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.
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
Day 5 - we're ready for the roof panels!
We've spent the past two days scrambing up ladders and climbing rolling scaffolding and kneeling in the crow's nest and dancing on canted top plates - as we haul the beams up and against the center ring and onto the top of the walls. Once the beams were in place, there were many other tasks to take care of : nailing them off the to the hardware on the top plates, running the rafter cable thru the beams at the wall line, cutting and nailing the back-blocks, and a myriad of other tasks that Jonas was able to convey in a cheerful and patient way that allowed each of us to feel like we were contributing something important to the project.
And then there were the frustrations of removing hardware (on the top plate: which means everything is done from a ladder- times 32)) and replacing it 1" from it's original position, the occasional head wounds ( Sophie and Sarah are both OK), trying to get the walls of a round structure plumb (you push one wall out, and the others come in), looking for nails and hardware beneath the sheets of black plastic everywhere, covering and uncovering the piles of nails and hardware depending on the precipitation....
The truly amazing aspect of this project is that no one has totally lost it yet - everyone is gracious and polite - and the air is full of laughter and jokes and wisecracks... however every once in a while I slip back into my construction worker mentality and yell something- like when the power kept going out due to the rain- and in my frustration at picking up the saw, and not having any juice, I yelled POWER!!! And Jonas turned to me and said 'Wow, really old school' and I had to laugh at myself and take a step back from the brink of being a total asshole.
We've been helped this week by Terry Kelley - who showed up and threw himself into the project with great skill and grace and humor. Dave Leslie worked with us on Saturday and stayed the whole day despite the rain. Kendra and Mia have provided amazing and delicious lunches each day and have pampered us with snacks and mid-morning coffee and tea!! The crew is awesome - so many talented and willing and wonderful folk putting their hands and hearts into creating this great home!!
more pics here
posted by Tere # 7:18 AM 