Siding!

I ordered my siding today! I bought 4" Eastern White Pine clapboard siding. 4" siding is actually 3-1/2 inches. With a 1" overlap, I will get the 2-1/2" exposure that I was looking for. The order came in at $610.50: by far the most expensive single order on the entire project. I don't think I am doing too badly if this is the most expensive item. As an added benefit, the siding is being milled only 3 miles from where the house will stand.

Check back in early June to see the siding installed!

The last wall and a big window

This is a shot of the last wall section being lifted into place. This one contains the rough opening for the bay window that will double as my desk. Note that the big window was installed this week as well.

Next on the list is to make my window jams, fill in a few places with blocking to support the siding, exterior trim, and then siding!

Thank you Anna and Greg for the photos!

Salvage

Over the past week I have been thinking a lot about the finish of my house. I can finally start to see the final details. Our basement is full of molding, door casings, beaded paneling and other decorative wood trim from previous renovations of the Firehouse. After a quick trip down there, I had a pile with enough beaded paneling to build the kitchen ceiling / loft floor. A beautiful old door casing appeared that will be perfect for my front door. The trim will wait until another time though. All of the wood has old shellac on it, but when striped off it leaves an incredible, warm, yellow wood. The pattern of the grain shows that it is definitely from another era.

Also this week, a friend of mine who works at the Community Development Corporation took me on a tour of some of the salvage he has saved from renovations of old houses and mills from all over the city. There are lots of possibilities for my cabinetry or whatever else I need to build.  It seems that there is no shortage of amazing salvage in this city!

I think I found my door also- well sort of. I still need to make it, but I found an example of one that I really like. This one is made by Historic Doors

 in Kempton, PA. I really like the proportions of this door, much skinnier than most. There are two things I might change about it though. First, I want to make it into a dutch door. I really like being able to open just half of the door like a window. I also might make the glass section with more, smaller windows.

The next dilemma I have encountered involves the wood stove. I have a great stove that I found last year, and have actually been using all winter in my bedroom. It is a Coalbrookdale Much Wenlock- a small but substantial cast-iron stove, weighing in at just over 300 pounds. Even though it is small (19" by 20" by 27" tall), it may not be small enough. It has the capacity to output more heat that I will probably need as well. I still hope to be able to use this stove because I have it and I love its style, but there are other options if it turns out to be too big. One of my favorites is designed for boats by Navigator Stoveworks located on Orcas Island in Washington State. It is tiny, can fit on top of a stand to reduce clearances and has a 4" flue. It is too expensive for me at the moment, but I will definitely be looking out for used ones.

Floored!

Yesterday I got sick of a two day lull in my productivity and finished the floor. Preparing the boards and laying them down went much more smoothly after learning a few tricks from the first half. Instead of pickiing a bunch of boards and processing them before cutting them to length, I picked the approximate location of each board and cut it nearly to size before plaing and shaping.

This method substantially reduced the lineal feet of board that I had to pass through the planer and router. Also, since the boards were a more manageable length I didn't need a helper to wrangle the ends.

The slowest part of the process was still cutting the toung. There is a lot of material to remove and cutter diameter is necesaritlly very large, which is hard for the router to spin- especially through oak.

I am actually amazed that this little router was able to handle the task. It is an old Porter Cable 690 that I picked up at the local used tool store. Several times I stopped to take a break and check on the router, almost burning myself on the motor.

This process went so smoothly that I immediately moved onto nailing the boards down. With the end in sight, momentum built until I pounded the last nail around 11 pm to the weary eyes of those who had work in the morning. Time to finish the last two walls and install my big window!

Now that I have most of my flooring and walls in place, I have a much better picture of the space I have to work with. While I really like my original idea for a combination bookcase and folding spiral staircase, I realized that it would not work out in the space I have. Here is another option though- it still fulfills my goals of being space efficient and multi-purpose. It will look like a normal book case against the wall just under the edge of my loft. When I need stairs, it will pivot against the bottom shelf and the top will pull out against the edge of the loft. I will install pulleys with a counter weight (similar to a sash window) so it will not slam open. The construction should be fairly straight forward with this one. I will make each shelf/step out of wood, with some sort of bearing or low friction slide on the top. A set of steel slides will hold the unit together and keep each step plumb as they slide.

Classic Thought vs. Box Store Employees

I am going to start keeping score. Surprise surprise, 1 to 0, Classic Thought in the lead.

As I prepared to lay my floor, I went out on what I thought would be a quick errand to pick up flooring nails. Both of my preferred hardware stores knew exactly what I was looking for, but sadly admitted that they didn't carry those nails anymore. Reluctantly I went on over to Lowes thinking that in their extensive selection I could find what I needed. Ten minutes of staring at the wall of fasteners yielded no results. After another ten minutes I finally captured one of the employees (I'll call him Bob) as he was scurrying off to what must have been an impending emergency in any isle except the one I was in. After walking up and down the store looking for the nail isle (as if he didn't know where it was) we looked through the selection. When Bob finally realized that no, I wasn't going to be using a pneumatic flooring nailer he said,  "Wait, you can't do that by hand! you'll have to drill every single nail- and the heads have to be countersunk! You need a pneumatic flooring nailer- we sell them in isle ten".

Not wanting to get into a philosophical discussion on why sometimes I don't mind doing things the "hard" way, I told him "It's only one-hundred square feet". Bob replied "A hundred square feet- that's ten by ten(apparently he can multiply), you can't do that by hand! You'll need to nail it every six inches- it'll take you forever!" Just as I was about to give up, another employee, who we can call Bill, appeared seeing that his coworker was in trouble. Together they tried to sell me every nail they had as I retreated backwards out of the store in defeat.

   I drove across town to Home Depot, darted inside, made a b-line straight to the nail wall without making eye contact with any of the clerks, found two boxes of 2 -1/2" spiral-shank conical head flooring nails, paid and left before the army of pneumatic-nailer toting salesmen could amass. It was at this time that I realized that in my haste I had forgotten got to pick up the insulation while I was at Lowes. When I walked back in the door, Bob and Bill were right there, probably reveling in their victory. Feeling confident after my own victory at Home Depot, I showed them the nail. Bill said, "Oh yeah, that's a flooring nail. We have those in isle four." I didn't even know how to respond. I crept off to the insulation district, out of Bob and Bill's jurisdiction and finished my shopping in peace.

One thing that I have really enjoyed about this project has been taking my time, thinking things out and focusing on enjoying the process. There are some things that would take prohibitively long to achieve the results I am looking for. For example, planing and shaping my flooring could be done entirely with unpowered tools. It would take a long time and I would probably cease to enjoy it along the way. While the noise of a power planer and router are obnoxious, they achieve excellent results quickly. Without these tools I would probably have installed a much more rustic looking floor, skipping the planing and shaping process all together. It would be a functional floor, but would not have the style and strength that I want. Using the power tools has allowed me to achieve a result that I would otherwise have not been able to reach. This is great application for technology. When it comes to nailing the floor down, It did take me longer to do it by hand than it would have with a nailer, but it was an enjoyable process and the end result is basically the same as it would have been with the nailer. After this I know every board really well; I can point to the spots where I had a bent nail, or the location where I bloodied my thumb. With power tools it is easy to zone out and not pay attention to and enjoy the process. I know that this work will pay off in the form of enjoyment when I am sitting in my finished house, enjoying the memories of the construction.

Now it's time for a quick update and more photos:
The lower section of the floor is finished and I framed up the east wall- I can now gaze out of the R.O. for my kitchen window. I laid about half of the upper level floor before running out of finished boards. Today I want to build the north wall and cut some more flooring.

Flooring, Sunlight, and a beer before noon

This is the first warm weekend of the year! I was able to open the big doors and blow some of the dust and stale air out of the shop. All the sun and fresh air caused a flurry of activity on the house as well.

This morning I went out to visit Larry, the sawyer, to pick up the 2x4s I will need to frame up my floor, walls and roof. My friend Stephanie and I arrived at his farm to the most pleasant morning imaginable. It was sunny and warm, in the high 60s with a slight breeze. From Larry's hilltop mill, we enjoyed the sight of the smoke from two brushfires in the distance and the silhouette of the Prudential Center in Boston, over 50 miles off on the horizon. Once again Larry quoted me prices I couldn't believe- 2"x4"(actual 2 by 4 inches, not nominal 2x4) by 8' boards for $1.10 a piece! When I say 8 feet, I actually mean something closer to 12 feet since that is what he happened to have on the top of the pile. We loaded the truck with the lumber before enjoying a celebratory Miller Highlife and swig of blackberry brandy with Larry (apparently if you wake up at 5am it is okay to have a beer before 11). After the beer we begrudgingly peeled ourselves away from the scent of warm earth and sawdust to return to Worcester.

After unloading the lumber and soaking up some more sun, I coaxed one of my housemates, Dillon, to help me finish shaping my flooring. To cut the tong and groove I ended up buying a cheep set of router bits for the purpose. I was a little worried that a standard router would not be powerful enough to cut through the oak. Cutting the tong was definitely slow going, but it worked out in the end- about three hours of labor. The groove went much faster though. We had already made all of the decisions on the orientation of the boards during the previous operation and since there is much less material to remove, we could feed the boards through faster. The groove only took us a half hour.

Finally I am set up to really get some work done. Check back to see the floor get laid, walls framed, and a big window installed!

I need a skylight

There has been something missing from the past few places I've lived. I grew up in a room with a skylight over my bed, but I have not had one since I moved out of my parent's house. There is not a better way to wake up than to the bright morning sunlight steaming in from above. At night, it is comforting to see the stars and moon. The sound of rain pattering on the glass over the bed is second only to the sounds of a creaking sailboat for inducing relaxation. Finally, it is nice to wake up and have your first realization be that it has snowed during the night. I could go on and on, but the point is that I need some sort of window over my loft.
Before I gave it much thought, I just assumed that I would install a standard skylight in the roof. Now that the time to build the roof is approaching, I have given it more thought. Why make it easy on myself? I certainly haven't given into the easy way out yet. I want something bigger and more open feeling that a Velux skylight. I love the look of the large steel-framed glass roof windows that I see installed in some of the mill buildings in Worcester. Often they need to provide light into a room in the center of a building with no exterior walls or windows. The construction is similar to that of a greenhouse- but without a floor. I would love to incorporate this idea into my house. The trick is to style it to match the rest of the house. Right now, I am tossing around the idea of building it as a shed dormer on both sides of the roof in the rafter bay over the loft. I want to make it 5 feet wide (the width of the bed) with 18" of vertical rise above the main roof. The glass roof would continue up from this vertical section to meet the main peak of the roof. This will add a lot of light to the house, opening up the small space in the loft, hopefully without looking obtrusive from the outside. I did a rough Sketchup model of it to get an idea of how it might look, but I think that I still need to make some changes to make it look right.

Before someone else points it out, let me say that I know I'm asking for leaks by building my own skylight, but I think it will be worth it!

Here is a quick update: Last week I finished all of the pegging in the frame. The joinery is tight and solid! I just ordered the router bit set that I need to cut the tongue and groove joint on my floorboards. Next week I will purchase the 2x4s for the walls and roof from the mill where I bought the rest of my material. I might even lay the floor and start walls next week!

After many weeks spent slowly picking away at odds and ends, I got sick of making little visible progress. So, over the past few days I finally pegged and wedged more than half of the frame. I used a large ratchet hold-down strap to pull the joints together before drilling and driving in a peg. It is nice to see that all of my time spent calculating the angles and dimensions payed off with tight joinery!

Yesterday I ran enough of the oak through a planer for the floor. There is some incredible wood under the rough weathered exterior! This floor might actually look too slick for my taste. I'll have to be sure to ding it up some by dropping some heavy things on it and by leaving a few strategically placed stains (not that I will have to try to hard to do that). To finish the prep work on the boards, I need to get a cutter for my router to mill the lap onto the edges.

More fun work is fast approaching! Soon I will get to lay the floor and build walls.

Could someone find one of these for me?

I could definitely use the help. (source)

Tiny house in a landscape

The Tiny House Blog features photos of small houses in beautiful landscapes every so often and this week they posted one that I took while I was in Peru. Click here to see it.

This past week I finally cut oak wedges to tighten up the dovetails on the joists. The tenons are intentionally cut slightly under size to allow room for a hardwood wedge. When this is driven in, it pulls the joint togehter allowing it to stay tight even as the wood continues to dry and shrink. I also filed down a 1" drill bit for the peg holes. The pegs are 1", but they were loose in a hole drilled with a 1" bit. By filing a little bit off of the bit, they fit in the hole better. Check back soon to see the frame tightened up and pegged!

Pegs!

Back from Peru

I am finally back from a month-long adventure in Peru. I saw some incredible architecture on my travels. Most of the cities were built in the colonial period and therefore resembled European cities in design, with a grid of streets surrounding a central plaza. There was not much timber construction (at least in the regions I visited) due to the scarcity of good strong trees so everything was built out of stone or adobe. It was really amazing to see large city buildings, built out of mud, that are almost 500 years old! The adobe construction often has a soothe stucco on the outside that gives it a finished look, but still retains the subtle organic form and curve of the mud bricks.
The architecture revolved around creating comfortable open courtyards where people could relax, sell goods, etc. with some privacy from the busy city streets. It is too bad that North Americans did not borrow some of these ideas when we built our cities. I think that my next house will have to have a courtyard in the center, although I might need a glass roof to deal with the northern climate.

     I noticed that most of the buildings had steel casement windows. This is a style that I have admired from the New England mill buildings and much of the Arts and Crafts architecture. In Peru, all of these windows were made locally in street-side shops out of readily available steel stock. Seeing this was all I needed to decide to build my own windows for my house. Now I have the flexability to make them any size I want, with my own layout of the panes. I already have enough antique glass in the rotten wood sashes that I have been saving to make the bay window and a box window over the kitchen counter.
     It has taken me a little while to get back into the swing of things, but I just ordered the pegs from Northcott Wood Turning and have put together a list of materials needed to build the walls. Expect to see some progress over the next few weeks!

Even more photos

My friend Annie Photographed the house raising on Sunday. She took some great photos (including the group shot in the post from Oct. 18th) which are on her blog. Check it out! http://acohn.blogspot.com/

I will be away for the next three weeks so don't expect any new posts. Check back next month though for a flurry of activity as I finish and move into the house!