After cobbing day after day without a break, in addition to working full time, I’ve let the pace slow the last couple of weeks, spending more time hanging out with friends, reading, taking walks through the woods, and finally returning some phone calls and emails. As the sun sets earlier each evening, just to wake up later each morning, I’ve been hearing the pending winter weather whispering to me, telling me to take it slow, and catch up on some sleep…
We have still been working a lot on the cob house, cobbing some random spots, trimming and shaping walls and window reveals, and doing some much needed site clean-up. I built a hearth for our tiny wood stove, out of urbanite and cob (I’ll post some pictures of it soon). And Noel and Gray spent a lot of time in the woods, harvesting and de-barking tulip poplar to use as rafters.
For the ridge beam I found a nice sourwood tree with a gentle curve, and Noel and I spent hours last weekend shaving all the bark off. We only have one drawshave, so Noel and Gray made an improvised drawshave by taking a large knife we had dumpstered from behind the thrift store, and pounding it into a piece of wood, creating a double handled blade. It actually does a great job getting the bark off all the roundwood!
On Sunday we managed to carry the ridge beam out of the woods and place it on top of this two story building. It took at least eight of us to haul it from the forest, and even with that many people it was still really, really heavy. My shoulder is still sore… But its worth all the pain, because I’m really looking forward to not having to see this anymore:
On Monday my friends Greg and Steve worked on placing rafters and securing them to the ridge beam. Each rafter is notched where it rests on the beam, and also secured with screws. The ends of the rafters that rest on the wall will also be attached to “deadmen,” which will further anchor them to the walls.
Noel rounds the edges
About half the rafters are in place, and we’ll be working later this week on the rest of them. Soon enough I’ll be able to fold up all these tarps, and sleep peacefully through rainy nights…
earthen acres 