turned out he had a lot of cedar lying around. This cedar is a dream come true for a
cordwood builder.

Another suggested place had the pieces we would be looking for next. In the corners of the house we will be using 4x4's stacked instead of posts. The 4x4 will be 18" and 24" in length. We will need about 80 of each, equaling 160 4x4s. This is a lot to mill with our little alaskan mill. We were planning on getting a hold of sound cedar or pine and milling it up ourselves, despite the high numbers. But, it just so happened that right next door to this logger, with the hundreds of cords of cedar, there was 4x4's already milled and dried for cheaper than we could do it ourselves!! We have been so lucky. Thanks to the log home builder for setting all this up for us, we really couldn't have had all this fall into place without him.

Here we are cutting the cedar to length. It can get really dusty, hence the face mask.

We also took a few days off to do some fishing and camping before the season closed.

When we got back from our trip we had a local man come out to the land to witch for water. He showed up with this willow and walked around with it until it turned down. Bam water. Well we hope so because he found a vein 10' from our back door!!! Yeah and he says it's most likely only 30' down. He came well recommend and has found many other wells in the area. Looks like we will be trying for a sand point shallow well. Having a spigot right out our back door would really increase the quality of life. I am really keeping my fingers crossed on this one. By the way, behind the willow is our firewood, not cordwood material.

Lets see what else happened... The power company met us out on the land to discuss bringing in power. There is a pole about 150' away. They want to bring it in underground for the same price as overhead. So we will be going underground. We will be getting an easement from the neighbors and clearing the 20' wide pathway in the next couple of weeks My goal is to get power by the end of May.

We also are waiting on our building/outhouse permit. Tick tock tick tock. Hopefully that will come sooner than later. Then as soon as the road restrictions come off we can get heavy equipment onto the land for dirt work. "As soon as" is a frequently used phase by Cory and I ;)

Wood wood and more wood!

2010-04-02T07:08:00.000-07:00

We're putting the trailer to use already. Yesterday we picked up a load of wood from a log home builder located a few hours from us. He wanted to clean up his log yard and get rid of this stuff and well we really needed it. What a deal. Definitely worth the drive and such a nice guy. He even loaded it for us. That's always a bonus over loading it by hand. All the wood is bone dry and the bark is falling off! Peeling the bark off these logs is almost addicting. I can tell you I won't be getting any blisters from peeling this load.

We'll be going back for a another load soon. You just can't have too much.

The trailer

2010-03-30T08:17:00.000-07:00

We picked up our trailer this weekend, thanks to my grandma and to my father for helping us build sides. Towing big logs wont' be a problem anymore. We are talking about putting a large hand crank winch on it. That will assist us with getting those large logs actually on the trailer.

After a lot of calculating, Cory and I realized we will need more wood for the walls. The piles just seemed so much bigger last fall. I guess there is just so much more waste than we thought. We are running out of time for cutting more trees down. So we got on the phone and called as many log home places we could find. Log home builders often have waste pieces when squaring up the corners. The waste pieces could be exactly what we need. They just need to be 12" long to fit into our wall. Most of the time these waste pieces are already dry and debarked, which is a plus for us since we are running out of drying time. Luckily, we found a log home builder willing to give up his waste ends to us. Again another wonderful person helping us out. So, this week we will be heading over with our new trailer to pick up a load of waste ends. I know Cory and I will be breathing easier when have enough wood in our hands. Let this be a lesson to us in the future.

Blogging about building!

2010-03-20T08:36:00.000-07:00

We're finally doing it! Blogging our building progress. Late last summer Cory and I bought just under 6 acres of wooded land. The land already had an old logging road into a cleared area. We were able to buy the land debt free. This summer we will be building a 16x16 cordwood house, also debt free! For those of you who don't know what cordwood is, visit www.daycreek.com or www.cordwoodmasonry.com. Also we currently live in a 18ft in diameter round cordwood house with a half loft. It's my profile picture. We plan on doing everything we possibly can ourselves and with the help of friends and family. As soon as we knew what we wanted to build, we got right down to work. We will be using mostly balsam fir and some cedar for the cordwood. Last fall we cut down some of the trees we will need to build. It sure is a lot of work cutting down all those trees, liming them and then transporting them to the land.

The next step was to remove all the bark from the trees. We bought an attachment for the chainsaw called a log wizard. This attachment was invaluable to us. If we didn't have the attachment we couldn't peel logs till spring.

We are done peeling all the balsam trees. Next we began cutting our logs to length. We chose to do 12 inch walls with stackwall corners in this small house. In the future when we build a bigger house we may do a post and beam structure with a cordwood infill. To prepare the corner pieces we needed to mill them using our alaskan mill. The corners will be built out of 4x4s.

There are some cedars that still need to be peeled so I got to work on that. I used a draw knife that we borrowed from a guy in our area. People in the community have been so generous to us. I still have blisters from this day of peeling! You'll also notice that we have no snow left. Which is amazing for our location and the time of year. It's practically unheard of. We are keeping our fingers crossed that we don't get that April dump of snow. It sure isn't to bad working outside right now. No bugs, not too hot, and no long underwear!
Also right now we are working on getting all this cut wood stacked. Our plan is to stack it just like firewood but only one row deep. This is to maximize the sunny southern exposure and enhance the drying process. So far we have about 43' long x4.5 high pile. We figure it's close to two walls not including mortar and windows. Our walls are going to be 10' tall, 8' of that being downstairs and a 2' knee wall in the loft to add more headroom.
This past winter we got a lead on some free tamarack logs for our floor joists. Since we don't have a trailer, this is how they were transported. Not recommended. And Cory and a friend loaded these bad boys by hand!! Luckily my grandma is going to borrow us a trailer for the summer and we plan on putting a winch on it. Then we can go back and get more of these free logs!

More to come!