Today is our slow day and so I thought I’d pull together a short blog post about our recycled wood house. It’s coming along nicely as you can see in the photo above. The walls are mostly done now. My favorite feature is the wide porch that overlooks the front gate and forest garden. There’s plenty of space to kick back and admire the plants in the garden, wave to passersby and have a good time at the dining table.
Note the batt and board siding with custom trim over the joints. This and the wood poles and twisted wood railing lend a nice rustic touch to our country house.
Just a reminder for new readers — check out our new Natural Homesteading YouTube channel for more details about our recycled wood house and forest garden. Our goal is to make everything sustainably and for only a few thousand dollars. Also note the house design is 99.9% my girlfriend’s. We drew a line down the center of the property and (only semi jokingly) each took one half to focus on to avoid disagreements. I get the garden, pump house and barn; she gets the house and kitchen garden. We still talk things over, but this approach gives us a good way to make final decisions without a lot of debate.
Very nice Doc. I also like your male to female click. Like they say…..”Happy wife..Happy Life”. Well sorta in your case but, I imagine this saying still applies. Nice porch. Did you do the railings yourself? What kind of wood did you use? And, what about the finish on it?
We’re doing so many projects in such a short amount of time that we needed some way to organize things. (Everything you see in our videos has been done in the last few months.) I think the division of work we decided on is very practical.
Most of the work is being done by ourselves, friends, family and extended family. I’m not doing much work on this house because I’m focusing on other projects like I said. The railing is made of free twisted wood from a local forest. Wood like this is freely available to most people. Take a little trip to a local forest and you’ll see what I mean. Twisted wood is common in rocky terrain and high elevations. You can also find plenty of wood like this for free where logging companies have logged the forest. They leave behind tons of twisted logs and branches. Use a finish that will withstand the elements. We used an exterior stain coated with some type of exterior varnish.
Yeah you’re right about the wood. I’d like to incorporate twisted wood into my place. My ideal piece would be large like the tree just inside the Hobbit house you see in the movies. I suspect finding one that isn’t already dried out and sun bleached is going to be a challenge. But, you never know.
Twisted wood?
Isn’t that the stuff sold at the home centers listed as “straight 2x?” lumber?
Ha ha. They are closely related.
Did I ever tell you about the best lumber I ever saw? One day I was poking around in the back of a lumber yard. I peered into a closed shed through a gap by the door and saw this incredible pile of 2x4s. They were all perfectly straight. I was able to take a closer look and discovered the wood was quite lightweight and had beautiful uniform grain. When I asked for more information, the clerk smiled and said the wood was reserved for the largest developer in town (mega millionaire). Apparently he was ordering premium lumber to speed construction and reduce call backs.
Haha…that’s a good one. Owen knows what I was talking about but, I guess that would sound a little off if you didn’t. I’m building a Hobbit house using the layout plans from Peter Jacksons Weta company. They’re the ones who made everything for the movies. The “twisted” I spoke of is the root that appears to run through the roof. When you first walk through the front door it’s at the rear on the right side with roots that run across part of the ceiling. In the latest movie The Hobbit you get a fairly good look at it. Ha ha and yeah it’s twisted. Now you know what I mean. Should have made that clear at the start. Hahaha….
Carroll, please don’t stress over it.
Your comment was perfectly clear. Owen understood exactly what you meant. I understood exactly what you meant. 99% of the readers of this blog understood exactly what you meant. You were more than clear.
I just happen to be the guy that saw an opportunity to make a joke and seized it.
I wasn’t trying to make fun of your comment. I was attempting to poke fun at the corporate overlords that try to pass off substandard building products to us, take our money, and then lobby our government to force us to keep spending money at their stores whether we want to or not. They were the butt of my joke, not you.
Please just keep on saying what you mean just like you have in the past, don’t stress over it, and hopefully I’ll make a few jokes along the way that you find funny, even if I do tend to intentionally “twist” someone’s words just to make a joke.
No stress what-so-ever. I took no offense at all. The corporate overlords I totally understand your meaning. I DO take offense of all the people who COULD have a home but for the overlords greed. Good to talk with you.