Cordwood Masonry Acoustics

As I wrote last time, I'm excited (me, Mr. Mellow, excited, yup!) about the final appearance of some of my recorded music. Actually, 'excited' doesn't cover it; I'm having a hard time thinking about anything else, except for that new song I'm working on, which may be even better. The physical CDs just arrived, sounding great, and the cover art (photo by my Honey) came out perfectly. Since I can't think about anything else right now, I'm going to elaborate on this recording project.

Music from a cordwood masonry mead-hall!

I've been writing music for a long time, and in the last couple of years, after falling in love with my Honey, that creative impulse has just skyrocketed. Finding that my heart is where it belongs, finally, has been amazingly good for my writing and composing.

 Months ago I asked my friend James Lindenschmidt of Crafted Recordings, who has all kinds of recording expertise, for pointers about getting some recording done. To my delight, he offered to help out, volunteering his considerable skills, at least in part because he had been wanting to try some recording in our house. The mead-hall, our central room with twelve-foot-plus ceilings, cordwood walls, and an adjoining space with gracefully curved walls, has great acoustic qualities. 

His version of this may be different, but here's why I think the space is so good for music. Cordwood masonry is not flat. It has a combination of very hard and somewhat hard surfaces, curves, and little angled segments all over it. So while it bounces sound nicely (compared to a curtained room, for example), it doesn't sound at all like a tiled space or a stairwell, with that complicated echo on top of everything. Not only that, but it is a magical space, made by hand with love, using natural local materials, and it is the perfect place for me to record my music. After all, it's where I write most of it, and it's where my Honey and I first met. Unless somebody tells me otherwise, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that this is the first professional music recording in a cordwood masonry space!

James and I have much in common, including acoustic music, a similarly spiritual way of living in the world and a long-standing love of mead and mead-brewing. My first experience with his recording expertise was when he interviewed me years ago for his excellent blog, Bardic Brews. Back then, he made me feel very much at ease in front of a microphone, and this time was no different, except that it involved more microphones! Then he put in many hours fine-tuning everything for me. The end result is a very good presentation of my and my songwriting at its current best, and I can't say enough about how sweetly he worked with the very raw material. Please check out the music, which is downloadable from most mainstream venues, as Harper Meader's EP, "Honey."

Coming up, I'll talk in detail about some of the songs in particular, and also about why I like Bandcamp. Stay tuned...

Winter in a Cordwood Masonry House

Winter is even more magical from inside cordwood masonry!

The debate about the R-value of cordwood masonry has gone on for some time, and as far as I know has not been settled yet. R-value is the rate at which heat travels through the walls, and different building materials have different R-values. That's the reason for part of the question; cordwood masonry has three different materials in a standard wall. First there is the mortar, which isn't usually plain mortar. We include sawdust, which is not used in mortar for any other purposes that I know of. Then there is the insulation layer between the outer and inner layers of mortar. Often that is a mix of sawdust and anydrous lime. Finally there is the cedar (or other softwood), which is laid up with the grain running through the wall, not parallel to the wall, the way it would be if we used boards or logs. I recently learned that the R-value calculated for wood is usually figured on the assumption that heat passes through the grain, not along the grain. This means that calculating the insulating qualities of cordwood masonry is even more of a mystery than previously thought.
I have been in my house for over ten years now, and would add yet another factor. As the walls age, and the wood seasons, you get little cracks in the wood, called checking. Also, the wood often shrinks a bit, which is most noticeable with the larger pieces. The resulting gaps have an effect on air flow. To be honest, they allow the free flow of air through the building, because there is no good way to fill in all of those tiny spaces, inside and out. In the summer, we appreciate the effect, and say the house "breathes well." In the winter, especially on cold, windy days, we run the wood-stove extra hot!
Still, I wouldn't have it any other way, and you only need to spend an evening watching the snow fall through the castle-like deep window, framed by native cedar, with the fire crackling, to learn to appreciate the coziness of life in a cordwood masonry house. Blankets, sweaters, good socks, and lots of snuggling are the magic formula for making it all good.
Back to the R-value, my contribution to the debate is that whatever the R-value is, you need to also consider actual air-flow as the building ages. I don't bring it up to be discouraging, though; that flow-through is refreshing and healthy, the opposite of modern houses that are so tight you need to pump in fresh air sometimes.

Keeping It True

In cordwood masonry building, one of the challenges is keeping your wall vertical. The load-bearing potential of the structure is dependent upon the wall being aligned as truly up-and-down as possible. A bit of variation won't be a disaster, but letting your wall wander too much will make for weak support. It could eventually buckle, or crack your windows by shifting over a leaning support system.

The metaphor is important to me. If you have a solid foundation, and build carefully and consciously upon it, then the strength that foundation will be present throughout your structure, providing safety, security, and even beauty because you have respected its gift of strength. Don't assume anything, but rather check as you go along that you and your foundation are in sync, that you're working together. Don't stray from it; honor it, and you can trust it with your home, your shelter, your life.

The most important tool for keeping your walls true in cordwood masonry is a plumb-bob, a pendulum-like brass tool on a long string, used for millennia to line up vertical work over its center of gravity. Mine is somewhat crusted with mortar, and its string is faded by time and weather, but it holds a strong magic, in my mind at least. Except for the first row or three of cordwood pieces, it was used on every single log in my cordwood masonry walls. When I look up at my highest walls, over eighteen feet from the foundation, I remember using it, over and over and over again.

First you mix up some mortar, using sand, cement mix, lime, water, and wet sawdust, along with plenty of back and arm strength with a masonry hoe. Then you carry a bucket of that and some cedar pieces up your ladder, lay a double-bead of mortar with rubber-gloved hands, and squish a piece of cedar roughly into place. Below you is a chalk-line two inches out from the base of the wall. You pull your trusty plumb-bob from your nail apron, along with a two-inch nail for a spacer, and swing it down from the head of the nail. The point of the nail is held steady against the wood, and when you have tapped the wood back and forth into the right position, the point of the bob is true above the chalk-line, making the log true at the top of the wall. Ancient science, the tradition of countless generations of carpenters and masons working through your hands, the magic of a fine metaphor, if you will pay attention to it. 

What's the most important tool for keeping your life true? Opinions may vary, but I believe that tending to your primary relationships above all else is crucial. Always checking that you are treating your loved ones as they deserve, with honesty, care, and consideration, that communication is true, you will know of potential trouble in time to correct it. You will build on that respect for your foundation.

I'm going to loan my plumb-bob, for the duration of their home-building, to Ben and Kissy of Dragonfly Acres, who have already begun harvesting cedar, and milling hemlock, for their own cordwood masonry home not far from ours. The thought of having that ancient and solid tool carry such a metaphor to another home built by people who bring thoughtfulness, love, and care to their endeavors pleases me greatly.

On Uncertainty

I first thought of home-building as a metaphor many years ago, when my Dad, talking about how there seems to be more to do in his home all the time, things left unfinished, early work needing to be rebuilt before planned further work is even started, said there is proverb about that.

"Confucius say, 'Man finish house, man die.' I don't know if he really did say that, but he might have..."*

Floor plan from years ago...updates needed!

Musing about that has taken me very far into what I know about my place in the world, as it relates to my home. The structure is an extension of me, all parts built for a reason, to shelter, warm, hold up, express, comfort. If it is ever fully completed, I can only imagine the great sigh of satisfaction that will whoosh out of me, but...then what? I hope that there will always be more to do, new needs to meet, adjustments to make so as to keep up with changes, in the house, in my life, in the needs of my family.

When I was building the cordwood walls, more than a decade ago, I would take my lunch and a beer, sit on the highest point of the foundation, and imagine the fully formed home that was taking shape so slowly in front of me. From that vantage, the curved walls of the house reach out and downhill, like your arms when you are reaching for a hug. I came to think of those walls as my arms, aware that they would shelter, welcome, and comfort the people that I bring into my life, family and friends. That visualization is very powerful for me, especially now, as I ready myself and the house to welcome my Honey and the kids, and occasionally all of the new people in her extended family, parents and siblings. My grown daughter is on her own path, and those arms/walls have been empty except for my own presence for enough time that I know I am ready, the house is ready, to fill with laughter, footsteps, rattling dishes, cooking smells, brother-sister arguments, frisbees...okay, the frisbees will be outside, first rule.

Furthering the metaphor, my style of working on the house is a reflection of life, at least to my mind. I'm looking at the stairs in this picture, and seeing so much as I contemplate the logistics of getting that railing to turn a corner and go down to the first floor, sturdy and attractive.

Without going into too much detail, I'm working out how to fasten, support, and shape an armload of wood so that it has rigidity carried up from those heavy hemlock logs on each side of the treads. It's complicated, and involves trusting that a little support and strength from each piece will combine into a sturdy whole, and that little flaws here and there will become, when all is said and done, not problems, but character. I'll trust my experience, trust the materials, trying to foresee potential errors, not borrowing trouble, but looking for the way to proceed that makes the best use of the situation. When it's done, the girls will have support to hang onto as they climb to their rooms, unaware of the work and care that went into it, but with a sense of security that will serve them well. The philosophizing that is going into this may escape them as well...

Where does the work on the stair end, and the metaphor for good work in my life begin? I have made plenty of mistakes, done things poorly that I can't undo. I can only try to make the most of the result, and try to do better going forward. I have also done things well by blind luck, like having an extra room or two planned in, long before I knew that I would have this incredible woman with her beautiful family joining me. The "study" in the floor-plan above, is now going to be "the boys' room," and the "library" will be "the girls' room." Metaphor or simple reality, I only know that it is all meaningful to me, and that I will bring my best to it with as much awareness and heart as I have in me.

*On random coolness (serendipity?), I did a search for the phrase, and found it quoted by Bryce Black, who seems at first glance like somebody I have a lot in common with, and really interesting! I guess my Dad didn't make that one up after all...

Hemlock Balcony and Stair Railing

The balcony before the railing.

I've alluded to this already, and there are already one or two photos of the railing that I've been working on, but I want to review the whole project in one post, to show how it all fits together, and how you can do it. I received a great compliment a few days ago, when Kissy from Dragonfly Acres, who will be building a cordwood masonry house with Ben not far away over the next couple of years, took one look at it and said, "I'm totally stealing that idea!" It was really easy to put together, and used a lot of material from the land, instead of from the store, so read on...

Hemlock logs for stair support.

What I had for years was a balcony with a temporary railing screwed together from three-inch strapping, draped with fabric to cover the scrap-lumber storage that had taken the space over, and stairs quickly knocked together from scrap two-by-sixes. (The photo above left shows what I had after taking down the "temporary" railing.) Then last year I scrapped the temporary stairs and made extremely heavy-duty stairs from two large hemlock logs (my best free-hand chainsaw work to date) with oak risers and treads.

This spring I cut and peeled about a hundred small hemlock trees, leaving the +/_ four-foot lengths to dry for a few weeks. A good thing about hemlock is that in spring and summer you can easily peel it with no tools at all, and the sap is not sticky, unlike pine or spruce. It's also remarkably hard and strong for a softwood, so is especially suited to uses like joists, stringers, studs, sub-floor planks, and stair-railings. It is hard enough that you'll want to drill a pilot-hole for everything, to avoid snapping screws, bending nails, or splitting the wood. (Side note, and maybe a future post: hemlock bark is really nice for basket-weaving. You can easily cut strips of a needed size out of your peelings, and they remain flexible for an hour or two without soaking. They dry hard, like wood. With age it becomes brittle, but is very pretty for decorative uses.

Scooby likes the new work.

Milled overlap, and bungees.

 After VERY carefully trimming the knots on a tablesaw, then hand-sanding with a sanding sponge, I organized the pieces by diameter, and cut a flat segment into the bottom eight inches or so of all of the ones I wanted for the balcony railing. The pieces for the stairs didn't need a flat surface. Then, going with about a five-inch on-center spacing, I attached them to the balcony with two screws apiece. They started out sticking up at all angles, but roughly vertical. That didn't worry me; I had a plan!

This ragged look cleans up nice...

Here I have to confess that I bought the boards for the top of the railing. If I hadn't been in such an all-fired hurry to make things ready for Honey and the kids to  be able to use the space, I would have taken a little more time, used reclaimed wood, and just spent more time sanding and fitting it. So yes, I bought a few running feet of pine board in three and four inch sizes, milled an overlap for them, as seen in the photo on the left here, and got to work with screws and glue, using bungies to hold the boards in place while I worked. One of these days, I may do a post about the crazy things I've done in the name of not asking for help...

  
I really like the natural look of these uprights, much more than store-bought straight pieces, especially in a rustic space like Ironwood Hollow. It looks more like live stuff, and so much more individual and interesting! Once the balcony was finished, I spent a few days in a staring contest with the stairs. It's hard to describe all the variables that I was debating with myself, but in short, I wanted to turn the corner neatly, go down the stairs, have it be sturdy to lean against, and just look neat and clean. What I ended up doing was having two uprights per tread, with every second one being screwed to the riser on the tread above it. I used a one-inch forstner bit for really neat holes for each of these, and shaved each upright carefully to fit just right. Okay, here's my confession (don't tell the kids); I was a little concerned about the strength of all of this, and leaning hard against it didn't completely reassure me. After all, I now have teenagers. Athletic ones. Show-offs. Who have friends. They do things like hand-stand push-ups ans back-flip dives, so a guy like me can barely keep up... You can see where I'm going, right? One of these days, I come home to find my quaint hemlock railing in pieces, and one of the kids' friends being picked up by upset parents after they've crashed into the lower level followed by a bunch of toothpicks that used to be an artistic railing...

The final product, no sliding allowed!

So, don't tell the kids, but I stood on the balcony railing, and actually jumped up and down. And I slid down the railing. Several times, because it was so much fun. Er, I mean, just to make sure it's safe for the kids. But still, there'll be a house rule, can't have them thinking it's a jungle gym around here, right? Oh, and then I hand-sanded some more, not going to elaborate on that.

As a last note, you may note the remaining railing mounted to the cordwood wall. That's just a cedar board with spacers for your right hand going up, and next year, when I can cut and peel more hemlocks, I'll replace that with a railing to match the one in the foreground. Since I use our property as a firewood lot, every small softwood that I can use productively opens up the lot for more usable hardwood, so I'm always looking for new uses for hemlock, cedar, spruce, and pine, which are my local non-firewood species. The added benefit is that this railing would have cost hundreds and hundred of dollars if I had bought all of the materials. Built this way, I have the benefit of clearing some softwoods from my woodlot, and managed to build a unique part of our home at a total expense of about eighty dollars.

The full railing with a view of the main floor.

Ramblings and a Tip

Carrying wood without wrestling with it!

As you know, I have been using peeled and hand-sanded hemlock for the uprights of the balcony railing. The stair railing is up next, using similar methods, but in the interest of giving myself time to figure out how to do that well, I confess that I am finding other things to do with my renovating time. I turned a bookshelf into a shelved door for the pantry. I walled over an opening in the main bedroom (more on that later). I did some awesome locavore cooking with a jar of barbecue sauce made by the incomparable Craig Hickman at Annabessacook Farm (probably more on that later). I wrote another song, spent lots of time polishing up my enunciation to get ready for my big audio recording effort (definitely more on that later).

The last thing I could thing of to do is to trim out the upstairs bedroom door, on the outside where it shows to the main living space. I wanted to do something that would match the balcony work,  so I went out and cut some more hemlock, peeled it, and took it up to the family workshop.

Okay, here's a bit of a reveal. I have a utility room that has all my motorcycle gear, the cats' stuff, and all the assorted hand-tools necessary for minor work: a hand-saw, a cordless set of tools, hammers, pliers, chainsaw, a bit of electrical and plumbing gear, and so on. What I do not have is a workshop. I have sawhorses in the yard. When I need to use a tablesaw, a drill press, dado blades, or anything of that nature, I take whatever I'm working on and trudge up to the neighbor's house, where there is a workshop that I can use.

The family workshop

Hah! Okay, got you feeling sorry for me, right? Here's the workshop:

Trudging a couple of hundred yards next door to my father's home (for sure, more on him later!) to use his beautiful stone workshop, is a pure pleasure. It's outside of the home I grew up in, a slipform stone structure that could teach Ozymandias a thing or two. One of Dad's numerous remarkable achievements, it is very satisfying to work in.The hike adds time to my work, particularly when I'm fine-tuning one piece of wood at a time, but on the other hand it gets me out in the air, or else forces me to do things with simpler tools more often. It's amazing what can be done with a hand-saw and a hammer if you don't need to rush.

Don't be this poor guy!

So anyway, I have some large pieces of hemlock peeled, dried, and ready to become door-trim. Also have sixteen pieces of smaller hemlock ready to become stair railing uprights once I figure out how to turn a corner with the railing, and how it will be supported. Got them all in a pile, and realize that I'm going to look like the tarot card, ten of wands in a minute. Falling all over a lazy-man's load of wood is an old pattern with me, but I have a brainstorm. If I take a piece of rope, loop it like a firewood carrier, I can actually carry all these pieces without fetching up on every stair tread, doorway, and tree along the way!

This is so much easier...

Problem solved, I take all of my hemlock up to the workshop, and spend some time carefully carving the knots off of it, and halving each of the larger pieces lengthwise. This gives me, in just a few minutes, a good bundle of usable sticks that only need a minute or so apiece of hand-sanding with a sanding sponge before they are ready.

I have to say a couple of things here. My photos show me working on  a bare blade, working each piece of hemlock by hand without much in the way of protection. A table-saw can do sudden and irreparable damage to your fingers, so please exercise all due caution. I have a lot of experience with this, and am so aware of the dangers involved that I have never been within a country mile of an accident. Don't be casual or complacent with power tools!

The other thing about this is that, after handling almost twenty pieces of hemlock, free-handing them around a high-speed blade, I promptly went back to Ironwood Hollow and cut myself badly with a handsaw. So here's your second warning; hand tools are dangerous too! I managed to hit my thumb hard enough with a handsaw to make cuts that bled for an hour, and made the tendon on the palm side of my thumb really really tender. This reminds me of the times when I have been meticulously careful with a chainsaw, cutting cord after cord of firewood, wearing all the right protective gear, without incident, and then, right away, flattened my thumb with the limbing axe or splitting maul. So please, people, be careful even with the manually powered tools.

Long story short, I got the trim halved, the various pieces cleaned up on the table-saw, and had enough time left in my evening to start in on the stair railing.  That will be another post or two, and I am thinking I had better talk a bit about my Dad, the genius behind the workshop, his garden that provides beautifully for so many friends and family, and the way he instilled in me values that have evolved into my love of alternative and natural building, living frugally, and taking Nature as a partner in so much of life.

Reclaiming

The price of milled wood is high, and not only in dollars. It is easy for me, deep in the woods of Maine, to forget how much of the world's once-forested land is now bare of tree-cover, but it's worth remembering. The effect of clearing a forest is enormous. The streams, once shaded, heat up and even dry up, changing or eliminating the habitat for insects, fish, and other life that depends on that water. The trees themselves, food and habitat for a complex network of life, are no longer there to support that life. 

A large wall done in all reclaimed wood...

So yes, the price is high, whether we can afford that truckload of two-by-fours and inch board or not. When I go to my local transfer station, there's a large pile of scrap wood, destined to be burned for electricity production, that accumulates all week and is then trucked away. Frugal and green-thinking people like myself are always watching that pile for useful wood, and much of it gets a second life. Today I found two two-by-sixes nailed together, covered with staples and box-nails, but fresh, solid, and straight. That's something like fifteen dollars, maybe more, that I will save by taking them home, extracting the nails, and storing them for future use. I have a doorway that I want to close off, and they will be just what I need.

For weeks I have been watching for discarded hardwood boards, taking any that are about 3/4 inch thick and at least 39 inches long. They will be slats for a couple of twin-sized bed platforms that I'm building. Oak flooring is perfect, and I keep finding some, only needing to take a few minutes to pry out the old flooring nails and cut the boards to size. 

Re-used doors, oak flooring for bed-slats...

In the same room, I started with unfinished walls, just the studs and insulation in place, three months ago. In that time I have been able to finish the walls with mismatched inch-boards of all kinds, along with cupboard doors, a couple of closet doors, and even an old store-front sign. Most of this wood came from the transfer station, and only required a few minutes per piece of nail-removal and some light hand-sanding. It's not fine and neat in the way that drywall is, but it IS classy in a rustic way, more solid, and completely free except for the nails! In fact, many of the nails used came from the reclaimed boards in the first place. I saved the planet the cost of either drywall manufacture or tree-cutting and milling, which pairs well with my satisfaction at getting more done with less. 

There's another positive aspect to this kind of re-use that is hard to put into words, but I'll try. Each board that I bring home and clean up has its own history, and I can guess at that history while I work on it, and thereafter whenever I notice that particular board on a wall in our home. I think that may be hard to imagine for people who live in pre-made homes, but picture this...

Oh, the history in those boards!

In the kitchen, one of the logs in the cordwood masonry wall above the range is a piece of my grandmother's apple tree, from a branch that fell. That tree shows in photos from the civil war era, it is so old, and touching the wood reminds me of my grandmother, a fine woman who raised my remarkable mother. That's one piece of wood that I know very well. Among these reclaimed boards are sweet mysteries; a piece that was part of a very large packing crate, holding what, I have no idea,  one that held old square nails and showed signs of decades of paint and wear, that I imagine was on someone's living room floor through generations of good life, one that looks like it was used in a lath-and-plaster wall, so was part of a very old house that is now being remodeled. One that is wide, mellowed into a lovely deep amber with age, may have been on a living room wall of someone's summer camp through many seasons of canoeing and fishing...the clues in the wood are intriguing, and give the walls so much more character than they would have if I had simply plastered together some mass-produced drywall.

A sneak peak at the girls' room in process...

In the converted library, I'm painting those boards a daring teal color. In the main bedroom I'm leaving them in their natural rustic glory. I'm going to love looking around and seeing the mill-marks, the re-used old square nails, the paint edges that hint at each board's history, the texture and color differences between the pine, the hemlock, the spruce, that oak, the inevitable dents from pulling out old nails. The best thing, though? We get to give all of those boards a whole new life; they will witness generations of life in our home, soak up the cooking smells, take the dents of life being lived, shelter us from the cold and the sun for decades to come, instead of being sent off to be rendered into a moment's power supply.

Cordwood Masonry

Having built my own cordwood masonry house and lived in it for over ten years so far, I have quite a bit of expertise, experience, knowledge, dare I say wisdom, about the topic. Some of it comes from quickly having learned how to do it well, and some of it is from having learned over time what I wish I had done differently. Put more simply, some of it I got right, and some of it I learned from by getting it wrong.  Finally, I have a chance to share that experience; my long-time friends Ben and Kissy over in Appleton have decided to build their own very ambitious cordwood masonry house!

The home at Ironwood Hollow

Cordwood masonry is a little-known alternative building method in which you lay up short pieces of cordwood (16-inch long cedar in my case), with a specially-designed mortar. the ends of each piece show on both sides of a wall, so the effect is something like a stone and mortar wall, both inside and out. It has a number of advantages, which I'll go into in more detail later, but the two primary ones are that it is very affordable if you have the right wood available to you, and it is environmentally very sound. Using wood from my property that I harvested myself, and mortar, sand, and sawdust produced very nearby, the impact on the environment was very little. Oh, okay, a third advantage is that it is so beautiful. Most of the house goes up without nails, spikes, screws, foam, plastic, tarpaper, siding, and so on. The walls are beautiful, and last better, if you don't treat them with anything, inside or out, and don't cover them. This means, at least for the perimeter of the house, no drywall, no paint, no shingles, no siding, no foam or fiberglass insulation.

Adding details is just so much fun!

It also allows you to express yourself in your building, to include elements for style, sentiment, or utility, from stone and brick and broken pottery to drawers, reclaimed parts from other buildings, shelves, bottles, really there is no limit. The walls can be straight or curved (from side to side, not top to bottom), and can include some variety of wood types. Something that will show over time as we get into some projects inside is that my own style is quite guy-like. Light on color, heavy on things matching and being well lined-up. I am hopeful that my Honey will bring her touch to the place, and bring some by-God color to the predominantly grey and brown space. If so, soon the improvements and changes to the house will reflect her sense of style and beauty too.

My house is unusual, even for a cordwood masonry house, since I built on a hillside, on a block foundation instead of a slab, without a framework of timber, and have some sections of cordwood as tall as eighteen feet. The floor-plan is three-sided, with two long curved walls and one straight one, and three corners. From above, it looks a bit like an ark that grounded itself into Mellow Hill, and there are four different floor levels.

An oil lamp casts a cozy light on the cordwood.

I'll be coming back to cordwood masonry as a topic from time to time, as I annoy Ben and Kissy with my experience and advice, as I enjoy watching a new project of this scope take shape, as new puzzles remind me of old solutions, any time I think I have a useful bit of advice to send out into the world of cordwood masonry building. For now, I'll just say that I love my house as though it is an extension of myself, and wish for Ben and Kissy that they may find the same satisfaction as their dream home takes shape literally in their hands.

Nesting

I am nesting. Have been for months now, and the whole process is culminating in a way that makes my toes curl and my stomach get the best kind of butterflies. I've been building my house for the last 15 years, raised a daughter in it during much of the process, and often look around when I am alone here, unsatisfied, seeing unfinished edges everywhere. Things like ceilings not painted, doors not trimmed out, floors still only exposed plank in some places. Everything has changed now, though; I am in love. Crazy in love, in the kind of love that fills my heart to overflowing, that has me writing love-songs unabashedly on a weekly basis. The kind of love that always used to make me sad when I saw it in a movie, read it in a book, heard it in a song, because I knew I didn't have it, though I wanted it more than anything. 

So here I am, a grown man feeling like a teenager in some ways, alone in a very unconventional unfinished home, with the woman-better-than-my-dreams moving in, bringing her kids, her cats, her enthusiasm, her own hopes and dreams. Am I excited? Oh, Hell yes. Nervous? Well, of course. Prepared? Oh, boy...

Some of that reclaimed wood.

For months I have been making room, hoping against hope that she would say yes. Several unfinished rooms had become, over the years, floor-to-ceiling storage areas. The "utility room" is simply mounds of tools, scrap wood, totes, motorcycle gear, with just enough room for a litter box and a bowl for cat food in the middle. The "library" was, until not long ago, simply filled with boxes of books, the mismatched shelves stacked with rugs, photos, paperwork, unwanted nicknacks, camping gear, and the like. The "balcony" was blessedly hidden behind some stapled-up batik fabric and overflowed with mead-buckets in various stages of production, books, lumber, junk, empty boxes. We're not talking about clutter here, but about whole parts of my house that couldn't be navigated without a flashlight, a duster, and some climbing skills. 

I'll be coming back in detail to some of the specific projects, but for today I just want to touch on some of them briefly. The bathroom, for years mostly finished, is finally getting its corner trim, small slats of cedar customized from cedar closet-paneling. The outdoor shower, long a fond dream, came together in two days of intense soldering and drilling, and now needs only some enclosing and floor-surfacing. The balcony and stairs are getting a complete make-over, railings made of peeled hemlock saplings. Watch for that entry; for the cost of some screws and just a handful of three- and four-inch boards, I am building what would cost hundreds to build conventionally. Saving lots of money, at the same time as conserving natural resources, is great when you can do it, and I'll talk in detail about how this works for me.

Almost ready to tame the wild railing risers.

The library is empty now, and I've been surfacing it with reclaimed lumber from the transfer station, my goal to finish the room with only the cost of screws, nails, and paint. One wall is surfaced completely with cupboard and other doors. A built-in bunk and a secret cabinet are further signs of nesting, wanting so much to have two girls find it beautiful and magical as their new bedroom.

What once was going to be a study for me, then morphed into a guest-room, can now be home to two teen boys. Since I made it from my boyhood dreams of "the perfect bedroom," I have some reason to hope that they will like it, secret shelves, hanging chair, curved walls, and all. Am I prepared? Not yet, but working on it is indescribably satisfying.

This journal will be about much more than my nesting, this process of making my home suitable for my Beloved, sweeping, fixing, improving, building; today that is my focus, but as my new life, OUR new life, grows, many other facets of this love-filled path will find their way to these pages, and I will try my damnedest to bring you inspiration, motivation, hope, beauty, song, art, and goodwill.