A shot of the woodmizer in action

We have taken a small detour to saw up some more boards for the roof and walls. The Pittman family has graciously allowed us to cut down some tulip poplar along the high tension right of way so we hauled the woodmizer over and have been making 2x6s and other boards that might be useful. Tulip poplar is a fairly soft, easy to cut wood that has a nice straight grain and few knots. The heart has a nice green tone. Here we can see Jenny operating the mill.

The sub floor is finished, now we can start with the skeleton. After talking with Kappy and Sam we decided to go with a ridge beam and rafters with a drop cathedral ceiling similar to the eco house. Another idea Sam had is to mill some tulip poplar for the ridge beam and rafters rather than buy wood. Sam has a woodmizer portable sawmill and it does quite nice work. Yesterday I sawed up some spalted sycamore into one inch boards. Jenny had a good time learning to use the nail gun to secure the subfloor.

We are installing sub-flooring over the joists in preparation for a salvaged oak floor. The sub-flooring boards have come from several sources, some are from the Glen Echo Water Plant, circa 1950 others were supplied by our main source of wisdom and materials, Rob Roy Mackey. Another excellent source is the Community Forklift http://www.communityforklift.com/, a recycled building materials outlet in the DC area.

Here is the ho-made lumber rack slash canopy for the pickup. Jenny and Eric made it in their spare time and almost froze their kahoonies off.

With the supervision of legendary Rob Roy Mackey we finished the floor joists. As you can see it is trying to snow also.

some google sketchup shots of new building.

Here's a shot of the eco house that is on display at the Botanic Gardens on the Mall in DC. It is strawbale with some fantastic plaster on the inside. With luck we will have it out here in Maryland after New Year.

Today we placed and bolted the sill beams. They are 10x12 timbers from the old Matapeake Ferry dock. They fit nicely on the brick piers and have a very solid feel. Barrett Snow came back to help us, he is an up and coming stunt man, check out his site: www.barrettsnow.com. Jenny Nazak is also here , she lives in Austin, TX and has graced us with her presence for a while. It actually tried to snow a little today. Pretty cold and breezy. Kappy is recovering from donating a kidney to her friend Lee.

Today is Monday and I finished off the piers and filled them with concrete. Now we just wait for them to harden before placing the 10"x12" beams which were recovered from the old Mattapeake ferry terminal . Before the bay bridge across Chesapeake Bay you had to use the ferry which ran from 1919 to 1952.

on site board stack and foundation piers

Building a space for healing

Kappy Laning has been a Breathworker for many years and decided she wanted her own special space to practice. She and her husband Sam Droege have done extensive remodeling of their home with strawbale and timber framing so they wanted a simple building that used locally available and recycled materials to reduce the carbon footprint. There were several trees on the land that were not fairing too well so they were cut down and turned into boards with a Wood Mizer portable sawmill. Sand from a foundation trench has been mixed with broken concrete and local gravel to form piers. Windows and beams will come from Rob Roy Mackey who collects just about everything. Rob Roy also loaned us his winch truck and dump truck. We will be getting recycled boards from the Community Forklift, a building material recycler near here. Straw bales will come from a local farmer. We have several volunteers helping us and Barrett Snow, up and coming stunt man has been hard at work for several weeks. At this point the piers are almost done and as soon as the concrete and mortar have hardened we will place the foundation beams and go up from there.