we just finished building a little insulated room in the attic to go get warmed up in and have a place to lock up our tools. here it is before we finished it off. the church across the street had some extra drywall scraps, so we ended up using those for most of the walls. we learned how to frame out a window and door, and also run electricity in for a switch, receptacles, and a recessed lights. electricity is the only straight forward thing we’ve done so far, so we liked that part.
we’ll eventually be building a cordwood wall, which is basically logs debarked, cut up into foot long sections, and stacked with mortar. we cut down a couple of catalpa trees that were too close to the house, and are now working on debarking and preparing them to air dry for about a year before we can safely use them without having them crack. normally it’s only feasible to debark wood by hand in the spring, when the bark easily peels off due to the sap flow, so since these trees were cut in the winter, we bought an attachment for the chainsaw that debarks and also can notch wood.
we also decided on buying green log slices from a sawmill, sometimes called “natural edge” boards. we’ll also have to dry these out for about a year. our plan is to use them for siding. at only 60 cents a board foot, we’ll be saving a lot of money if they don’t crack too much as they dry. we read that sealing the ends with a product called anchor seal will prevent checking (splitting) at the ends. hopefully that will work.
the next immediate project is to frame out this floor, and to build new stairs to the basement. we’ll put the stairs where we cut into that block:
