~ 2003 ~
Home for the Holidays
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...
Strange Times in the Twilight Zone
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...
Got the Cloudy Weather Blues
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...
Snap, Crackle, Pop – Cordwood Wall Sounds
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...
Autumn Joy – Cordwood Wall Update
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?...
DayCreek Open House
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...
Cordobe Cracks!
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...
A Staple Diet – Affixing metal lath with a staple gun
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...
No More Making Hay
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...
Putting it to Bed
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...
The Great Bottle Debate
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...
A Tankless Job – Installing an Aquastar 125B LP Water Heater
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...
You stack 17 feet and what do you get?
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...
New Friends
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...
Cordobe
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...
Fungus Among Us
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...
A Chilling Subject
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...
I Got So Plastered
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...
Two More Walls Completed and The MREA Fair
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...
I Get By With A Little Help From Richard Flatau
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...
In A Bunch of Hot Water
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...
I Think I Conduit
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...
Interior Cordwood Wall Framing
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...
Cistern Cleaning
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...
Well vs Rainwater
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...
Building a Vanity
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...
Pain in the Ash
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...
There’s A Bathroom on the Right
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...
Cost of Commuting
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,...
Bathroom Taking Shape
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...