Amanda's treehouse and barn and....

Started by Amanda_931, August 28, 2006, 09:55:47 PM

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Amanda_931

For the moment it's mostly the treehouse.  Three years old now, as is the barn.  But the treehouse is about as finished as it will ever be.  Back legs are 4x4's sitting on those pound in jobs.  I'm having trouble with uploading pictures--having to switch between two computers, and some that are described as JPEGs but don't appear when you try to look at them after they were uploaded.  Grrrr.  Kind of random sizes of pictures here.  We're trying to get the last wall on the barn ready to plaster.  And I'm looking for suggestions and comments there, but that's one of the pictures that doesn't show.

http://groups.msn.com/ap615/summerfall2006.msnw?Page=1



You can sort of see the black diagonal lines in the earthen floor of the log room in the barn in this picture of Cherty.


glenn-k

#1
Thanks for the work to get the pix to us Amanda.  Cool tree house and very intelligent looking dog there.

Please keep them coming. :)

What are the black lines make of?


desdawg

#2
That looks like a good place to take a sip of morning coffee or tea if you can get permission to enter from the custodian.

Amanda_931

The custodian just loves humans, especially if they stroke her face.  On the other hand, she HATES SNAKES!  I don't normally put capital letters (called screaming) in my posts, but she will bark angrily for hours until a snake decides that not here is where she--or he--wants to live.

One of the vet's assistants thought that Cherty might have gotten her black color from a labrador retriever ancestor, but head shape and behavior were definitely that of a border collie.  I've come to think he was probably right.  She's the one who chewed herself out of a chain-link fence.

The black lines are the same stuff as the floor--clay, sand, wood chips--colored with concrete color.  Last year I put a bit of linseed oil down to see what the color would look like afterward.  Some critter (maybe even Miss Cherty Pie herself) chewed it all up.  Next time I add mineral spirits.
\

desdawg

Did you cut that log siding yourself Amanda or did you find it at a mill? I was hoping to find some slabs myself but the trees around here are on the smallish side and the mills are getting more efficient at using everything.


Sassy

I LIKE it!  :) The tree house does look like it would be a nice place for a morning coffee, or reading or exercising.  Thanks for posting it.  I also like your floor - the way you put the colored strips in.  And of course, can't forget Cherty Pie Barker!  Quite a lovely dog  :) - we have friends who have several border collies.  We used to go white water rafting & Louise (one of the border collies) just loved the action.  She would run all over the raft to where the action was - loved the big rapids - only trouble was, she would use your legs to run on  :-/ if you didn't have a wet suit on, she could do some damage!  You could throw a stick out into the water for hours for her to fetch & be disappointed when you stopped.  Quite the personality & energy (wish I had some of that energy...)

And of course, MORE pictures, please!  :)

Amanda_931

The horizontal slab siding--on the treehouse--came from a local sawmill.  It's hickory for the most part  The owner had a stroke, so they aren't working much if any right now.  The sawmill up in Perry County seems to be cutting like Cecelia showed pictures and diagrams of--very little waste, but what there is is fine to take for kindling.

the vertical logs for the room at the barn were cut on the property, peeled stood up, fastened and allowed to shrink and crack.  Wet as they were, the man who was building it used the tractor to set the big poplar logs in the corners.

Now, I've got a photo editing program on this computer, not going to do more with it tonight.  Alma, my current helper, is coming in at 6:30 in the morning, and she's usually on time.  It's getting light too early for 6.  

I am mostly not a morning person.  I really enjoy being able to work until late.

desdawg

The treehouse looks like a fun project to experiment with some of the different techniques before starting on something major, i.e. taste testing the mix.

bartholomew

Looks very peaceful. I bet the treehouse is a great place to do some writing or catch up on reading.



Amanda_931

A few more pictures up.

http://groups.msn.com/ap615/summerfall2006.msnw

Cherty spent a lot of time ripping the bark off a hollow tree, and dug her way into the center.  But it's not weak enough to come down if we push on it.  Yet.  Not terribly exciting picture there on the web-site.  I didn't have the camera in my hand while she was ripping bark off.

The final wall of the barn is starting to go up.  framed in with 2x8s with an inside support of privet some of it was cut from the area where the bush-hog operator came close to getting stuck--at least one tractor wheel off the ground.  Privet is not one of my favorite plants.  I'll take suggestions for other uses for it.  

The straw-clay seems to be doing OK.  



Pictures still don't look like they are working right on the web-site.  I'm not getting a thumbnail image.  

MIEDRN

How beautiful the land and soil looked by the creek. Some might take that for granted but the more I read, the more impressed with it I am. Sounds silly, doesn't it?

Hopefully I'll be able to post pics of mine soon!

I feel everyone NEEDS their own land. I haven't always felt it so strongly, maybe it's because of the vulnerability I feel right now or it could be age creeping up on me!  ;D

Looks beautiful anyway Amanda.

Amanda_931

I think it might be place rather than land.  And that could be in a city neighborhood.

That said, I do love it here.

glenn-k


Amanda_931

We finished up the straw-clay part of the wall today.

It looks sooo dark in there now that that part is closed in--even though that wall looks north into the garage.

We pounded that stuff seriously.  It felt like especially the top bits, where we couldn't reach down to mash the straw into a form, so we placed generous amounts of straw in the spaces between the privet wattle affair, then nailed the forms to the studs.  Sometimes it took a lot of banging.  Alma broke my rubber mallet (that's not fair--it was old, well used, and the handle always looked wimpy to me, but it was in her hand when the head fell off).  A pity, because it worked better than the big sledge hammer.  



glenn-k

Sounds like you two are beating up on it, Amanda.  

The top few inches is also a problem with rammed earth -- the best tamping action takes place about 6 inches down and lower.

Amanda_931

That hadn't been quite what I was thinking of, but we had that problem every time we stopped for the day, the last couple of inches were awfully fluffy.

It's also a bit difficult to fwack away in the bottom of a foot-deep slip-form affair when you are only 18" from the ceiling.

Amanda_931

Nothing but problems.

I tend to fwack away at things better than any helper I've had (well, except maybe one).  

The straw wall is, at least in the first two sections we did, too soft to plaster.  It may also not be dry enough to plaster.  The wheat-grass growing out of it is still green.  But at least on one side we're having to bash in the soft spots and--I hope this is right--put in a clay/sand/wood chip mixture.  There are, durn it, a handful of places on the other side that are about as soft--in need of repairing, anyway.

One of these years I'll learn how to lay out a nice square building.  It hasn't happened yet.  I'd love to be able to blame this on somebody else, but not this time.

We put up the framing for the earth oven.  Tried and tried and tried to get things square level and plumb.  The posts are pretty plumb, and extremely solid.  They should be--I took a sledge hammer to the gravel around them--pounded it down almost six inches from what was supposed to have been well tamped.

Now how do I put a roof on this?  Ondura may be more forgiving than metal--and a whole lot easier to cut, but there's going to be a fire under there, so....  

I've taken a couple of pictures, but they'll come later.

glenn-k

Some of the earth building stuff doesn't dry too well in the cooler weather, but there's not much of a wrong way to do it -- more like things that just work or don't work. :)

Amanda_931

There is that.

One can special order class C fire rating certified roofing material from Ondura.  Maybe I need to figure out what that means.  

Far as I can tell, it means a rating is given, but there are two more that are much less likely to burn.

glenn-k

In the old days my grandfather had a wooden smokehouse.  Started a fire to smoke the meat - somehow it got a little carried away and burned down the smokehouse, meat and all but it did work well for many years.


Amanda_931

That's the kind of thing I am thinking about.

If I can figure out how to get a metal roof half-way squared, that's what I'll do.

Amanda_931

Progress--pictures to follow.

It was cold enough the other day that we decided that hard work would be good.  So we took a nice big slab log, peeled it, and put it up for a shelf with some really handsome and sturdy cast shelf brackets.  

Yesterday it was even colder--never got above 28 inside the log room, even with heat running.  So--finally--and not the way I'd decided it, I put a window in.  Still need a door.  And all the places that were supposed to have been filled somehow three years ago.  And another small window that's waiting for warm weather so we can plaster first.  Today was plenty cold, but nowhere near the wind.  And I got some sewing done.  Cherty Pie Barker stayed in front of the heat.

Window doesn't look too bad if you don't look at it closely.  I wanted rustic, that's what I got--in spades.  (I also wanted an insulated window, but that's in the "make a cold frame pile" now, with a couple of cracks from having set outside for a couple of years)

glenn-k

That sounds like the way I do things.  How are you going to remember to fix the window if it isn't freezing and windy?  You don't need windows in nice weather. :-?

desdawg

Old Chinese proverb says "Every journey begins with a single step." They didn't mention what season of the year was best for high steppin'.

Amanda_931

Oh, yes.  And winter is either--get it done NOW, or a good season to put things off.