Building our new house
In early 2007, we began building our new Round House here at Sacred Groves with a vision to expand our residential community on this beautiful land.
We purchased 3 round structures from Oregon Yurtworks--a big house with a large round Great Room that has become the heart and hearth of the Sacred Groves community, and 2 yurtlettes, private bedroom-cabins for new residents. We are modeling a "small is beautiful" lifestyle with small personal spaces, sharing kitchen, bathrooms, laundry, living room. We are enthused about the joys and challenges of community living, committed to the spiritual and personal growth required for sharing life in this way.
This blog, which has the most recent entry at the top, tells the story of the construction of the new house, starting with the foundation built Spring 2007. Carpenter and Groves resident Tere Carranza has managed the project from start to near-finish.
Thursday, June 14, 2007
More machines move around dirt.
The 'dirt-works' guys are back this week with their machines, putting curtain drains along the footings, then back-filling against the new foundation walls, also finishing the septic system connections. After the big piles of dirt are moved, they will smooth out two more small sites where our two 'detached bedrooms,' (also from Oregon Yurtworks) will be located. We really appreciate JPLandworks, the business we hired to do the clearing and digging work, excavating the house site and installing the septic system. It's a family business, good guys, all related in one way or another. They are respectful of the native plants and do a good job minimizing their impact, as much as could be hoped for considering the extent of the clearing they have had to make and the number of machines they have needed. One of their machines is even run on bio-deisel!
Maybe by the end of the week we will start building the pony walls to complete the foundation so that next week we can begin the foundations for the two bedroom-yurts. But for now, we are busy rounding up electrical conduit for the hook-up for the site (to be dug and buried next week) and doing a hundred details behind-the-scenes. Therese is back, updating budgets, making phonecalls about this and that. There certainly are a million details to tend when building a house!
posted by Tere # 11:42 AM 