waterproofing and french drain

Here Pam is putting in the French drain for the part of the house that will be under an 8 foot berm. She put on asphalt emulsion to seal the concrete parts and covered the metal as well (although the metal is well painted with a very resistant paint.

post and beam

Now we have raised the corner post (really a 10 inch diameter log) and have inletted into it's upper end a 24 ft. long 4x12 that we salvaged from the site of a defunct mill here in Harlan. We are trying to recycle as much material as we can, and the beam is really quite nice, but verrrry heavy. It took the bucket of a tractor to get it up.

steel I beams for terrace

Now we are starting to make some progress. Here you can see the I beams that will support the terrace for the upper bedroom being welded into place. The "sub floor" of the terrace will be some of the steel siding that we will cut out of the 40 footer to make part of the living room, stairs and access to the bath. It will get a light weight mortar bed on top and then tile.

Notice also the pins protruding from the footing, which will be to pin the straw bale infill in place. The upright beam that holds the steel in the corner is fastened to a one-quarter inch by 18 inch by 5 inch "fin" that is buried 9 inches into the corner footing.

a new foundation

So, we finally have time to start to work on this place again, after spending 7 weeks working on a remodel of a rented space where our son and daughter-in-law are going to move their tea business.

As you will see, we started with the pour of a (colored) slab floor with reinforced perimiter foundation.

Also, as you may notice, the floor is insulated from the ground, to enable it to store more of the heat that is in the room when heat (perhaps from a wood stove) is supplied to the living space.

We put in integral color (wild plum) and fiber, which has helped give us a crack free slab (the rebar and remesh also helped), but has also given us a few furry spots. We probably will just torch those off.

We chose the dark color so that the slab would retain more of the sun's heat - when there is sun in these coastal hills in the winter! You can see stcking up in the lower left corner of the slab one of the one quarter by 5 by 18 inch steel bolt plates that will hold another post in place. Keep watching for more changes soon.

tried and true

We are still across the pond, but we hope that these photos of other construction methods will stir something inside of you. The patio floors are just stones (black and white) arranged in patterns, and without using a design first - what I mean is that they do it by eye, not following some pre-drawn pattern.

The next image is of an old Portuguese house, stone walls, tile/brick arched ceilings (covered with lime), and rammed earth walls for the second floor. Probably wouldn't meet code in Oregon.

Finally, the last image is of an 800 year old stone barn near Brugge in Belgium. The interior beam work is amazing, and the thick stone walls have obviously withstood the test of time.

Cataluña

Since we aren't yet ready to start up the project again, we thought that some photos of other styles of building might be of interest. This first one was advertised as a fixer-upper, but they couldn't fool us. We knew that there would be some hidden damage that would cost us too much!

This next photo is actually from the beautiful old Catalan city Girona (correctly spelled in Catalan). It has a wonderful Gothic quarter and much of it's ancient wall (partly Roman). The stonework is amazing and humbling.

These are Jesús (he's a baker as you might guess) and Gemma, our wonderful Catalan friends who live in Sils, near Girona. Gemma is a bit of a chocolate lover!!

And, finally, we are wondering how difficult it would be to get a couple of stone arches permitted for the Harlan house?? They might look irregular, but they've been there since the 14th century,

olives

This blog has been dormant for a while so we decided it is time to put something up for everyone to look at. These photos are from Andalucia, where there are more olives than any where else in the world. Monoculture??