Arkansas

[onegreynight]

[size=14]I just wanted to get an idea of how many people on the forum are from Arkansas.  As you may already know, I live in NW Arkansas -- Go Hogs!

I'd love to start arranging a meeting for some of us to get together in person and talk building.  My husband and I would love to help out on your projects.    

Okay all you Arkansas folks, speak out!
Talk to you soon.
KELLY KELLY KELLY KELLY [/size]

[southernsis]

Hi Kelly,
Arkansas here. In the North East area, south of Cherokee Village. That would be great to get together and talk building. Have you built your place yet? We are in the start up phase. Great to hear from someone else here in the state.

[travcojim]

And of course you know I am here,, Whoo Pig Soooie,, Fayetteville area.  I've got a hammer.........

[Chuckca]

Yall have room for one more human?  What's Cherokee Village and the surrounding area like?  

Thanks
Chuck

[n74tg]

Hot Springs here....Gig Em Aggies.

[southernsis]

Hi Chuck,
Cherokee Village is at the Spring River. It is a planned community with lakes and golf courses. I live on a private 32 acre lake south of Cherokee. This area is very wooded with lot of hills. It is a very beautiful area. That is why we live here, plus land is very reasonable still.

[Jared]

I'm from Siloam Springs and have no affiliation with any sports team. Go Somebody!!!
Jared

[jimbob44]

I live a ways south of Fort Smith, AR.
I will retire this year and plan to build a retirement home on 24 acres of mountain land.
It's all wooded with lots of pine and cedar from which I plan on milling the lumber for the house.
I may build off-grid if I can talk the wife into it.  

[tcolwell]

We are Tim and Paula Colwell. We do not currently live in Arkansas but we do own  wooded acreage located between Mt. View and Fifty-Six. We are drawing up the plans for a vacation house/shop project that we expect to start in Spring 2008 when we finish our current building program.

Where do we live? We are US citizens, retired for many years, who live on the island of Faial in the Azores. This is a group of islands (part of Portugal) located 2000 miles east of Boston and 1000 miles west of continental Europe. Did we hear someone discussing living at a distance from their building project?

We will enjoy reading about your experiences building in Arkansas.

[glenn-k]

Welcome to the forum.  

We are also interested in learning of the building in different areas of the world.  Do they use standard practices in the Azores?  How about historic construction?  Thanks.  Looking forward to hearing more from you, Tim and Paula.

[tcolwell]

Paula and I want to thank Glenn Kangiser for his welcome to the forum and also for the time which he has spent to organize the forum; making the forum interesting.

We also want to thank John Raab for the website although we hope that he is earning a capitalistic profit.

Glenn asked about traditional building practices in the Azores...

Traditionally, Portugal has been one of the poorest nations in Western Europe and the Azores (a group of islands belonging to Portugal located in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean) have been one of the poorest regions in Portugal. This has influenced the building practices. The traditional house in many of the poorer areas in Western Europe was/is a one, or two, storey stone cottage, 35 – 45 feet long, 12 – 14 feet deep with few exterior windows and doors. The stone cottage which (the character played by) John Wayne bought in the movie THE QUIET MAN is a good example of this type of construction.

The stone walls are dry-laid 20 – 24 inches thick. The center is frequently rubble laid in a mud (MUD, not cement) mortar which "stabilizes" the wall. Sometimes the interior surface is plastered on the inside with a thin layer of mud then plaster. The outside might have plaster over the stone. Traditional roof tiles are hand made red clay which is dried, not baked. The tiles are placed on top of furring strips laid directly on the rafters – no insulation or house wrap. The house we own had a hard packed dirt floor until the 1980's when a thin layer of concrete was applied directly over the dirt. Water and electricity were also brought in at that time. The only heat source was the fireplace and bread oven that were in the kitchen.

These houses are very romantic in appearance but they are cold, damp and drafty.

After renovation, ours will become my woodworking shop.

Organizing building materials is interesting. We have no US-style lumber yards. I buy lumber from one of the 4 saw mills on the island (96 sq miles – 15,000 population) and select or order the rough lumber that I want. The time from tree to boards can be as little as 3 days so the wood is wet. I air dry the wood for SEVERAL YEARS then mill it to my specifications.

The local wood is KRIPTOMERIA, a Japanese cedar. It is fast-growing, soft and generally not very strong. However it sometimes has an interesting grain and the heart wood is a dark reddish color in contrast to the lighter exterior boards. I can also purchase Black Locust and SAPELLI (a type of African mahogany) for $3 – 4/bd foot (2s; 3-4'wide; up to 20'long).

There are a growing number of small carpentry shops which will build to your specifications but I prefer to do my own work which avoids dependency upon others. Yes, I make everything – from 2x4's to finished cabinetry. I also do all of the other work except concrete construction.

We now live in a traditional 2-story stone barn that we have enlarged and renovated. The barn has Black Locust floor beams. We had the interior plastered. This was an interesting procedure, we wanted to keep the uneven surface of the walls and the crew doing the work wanted to make the walls straight! We compromised at "smooth". The exterior was plastered over a steel mesh to stabilize the walls as we are in an earthquake zone.

Tim is not telling you that neither the house nor the barn were built with footers and/or foundations. The lowest row of stones sits directly on the ground. The first thing Tim did to renovate the barn was to dig up the laid stone floor and go down an additional 2 feet and then build a foundation inside to additionally stabilize the walls.

We had a major earthquake in 1998 (6.5 on the Richter scale) shortly after we settled here. One or two of the larger stones in an end wall of the house slipped out and down. It is now possible to see that the rest of the wall is also moving out and down. One of the first projects in the little house will be to replace that wall with block and carry the cement around to the longer sides. The other end wall is built directly against the ground and is stabilized by the rocky soil.

The earthquake caused a massive infusion of money from Brussels (the capital of the European Union) to assist in the rebuilding. Consequently we can now select from a much larger variety of /more sophisticated building materials. The windows and doors in the barn are now aluminum double glazed. I can now purchase plywood and drywall.

Cement and concrete block are a way of life here. I think we have used "in the vicinity of" 1300 bags of cement SO FAR in the work on the barn. This includes block walls, foundations, floors, plaster, walkways and roofs of three additions. Floor and wall tiles are the traditional finish. Wood floors are rare - our barn has a wooden floor on the second floor. Almost all new building is block and concrete but wooden prefabricated houses have made an appearance.

The regional government is encouraging historical reconstruction. Developers of tourist facilities can exploit this program for a grant. Few private home owners build in stone.

Enough said. Enjoy your day.

[glenn-k]

Thanks so much for taking time to post that.  

I figure if we keep the forum stirred up and interesting we will have plenty of people here to answer questions when someone has a problem.  Thanks for adding to the interesting information.  If you ever end up with any digital pictures we would love to see them.  If not you painted a very nice word picture.

It is great of John to give us a place to do this and we are all waiting for him to take us under his wing after he has made his massive fortune.