~ 2003 ~
Home for the Holidays
It’s been a while since I last wrote and well, there has been a lot of things going on other than working on the house. After Thanksgiving, I spent a couple of weeks at the house making...
Strange Times in the Twilight Zone
For the last few years, I have been watching every November for the Leonid meteor shower and it has never been disappointing. (Even when I had to drive to Tennessee for clear skies!). Last...
Got the Cloudy Weather Blues
It’s bad enough for the psyche when the weather turns dark and gray, but it doesn’t help with the heating bill either. Nine straight days of cloudy weather has pretty much depleted all...
Snap, Crackle, Pop – Cordwood Wall Sounds
Lately I’ve had a hankerin’ for Rice Krispies® and I just can’t figure out why. Could it be that the cordwood walls have been talking to me again? Yes, those three strange sounds...
Autumn Joy – Cordwood Wall Update
Seventeen more walls to go! That’s not so bad considering I started with 64. Of course, that was a few years ago, but who’s counting the years? It’s been a slow process, but...
DayCreek Open House
Two years ago (our last open house) it poured rain all day, but this year the weather was much better. The sun played hide and seek with the clouds, but didn’t spoil the Solar Tour of Homes....
Cordobe Cracks!
It’s hard to believe that Autumn is already here—time flies when your building walls. There’s not a whole lot to report over the last two weeks. I took a short break from building...
A Staple Diet – Affixing metal lath with a staple gun
I don’t know if there is such a thing as “metal lath nirvana” but hanging metal lath with a pneumatic stapler is at least 10 times easier and quicker than using a cordless drill...
No More Making Hay
In May this year I went to our county’s Ag Center to apply for the Department of Agriculture’s 2003 CRP (Conservation Reserve Program). The CRP is a federal program in which the...
Putting it to Bed
The five interior cordwood walls that make up the master bedroom and closet were completed this week. The last wall of the bedroom was a window wall and I found myself wrestling with a screw-gun...
The Great Bottle Debate
For the most part Jo and I agree on most subjects related to the house. There are occasions though that we have our artistic differences. One of these “occasions” occurred when we...
A Tankless Job – Installing an Aquastar 125B LP Water Heater
Yes, that’s right…it was a tankless job. This week’s goal was to complete the domestic hot water heating system by installing the Aquastar 125B LPS tankless water heater. For...
You stack 17 feet and what do you get?
You get a lot of cordwood! This was a first for this cordwood builder—17 feet of continuous cordwood from floor to ceiling. It all started last week with the Oneida crew helping with the...
New Friends
My afternoon plans of getting one or two batches of mortar done have been spoiled by a thunderstorm passing through the area. It’s probably a good thing though since I haven’t found...
Cordobe
Is it a cordwood wall or is it an adobe wall? Well…it’s kinda both—It’s Cordobe! Building the house has been quite an experiment, so why stop now? I’ve had great success up...
Fungus Among Us
On my return trip this week I was greeted by a tree blocking my way up to the house. It was a dead elm that probably should have been cut down a while ago, but it looked like a “widow...
A Chilling Subject
For the last five years a small, simulated wood panel refrigerator has done an adequate job keeping food cold, but its quite energy inefficient and it can only store a few items in its freezer. The...
I Got So Plastered
As you can see by the above photograph, there’s a bunch of gray matter stuck to the wall on the left—that’s PEP (Paper Enhanced Plaster). The color is a dark gray at the moment,...
Two More Walls Completed and The MREA Fair
Over the past few weeks, I’ve managed to finish two more walls. The going is a little easier compared to the outside walls since I have been placing the logs flush with the mortar. It still...
I Get By With A Little Help From Richard Flatau
Last week I got the green light from the state’s electrical inspector to go ahead and start mudding. I have nothing but good things to say about the cooperation and advice received by the...
In A Bunch of Hot Water
Not only is it hot water, it’s solar hot water! Zeus Stark from Next Step Energy Systems came out last Tuesday afternoon and plumbed in a custom made heat exchanger for our 80 gallon...
I Think I Conduit
Little did I know that when my mother would read to me the story about the Little Engine That Could, (my favorite bedtime story) she was preparing me for building a double-wall, cordwood...
Interior Cordwood Wall Framing
It’s been a couple of weeks since I last wrote, so I figured I better get on the stick and post a journal entry. Things have been busy here at the house the last couple of weeks and...
Cistern Cleaning
It’s been a few years since the cistern was installed and now that I have completed the plumbing, I decided that this was a good time to clean it. It hadn’t gotten a whole lot of...
Well vs Rainwater
Over the course of the past few years I have gone back and forth as to what role the cistern and the well will play. When the well was originally drilled, the well was shocked (chlorine...
Building a Vanity
I had planned on driving up on Monday, but was delayed due to a late-season snow that plagued both the La Crosse and Chicago areas. It was a quite a wet snow and travel conditions were marginal at...
Pain in the Ash
Ever had one of those trees that you want to cut down, but don’t know how to safely go about it? This tree had me stumped. It was originally damaged back in the days that I was tent camping in...
There’s A Bathroom on the Right
It’s hard to believe sometimes how rapidly weather can change. I arrived on March 8th with temperatures struggling to get into the teens (F) and exactly one week later, temperatures nearly...
Cost of Commuting
Yes, I am still alive. It’s been a couple of weeks since since I have been up at the house. As a matter of fact, I just arrived this afternoon. Between bad travel weather, family commitments...
Bathroom Taking Shape
We seem to go from one weather extreme to another around here. The bitter cold that had been entrenched in the upper Midwest for the last month broke this past week with temperatures reaching 54°F...