some walls are up / chicken bowling

Been triple digits over 30 days so far and not to August yet. Decked the floor framing with 3/4" T&G and quickly put down a coat of white primer to seal it up. Have started standing up 2x6 walls and are committed to generic rough openings for window and door sizes since we haven't bought the actual units yet. Will just count on having to modify a few openings depending on what we end up if it comes to that. Going as planned so far and sticking to the plans as drawn, take-offs have been mostly accurate and under budget so far; what a switch that is. As usual the bigger / smaller phenomenon has already occurred. I've noticed through the years on all construction sites that a project goes through a confusing modulating perceived sense of scale: A staked out building "feels" big. A poured slab feels small. A framed building feels big again. As drywall goes up rooms feel small but once they are floated and textured they seem big again. Finishes hopefully bring the perceived scale to the imagined design but of course any empty room with no furnishings seems big. The goal is to weather through the emotional roller coaster of questioning your sense of scale and once it is ready to move into it will feel just right. The foundation piers seemed like a bigger house was being built, the floor framing looked small but the decking painted white felt like I was building an aircraft carrier. Now that walls are going up and a vertical scale is established it is feeling cozy again, I think once the roof framing goes on it will seem big once again. It has a nice scale and presence among the trees right now though and the focused views out of window openings are nice to see.  

Joey has invented the new sport of chicken bowling. She favors the higher view that the floor deck provides her and her leaping agility gets her a running start at the chickens. When they gather into a tight feeding circle with their backs turned she goes for it full tilt, flying off the deck across the driveway to see just how hard and far she can scatter the 10 chicken pins squawking into the air. A strike every time.  

floor framing, a visitor

all blocked out and ready for decking

The house floor framing is ready to receive decking. Hot yet again; 100 in the shade. Had some friends from Houston stop by to view the place plus had an uninvited visitor early this morning.  Nearly stepped right on the well camoed fellow and had to nearly stick the dog's nose into it before she ever saw him. The pretty little hognose snake was quite the thespian: he coiled up, hissed, spit, flared his neck out like a cobra and when all hope was lost of running us off he flipped over on his back and writhed around in faux agony. I swear he even had one eye open to see if we were still around. After a performance like that we just let him be.

the colonel, earth oven pizza

104 again today, not too hot to enjoy a mesquite fired earth oven pizza though.

The Colonel takes over the adirondack chair.

Grandson Drake does a fire dance, thankfully there hasn't been a fire in there in a while. Now if we can get him to do a rain dance instead. ( Joey looks on from a safe distance.)

house progress

Managed to work around the ridiculous heat and have most of the floor framing done. Triple digits for two weeks and it's only the third week of June. We've lost all three of our turkey chicks and a chicken to the heat. The survivors seem to be doing good in the new chicken ark though. The footprint and scale of the house project has hit home and, although small, it is 4 times the size of the camper that we've lived in for a year now and looks plenty big enough for the three of us. The house will be less than 900 square feet of conditioned space. There will be an attached screened porch and front deck for extended living area and the vintage camper where I am now will still be serving permanent office and guest bedroom duties. There may be several outbuildings including the storage shed, a separate studio and shop, a storm shelter / root cellar, tree house, chicken coop, junk gazebo, etc. Anyways... The pix show a pretty straight forward frame of 2x8s and a triple 2x8 treated sill on the concrete piers. This will put the finish floor about 2 to 3 feet off the sloping ground. Floor areas are blocked out for recesses that will hold vintage bricks under the woodstove and a thicker mesquite tiled floor in the bathroom so they will be flush with all the other floors. The floor cantilevers 30" all around to a total width of 14' and about 4' out for two extended bays in the bedrooms at each end which required some perpendicular framing to handle the overhangs. The chickens and dog will have free rein of the shade under the house and the floor underside will be sealed from critters and insulated. The composting toilet system will tuck under the back side and a grey water tank, plumbing, and electrical risers will also be under there. We plan on plenty of native grasses and planting to help hide some of the foundation although the board formed concrete was an intentional added texture. I want the floating and cantilevered effect to denote how the house sits lightly on the site. Will start floor decking in a few days and may try and raise the walls and roof framing in the next couple of weeks with some bartered help.

chicken ark / coopdiminium

We've built a portable chicken tractor (I prefer the more commonly euro term chicken ark; tractor sounds a little too industrial) to house 12 chicks and 3 turkey chicks. They are about 4 weeks old and getting along smashingly. The ark is framed with 2x2's all ripped from various salvage 2x material and sheathed in salvaged corrugated tin. Our only material cost was new poultry wire and a few hinges; we had plenty of old rusty wire but this new stuff is vinyl coated in a nice dark green color that goes away visually and has fewer sharp points. Two vintage tricycle wheels

(borrowed from our junk gazebo) at one end and a handle to lift at the other provides portability. We scoot it around every other day or so once the chicks have cleaned and fertilized the 4' x 8' footprint of the enclosure. Unlike most other designs we've seen with a coop at one end, I built the coop all down one side and completely elevated to provide more ground area and plenty of shade from the central Texas sun. The ramp up the back side lets them access the coop at night. We've been having to encourage them up to the roost at sundown every night but they are catching on, and come daylight they all come parading down by themselves cheeping for food and water. A popular place seems to be the perch under the coop that also holds up the end of the ramp, they hang out up there under the shade of the house above and scope out the action below for grasshopper activity. A gate on the pen side near the coop door lets Jeree change the water and two large doors on the front gives easy access to 12 nests inside to harvest eggs once they start laying. We don't expect to keep all 12 full grown chickens as layers, they came unsexed so we're not sure yet just how many hens or roosters we've got. We'll deal with harvesting and thinning the flock in a couple of months but expect the place will be plenty big enough for 8 or so full grown birds. The turkeys are just in the ark for their protection now and will be free range soon enough, supposedly the turkeys will not tolerate the chickens when they get bigger. So far their personalities seem to be that the turkeys are more clever and adventurous than the chickens despite all the stories we hear about how stupid the turkeys are. The chickens will be free range when full grown too but just like Motel 6, we'll leave the door open for them to roost.

It's no accident that the design is very similar to our own house design with the pen on the back reflecting the screened in porch. The house shape was derived from vernacular sheds (and chicken coops) with a one way sloping roof to gather breezes and provide natural ventilation, provide shade where it is needed most and to harvest rainwater most efficiently with a single straight gutter along the back edge. 

finally: the finials

The Hubbard / Hill Cemetery project required replication of three missing headstone finials for the nearly identical headstones of Hubbard family members who died in 1880, 1881, and 1884. The original finials would of have been made of lathe turned white marble. No evidence of their design was available in photographs or fragments. The Texas Historic Commission warns against making assumptions when replicating missing elements unless there is strong historical evidence to back it up. After some discussion with the owners I felt further investigation might yield some clues and they were game to the idea. The nearby historic Old Red Rock cemetery on highway 821 south of present day Red Rock gave me a good answer. Identical headstones from the same era and of the same dimensions convinced me that the design was a standard monument company model of the period, but only one of the Red Rock headstones had it's finial. Cemetery bandits must love the fact that the tempting tidbit is at eye level and held in place by a single dowel. Unfortunately, over time, the steel or bronze dowel corrodes and becomes loose in it's packing, which may have been either oakum or poured molten sulfer, making the finial as easy to swipe as Jimmy Stewart's loose newel post knob in It's a Wonderful Life. 

The marble finial model was borrowed from it's hole only long enough to measure and photograph it, and then with Jeree's help I traced it's shadow profile (held at right angles to the afternoon sun above a note pad) back at the truck. He was then returned to his proper place - with a little prayer that it doesn't disappear to thieves too.

After having replicas priced by a local stone company (to the tune of nearly 600 dollars!) for the three I thought it was time to come up with our own version. The first step was to replicate the profile in a moldable material. I built a jig - type lathe out of plywood for my reversible drill and turned a replica profile out of dense floral foam to match the dimensions of my notes. The styrofoam was shaped easily to an acceptable facsimile using a small rasp, files, and sandpaper. So far, so good. The foam would disintegrate if sealed with spray polyurethane (discovered from previous experience unfortunately). The texture of the foam would also show up - or not release from a plaster mold - without sealing so I coated the foam with drywall compound, let it dry and turned it again in the lathe jig to a smooth shape with sandpaper. After drying and coating that with several coats of spray poly I made a two piece plaster mold for casting the finials in concrete. A good casting mix for concrete was researched, I tried a 3:2 sand to white portland cement and left it fairly stiff for strength.  The mold turned out fine and left a great reverse shape to receive the concrete but the first casting showed how absorbent the plaster was - sucking the moisture right out of the concrete mix like a dehydrator. The mold was sealed with multiple coats of polyurethane, dried overnight and then coated with a release layer of thinned vaseline. The second mix was made thinner to fill the mold shape easier and left for a good twelve hours to set. The thinnest neck near the base repeatedly broke while unmolding. Different combinations of concrete were tried for moldability, strength, color, and texture. No acceptable results and a table full of broken finals after nearly a week of effort required a different direction. Back to the foam model. Latex molding liquid was applied over several days to 10 layers thick obtaining a flexible rubber mold thick enough to hold up to repeated castings. The profile prevented stretching the mold enough to get a concrete out of the narrow neck so the latex had to be split up the side to peel it off. The latex was stitched back together with masking tape into a complete shape for casting. More concrete - after a day of drying the tape was removed and voila' - a complete finial. BUT, the rubber mold filled with heavy concrete had left the final casting bumpy and lumpy, okay for Claus Oldenberg but not for this project. The latex was taped around the foam model once again and an outer mold was made from plain sacrete just to hold it into shape while the inner castings set up. By this time the mix had evolved to a 1:1:1 mix of sacrete (screened to remove the largest aggregate) to white portland cement to sand and watered to the consistency of thick oatmeal. This allowed a drier mix for strength but still liquid enough to find the inner profile with tamping and tapping the outer mold after pouring. It took 12-14 failed castings to come up with three complete, but far from perfect finials. They were delivered and installed with Barre Pak epoxy onto the patiently waiting headstones. They are intended to represent the originals and they certainly add a tremendous amount of detail to the cemetery. The strong gothic obelisk shape of the headstones look almost art deco in design without them but appropriately Victorian when in place. 

The headstones missing their finial appear almost art deco in design.

From a few feet away it is hard to tell they are imposters. In true preservation form they are not intended to exactly replicate the missing forms but are there to just inform the viewer of the historic detail. Next time I have to do this it should be a cinch ... and now that I have the mold and the process down it is tempting to go on a guerrilla campaign to replace missing finals in other cemeteries; beware all you bastard grave robbers.

oven roof from last weekend...

decided to add a triangular shaped roof over the earth oven work area to protect the plaster from rain, give some shade and have a dry spot for firewood, a table, and accessories. framed with mesquite and cedar branches, two cedar 4x6's from the old house floor and more salvage tin. cost: $0 ( except for nails).

oldham house in progress

We've started building the new house and as of March have finished the foundation. It is a humble affair-to say the least. It will be approximately 1000 sq. ft., energy efficient, with natural ventilation and lots of natural light. It will be conventionally framed in a simple vernacular shape using mostly recycled and salvaged materials for details and finishes. We have set a goal to not use a square inch of drywall, carpet, laminate, or paint but instead will use naturally finished wood, metal, glass, stone or concrete. The galvalume metal roof will slope to the east and drain into a rain water harvesting tank to be used for irrigation of native grasses, cacti, wildflowers, etc. A screened porch on the east side will provide ventilation and a place for utilities, a laundry area and maybe an aviary. We plan to use either milled salvaged wood for the floor or sustainable bamboo. Concrete countertops will be poured in place and possibly a concrete tub/shower or vintage cast iron tub will be in the single bathroom. I have thoughts of using recycled beer and wine bottles for a large window over the tub because I have always loved those bottle houses in "outsider art" environments. CFL, custom task, and indirect fixtures - some with rusted barbed wire shades - will provide what little lighting we will need to complement lots of low-e glass and a continuous clerestory window of polygal or similar twin walled extruded plastic panels under a deep eave for natural lighting. I plan to use solar assisted radiant heated floor and hot water tanks, plus a wood stove for heating and high efficiency 14 or better SEER A/C as backup for natural ventilation. Low water usage fixtures with exposed copper plumbing and a grey water system for gardening. The ceiling will be insulated to R30 or better and be finished with recycled cedar fence wood. Wainscots and wall finishes throughout the house will be recycled wood from Birdie's old house or of salvaged corrugated metal. Vintage pressed tin shingles we have found stockpiled on the place and even some vintage asbestos (Gasp!) shingles will be used for an accent walls or possibly extended bay window elements on the exterior. Salvaged bead board ceilings will finish the bathroom and kitchen ceiling, and I have been working on a "parquet" floor idea using end-grain mesquite cordwood grouted like tile for a bathroom floor.

Lots of details still to work out but we plan to keep it fun, low cost, funky and experimental and most of all mortgage free. Lots of Wabi Sabi, man. Stay tuned.

foundation completed awaiting floor framing.

sketchup view of the interior plan.

sketchup view of the exterior.

A couple more pictures of the cemetery project:

A crypt resident.

In honor of miss birdie: a roosting "trikey" buzzard.