Our House

If you look back through the posts from last fall you’ll see I mentioned using Shark Bite pex fittings in my replumbing of the laundry room.  I am such a huge fan of these fittings.  They are more expensive than standard pex fittings, but they require no extra tools and the fittings can reused innumerable times.

The laundry room move changed the length of the hot and cold water runs to the Airstream, shortening them by about 5′.  I didn’t have to buy a thing.  I cut the lines using a hammer and sharp butcher knife against a wood block (produces a clean end necessary for a good seal), undid the Shark Bite fittings and slid them on the newly cut ends.  Rerouting and reconnecting the lines was a few-minutes-zero-cost job.

In this one plumbing change, the fittings paid for themselves.  I’ll be able to use these fittings again when I’m done with the current application.  I see this as money well spent.

Terry (neighbor) manning the shovel

With the debacle of the shop move fresh in our minds, Wadly, Terry and I moved the laundry room out of the way of our new building project.  This building was light enough to sling with straps, something the shop wasn’t.   Terry swung it around and placed it on blocks at the back of the Airstream, accessible but out of the way for the new construction.  After a day of rest I reinstalled the metal roofing we removed prior to the move adding new tar paper underneath.

I’ve got the stakes in the ground to run my leveling string for the new foundation.  Wadly’s got brother Tom’s cement mixer.  I’ve got my floor plan and my building plan and everything but the concrete and rebar which I won’t pick up until we’re ready to pour the grade beam!  It’s time to get out the shovels and get to work . . . weather permitting.

I am having a heck of a time getting Wadly to agree it’s time to start building up on the ridge.  He’s always been reluctant to embrace any kind of change that involved work or discomfort, though he is getting better.  While I’m waiting for him to come around to my way of thinking, I’m planning and working to get other projects done.

I’m trying to not build anything that I will later need to deconstruct.  I view build-to-tear-down as a waste of time and materials.  Because our current accommodation is a collection of scabbed together re purposed buildings connected to an ancient Airstream trailer, we don’t stay warm enough in the winter, nor do we stay cool enough in the summer.

The current layout

We’ve gone back and forth on how to make us more comfortable and save on heating costs without wasting money.  We considered replacing the Airstream with a 10′x32′ SIP box, but I really hate SIP, the  box would have to be deconstructed when we finally move up the hill and it would be costly.  In my view, that’s three strikes.  Additionally, the new building would be on the south side of the living room which is totally the wrong side for the bedroom and bathroom.   The Airstream’s there and I hate its location in relation to our living room.  Any windows on the south side of the living room would look right at the Airstream and would be pointless.

New layout sans laundry and Airstream

So I came up with what we think is a better plan.  Why don’t we build a single 12′x36′ building on the north side of the living room to replace the laundry room (separate building), bedroom (separate building) and bathroom and kitchen function of the Airstream?  With the Airstream gone I could have south facing windows in the living room.  Sounds like an excellent plan!  And, when we finally move up the hill, the SIP living room could be deconstructed and this new single building could be the back side of a really nice greenhouse and could serve as guest quarters.

And what makes this idea even better, I can build the bedroom end of the new building first, move our bedroom furniture and my desk into it then move the old bedroom building (old 8′x16′ construction shack with no insulation in the floor and a roof that leaks if it’s not wearing a billboard vinyl hat) away to finish the construction of the remainder of the building. No camping while we build, no inconvenience.  Nice.

Once the rest of the building is done and the kitchen and bathroom are finished we can move the Airstream away, deconstruct the laundry room and put a couple nice big picture windows in the south wall of the living room so we can enjoy the view and the sunlight.  Brilliant plan.  And to make the plan even better, it gives Wadly a bathroom just steps away from his new shop in the barn!  How great is that?!

The weather’s been the typical “is it spring yet” diva.  One day it’s 75° and I’m running around with the truck windows open and the next it’s cold and depressingly wet and Chuck won’t come out from under his sweatshirt.  Welcome to the northwest.

The shop after the leantos had been stripped off and before the guys started lifting it.

A lot has happened since I posted last.  Wadly (venerable spouse), Terry (neighbor) and Lorr (son) jacked up the shop to move it from its original resting place.  In the process of putting the trailer under it to move it, the shop got bumped and crashed to the ground on top of the big log rounds that were holding it up.  This abrupt descent crushed in the floor in two places.   Picture me, your humble home builder/planner and semi-dutiful wife doing a happy dance around the now dead shop.  Wadly promised it would go away once he had the roof on the barn and his shop set up therein.  The welsher changed his mind, deciding he would move it to the back of the barn (in full view of the someday new house).  Ha!  Guess karma showed him.  Lorr, Terry and I are all snickering behind our hands.  Wadly’s pretending not to notice, but as he’s the one who tipped the shop of the blocks, he can’t say much.

The new plan is to deconstruct the old shop in place.  I’m ready with weenies and marshmallows for the bonfire.

Terry’s brother Walt came and spent a couple days getting the east end wall for the loft framed in with two windows and a door.  Once it’s sided it will keep the wind and rain out.  The joists for the loft deck are up and some of the pressure treated 2″x6″ decking is in place, though not fastened down.

Terry’s very excited about his new shop and is out every day doing something to the building.  This morning the chickens took their early morning sabbatical on his new workbench and he had to go shoo them off before they decorated his bench with bird detritus.  This problem will go away once the siding is all on and the birds can be kept out.

Wadly’s been working madly on what was to be the barn and will now be his 40′x40′ shop.  He’s got T1-11 up on part of one end and is working to get OSB and cedar siding up on the west side.  He’s planning to get his shop contents moved into the barn so we can get rid of the eyesore that is his original shop.  He’s cleaning and sorting and organizing and generally being productive as the weather allows.

This summer I’ll get a new power panel up on the barn and remove the existing panel which is on the pumphouse.  Until then we’ll continue to run temporary power to the barn.  We have to do things as we have money, so the transition of power has to wait until Terry goes back to work for National next summer.

The barn loft was designed and built to store tons of hay and is working well as general storage.  There’s enough room up there for a small house (16′x40′) and it’s got plenty of support . . . full dimension 2″x10″‘s on 1′ centers.   I’m going to have to get some clear plastic to cover the piles of goodies stored up there to keep the dust and dirt off.

I saw a metal spiral stair in town last weekend.  It’s behind a building overgrown with blackberries.  I’m gonna stop in and see if it’s available.  It might be perfect for getting to the loft, though it may take a crane to get it loaded.  I’m coveting.  We’ll see what comes of it.

Terry (aka Wadly) moved the papercrete mixer into the leanto by the storage shed but that won’t last long.  He and the neighbor are going to move our 20′ storage container to the barn which means the leanto has to come down as one side is resting on the container.  The plan is to put the opening of the container inside the barn on the north side at the east end with the bulk of the container outside on concrete pads.  Terry (the neighbor, not Wadly) will come over with his excavator and clean out where the container goes.  I’m assuming we will have to empty the container prior to the move.  That’ll force me to sort through and get rid of more stuff.  I did that two years ago, but the container’s packed to the roof again.  Time for another trip to Goodwill.

Once I’ve got the power meter off the pumphouse and onto the barn I can tear the pumphouse down and put in the rubble trench foundation for the new bigger pumphouse.  Moving the power and getting the pumphouse built and storage tanks and filtering installed will eat up all our extra income next summer, but paying as we go is important.  We’re almost done with our mortgage and we can easily live on Terry’s retirement once the mortgage is gone.

I think I’ve been going about things backward.  I’ve been planning building the structure when I should be planning the layout of the interior and fitting the structure around my layout.  Duh.  It took looking at the work of two innovative architects for the light to come on.

Every plan I look at will not suit our site or our lifestyle.  I have looked at hundreds, if not thousands of house plans.  I need my door in exactly one spot, my bathroom on the ravine wall, the bedroom in the northeast corner . . . and small with NO gingerbread, fuss or fancy rooflines.  Ack.

See the latest bit of fun here.

I ran into another architect with a unique viewpoint.  Look at some of the elevations and floor plans and you’ll see what I mean.  I love the organic feel of the curves.

One of the mental exercises I’ve worked lately involves temporary room dividers and folding doors.  I love decorative dividers, but those aren’t always the best solution.  I’m looking for indoor folding wall hardware. I would like a door that would slide into the wall to hide my washer and dryer.  I could use a bi-fold door, but they stick out into the walking space, which can be awkward in small spaces if they have to be left open for any extended period.

In the searching I’ve done so far I haven’t found any rolling door hardware for inside house doors for do-it-yourselfers.  I can get pocket door hardware easily.   There also isn’t any hardware readily available for inside house folding doors, small or large.  I can get industrial door hardware designed for Hotels (dividing conference or buffet rooms) and I can get overhead door hardware (garage and industrial).

The garage where we grew up had a rolling door on a track that left the entire width of the two car garage open.  The door moved via rollers on an overhead track which wrapped around the inside of the right hand garage wall.  Each 3′ wide section had a 2′ wide window in the top half which let in lots of daylight.  The door panels were hinged together and were solid wood.  It was well constructed and was still working as designed 80 years later.  I’ve seen the same sort of thing in counter top appliance garages.  In this I’ve seen doors that go up, and doors that wrap around the inside, but there’s no hardware involved, just channels for the doors to slide.

I’ve also seen 8′ wide sliding doors suited to tropical living.  I’d love to be able to open whole walls to the outdoors during the summer . . . but I’d have to deal with the resulting fly population, which I don’t care to do.  Plus there’s the difficulty in sealing/insulating for the parts of the year when it’s chilly.

This whole thought process is very much a work in progress.

We’re still snowed in.  <sigh>  Such is life in the Northwest.

I happened to do a search on alternative architecture which led me to a site which referred another site . . . you know how it goes.  It’s like a thread.  You grasp the end and pull gently and you have a chance at wonderful things.  Such was the case here.

You have GOT to see Holistic House Plans.  These house plan designs are absolutely lovely!  By now you know my penchant for curves and arcs and organic design.  This site feeds my soul.

I played with one of the designs.  See Just for fun.