Lots of progress this weekend!

Kaia and I seeded the yard.  We put red clover everywhere, field peas in front of the house, oats behind the house, and wildflowers in the front field area.  If they all grow, we will have lots of herbs and medicine, along with a beautiful yard!
We found a great vanity at an antiques warehouse. I only measured for the size of the sink and forgot that I needed to leave room for the faucets, and after buying it realized that it wasn’t deep enough. So we attached some pine boards to the side and stained them the same color as the original vanity.

Then we took a 2 inch slab of oak that Toby’s brother gave to us, cut it and framed it for the top of the vanity. I need to add a strip of wood to the front, and we’ll cut the hole in it for the sink and faucets once the glue dries.

A lot of the little finish carpentry details are getting done too. Here, on the cordwood side of the house, where the concrete slab meets the foundation there is 2 inches of insulation.

So, that has been covered by a boxed out baseboard. We’ll probably run a little strip of wood along the bottom to close up that gap and I’ll finish it all with the Earthpaint oil.

And you may have noticed that the cordwood looks much cleaner and lighter in the above picture. Here is what that same spot looked like before:

To clean it up, we first sprayed it down lightly with bleach. We got this suggestion from Clarke Snell and it worked like a charm to lighten the wood ends. Then we took a metal putty knife and scraped the extra mortar off of the log ends. Then we used a hard bristle bathroom scrub brush to give the logs a final cleaning. We will scrub the outside logs, but not bleach them… they will weather anyway. But lightening the inside ends really brightens up the room!

And last, but absolutely not least, we have a kitchen!! A good friend of ours, Bruce, who is Toby’s computer business partner, also happens to be a carpenter. So he came over on Sat. to help install the cabinets. (You know, I don’t think I’ve ever posted a picture where you can actually see Toby’s face… it’s always the back of his head as he works on something

These cabinets are fully installed. The dish washer and fridge will go along the wall to the right, along with upper shelves that we will build.

Here are the cabinets to the left. We haven’t secured these in yet, ’cause we have to build a bookshelf in the corner first. For the counter top we are using the marble and granite that we got (for free!) 1 1/2 years ago from a stone cutter who was moving his shop.

Our little home was featured in two articles in the New Life Journal this month!  This one about cordwood and this one which was an interview.  Cool!

We are attempting to finish the cordwood in the kitchen today and clean it well.  The kitchen cabinets are scheduled to arrive on Wed!  Woohooo!

I need some creative thoughts here…

We are wanting to carve a blessing into the piece of wood that we put above our front door, on the inside. Any advice… It needs to be a fairly short blessing to fit on the wood. Two that I have thought of so far are:

May this home be a place of happiness & health. May those who visit & those who live here know only blessings and peace.

Bless this home and all who enter.

But I know there are more out there…. Let’s hear em!

The house continues slowly. All the doors and trim has been hung, and lots of little carpentry details are getting checked off the list. We’ve ordered a Caroma Sydney 305 Elongated Dual Flush toilet for the downstairs bathroom. It’s a toilet that has two flush options, .8gal and 1.6 gal (depending on if it’s #1 or #2). We were initially planning on just using composting bucket toilets, but you know… you have to think of the in-laws and other company that may be squeamish about the poo thing. I’ve also got the cabinets on order. We are getting some fancy schmancy stuff! We were going to build all the kitchen cabinets, but we decided it would be more worth the time and money to just purchase them. Well, we will actually be building upper shelves and be buying the lower cabinets. I’ll try to take some pictures this week…

We started putting the finish oil down on the floor and MAN!!  is it gorgeous!!!

But first, here’s a picture of our new front yard!  Kaia loves the running room (so does Suki and the chickens!)

For the floor, we sanded it down to 220 grit.  The large floor sander only went to 120, so we went over it one last time with a hand sander.  Then we wiped down the walls, vacuumed, and ragged off the floor.  We used the One Coat oil and applied it with a lambs wool applicator for the first coat.  Look at the color!!

Then Toby went over it with a buffer.  It was pretty funny to watch him try to control that thing!

Then we wiped off any excess with a soft cloth.  The wood feels very smooth!

My favorite part was the landing at the top of the stairs.  We have all kinds of woods up there.  #1 is our only piece of tropical wood in the floor.  It’s Cocobolo.  #2 I believe is Cherry.  #3 are Black Walnut, and #4 is Spalted Maple.

And here is the landing once it has a coat of oil.  Beautiful!!!

This piece really changed colors once the oil was applied.  It’s very pink.  I’m not sure what kind of wood it is.  Any thoughts?

Tomorrow, we will put on another coat of oil.  This time we will use the Biopoly for a harder finish.  Buff and rag off and it’s done!!!

Yesterday was a busy day at the house. We started by cleaning up the mess made by 50 mph winds the night before. As you can see by the insulation on the roof, a good bit of our insulation was blown off the roof and strewn, in little pieces, around the yard! So the morning focus was to put it back on the roof. The top floor was finished with a layer of plastic, then a layer of drainage mat. We got some locust boards from a local guy and put those up in a ring around the edge as a way to hold down the layers, and hold in the dirt once that is put on. You can also see that we have some landscaping going on in this picture… leveling all the dirt piles that we made when digging out the foundation.

Here’s a better picture of the locust ring on the top floor.

And here is an in progress shot of the dirt moving. He will come back out tomorrow to finish, but it already looks amazing!!! We have a great yard for gardens and play!!

They should finish laying the floor tomorrow. It’s looking amazing!!! They used a piece of Black Walnut to delineate the entry way to the room and the closet. You can see it in the picture below.

Here’s another angle. I can’t wait until oil goes on… that will really bring out the colors!

The hardwood floors started going in today.  Only the upstairs will be hardwood.  The downstairs is concrete.  We found some black oak, locust, and cherry to add to the walnut, maple, red and white oak.  It’s going to look soooo amazing when it’s all finished!

They started in the closet:

Sorry for not posting about the house in a while… there’s just lots of little details getting done. But, here’s some pictures…

Kaia’s room is close to done. A little more painting, some oiling of the shelves and window frames, and cleaning of the floor (oh and the bookshelf and hanging the closet doors… then it’s done ) Toby’s mom came up and did some painting today… doesn’t the door look great??? this is one of the antique doors that we got from the Habitat Store for $2.50! it’s a pocket door that slides into the wall! Cool, eh? The floor to ceiling book shelves will go in the corner behind Doris.  Oh, the there’s Kaia’s new magnetic chalkboard (that was definitely not non toxic paint). She said she thought it looked like a window looking out of her palace. We’ll probably put a wood shelf under it to hold chalk and erasers.

Here are the stairs. The oak treads and risers are down. I just need to give them a light sanding and finishing, and touch up the wall paint. But, I’ll wait to do that until after the handrail and spindles are in and the upstairs is finished.

Today, the guys worked on getting the upstairs subfloor ready for hardwood flooring. They went through 19 belt-sander belts trying to sand it down to a more even flooring!! Here’s the pile of the hardwood that we got from the local hardwood floor dumpster!! Mostly oak, but there’s some black walnut, red oak, maple, and a little wormy maple and a piece of curly maple in all kinds of widths! It’s going to be the coolest looking floor.

Here they are, getting instructions from the boss.

And up we go!

They now sit to the north of the big house, just outside the back door.  (to the right of the panels you can see the trench we dug that lead all the way to the well)

I like this pic. because you can really see the intensity of the sun hitting the panels

I don’t know how everything turned out, ’cause I had to leave for the evening.  But, we should have our floors warming up soon!!

Alrighty!!!  My mother-in-law came over this weekend and we painted all the walls!!!

As you walk in the front door and turn right, you see the study/office/xtra bedroom.  It’s “mulberry patch” colored Yes, those are our new appliances… they are working on installing the solar water system in the mudroom, so we put the appliances in here for now.

Here are the walls in the main living area.  It’s “orange pekoe”  I love this color!

This is that downstairs bathroom… “Cathay Coral” color.  It will go great with the mexican talavara sink!

Stairwell up to the master room

Stairway looking down

The color I was going for in the master BR was a pinky-taupe… it turned out very purple.  So, luckily I have a mother-in-law who use to be an interior designer… so we pulled out some of the other paints and mixed us up a new color!

A little orange pekoe, pink taupe, and pampas grass green and you get a great bedroom wall color!

Here’s the mud room solar controls for the hot water… They are out setting up the panels as I write.

We had great weather for our cordwood party today… low 60′s!  And it is supposed to be like this all week.  Unfortunately we weren’t able to finish like we had hoped we would.  We had problems getting the lime mortar to the right consistency.  It was too wet and mushy, no matter what we did.  We think the sand was just to wet, so we are going to try to dry it out a little before we mix more mortar.  I know, it’s my fault for wanting the white lime walls instead of the gray concrete mortar.  If we used concrete, it sets up much faster, so we wouldn’t have to worry so much about freezing weather, and you can control the moisture a lot easier… but the lime mortar is so much prettier (and it’s better for the environment).  The inside of a cordwood house is already so much darker just because of all the wood, so the white mortar brightens it up a lot!

Still, we were able to completely seal up 2 walls on the outside (there’s still a little work to be done on the inside) and build up on 3 other sections.  Lesson for today:  Cordwood will take longer than you think it will, and if you plan on that, it will still take longer than you plan!!  I will post more pictures tomorrow when we’ve had time to do a little clean up.  The picture below is the finished sections.  We will ‘point’ them tomorrow (clean/smooth the mortar) and sand the wood later on so it isn’t all messy with mortar.

This section will be above the kitchen sink… I love the variation in color in the bottles.  Kristine, that’s your blue triangle, and Yia Yia Shannon, that’s your green triangle, Mom, the teal one in the middle is yours and the brown rectangle is an antique brandy bottle I gave to Toby.

We also picked up our stove and got some help unloading the very heavy thing into our home.  Here it is happily nestled in it’s little crate.  (Kaia looks very festive, doesn’t she?  She’s wearing her mermaid suit, but you can’t see the tail in this picture

The boys couldn’t lift it, so I had to carry it in myself! 
I know…. the pictures aren’t great, but I hope to post more cordwood and stove pics tomorrow!  Maybe we will have the stove hooked up!!

Thanks to all our friends (old and new) who came out to help!

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.