I visited the Handmade House today, which is in the final days of detail work before the Parade of Homes. It’s all coming together nicely and the area around the patio and bench has been landscaped. I had a picnic lunch on the bench, figuring I wouldn’t have anymore chances to do so. People can visit the Handmade House in October and November. Handmade in America has more information.
We were able to finish setting the floor today despite the constant rain. A roof and a roaring fire helped. We did track a lot of mud in over the course of the day. Sometimes when I was working near the open doorway, I would have the fire blasting me from one side, and a cold wind-driven rain splashing me on the other. The white crate of splinters in the corner is Monday’s kindling supply drying out.
The floor is made of a Tennessee flagstone, a fairly flat and workable sandstone. It can be persuaded into most shapes with a chipping hammer, though the Beak helped as well. The only chisel I ever used on this was less than half an inch across and carbide tipped. Even that I only used to finesse the joints after the stones were in place. The thing that really draws my eye to the craftsmanship of stone flagging is consistent, tight joinery. It’s more time-consuming of course, but I love it when it looks the joints between all the stones were drawn with the same fine-line pen. Sometimes I sit in the loft- where this photo montage was taken- and look for letters in the joinery.
Click the image above for a GIGANTIC view.
I had a small fire today to shake the chill out of the air inside the cabin as I started working on the floor, seen above. The chimney draws well and will improve once all the windows and doors are hung and the chimney cap is in place.
Four of six windows are roughed in along the sides of the cabin, installed by Dan and his crew. The frames are bomber and look great. I have to admit that I don’t know how the actual window got to be so small. The initial designs called for a lot more glass and light. These are more like arrow slits than windows.
Pete’s old dog Tommy sacks out in the bucket of our skid steer loader.
The sleeping loft is the best place to check out the flagstone floor. This is how it looked at the beginning of the day. The wall with the fireplace is eighteen feet across. I was chasing the stone pile out of my way the whole day.
This is my new hammer by Trow & Holden
of Barre, Vermont. They call it the Stinger, but I call it The Beak. It has a carbide point at one end and a carbide blade at the other. This is the vertical blade model, though a horizontal blade is also available. A horizontal blade can be very helpful, but I prefer the vertical blade, as flying stone chips are less likely to tear up my knuckles. It only weighs two pounds, which means I can swing it all day.
Pete’s string for lining up the shakes dangles off the end of the roof.
Back in the loft to see the floor at the end of the day. We’ve got about a third of the floor in place.
Jody dropped the scaffolding at the end of the day, giving us a good look at the far side of the cabin. The first of the windows may go in early next week.
Here’s the first shot of the cabin floor. We’re using a Tennessee flagstone, a type of sandstone that’s quite flat and shapes well. I have a new hammer with a very fresh carbide blade that cuts this stone like butter. The floor is dry laid in pea gravel though we will grout the joints. I wouldn’t condone this practice for exterior applications, but the floor is well protected from the elements.
Jody rigged this trio of lights to illuminate the floor where we worked. I just thought it looked kind of cool.
Sunlight leaks through the open ends of the rafters. These will be closed up before too long, but the glow shows off the cedar roof and rough hewn rafters.
The first row of shakes is in place. Tomorrow this scaffolding will come down and we’ll get a good look at this wall.
I’ve recently been taught the ways of photomerge, a Photoshop function that makes panoramic shots like this almost effortless. Now I can’t stop.
We finished the Handmade project today. This is a view of the long bench along the back of the patio.
This is a close up of some marbles tucked into the joinery between two slabs of the seat back. I only got 72 marbles into the project, but they’re still a fun addition to the work. I like how they glimmer all shiny out of the corner of my eye.
The Handmade House at the Ramble is a collaboration between Handmade in America
, a local coalition of craftspeople, and Biltmore Farms Homes, a high end Asheville builder and developer. The demonstration project is meant to show how crafts can be integrated into the building trades. One hundred artisans, including Fred and I, have been taking part in this process. It is reaching critical mass, as the house will be open for display October 11 - November 9, 2008. More information is available here.
We are building a small patio framed by retaining walls and boulders that anchor a long bench. In this view you can see about half of the bench, though only some of the seat back is completed. Part of the Handmade vision includes building green, with an eye to minimizing impact on the environment and promoting sustainability. To that end, all of our work here is dry laid without mortar or concrete footings. This reduces the carbon impact and will last longer because of how dry stacked stone drains. All the stone is local to the area, reducing the fuel needed to get it to the job site. Some of the stone is quarried; the local fieldstone generally makes a terrible walking surface.
Throughout the course of this project I have been adding marbles to the work. So far I have 57 marbles tucked into the joints. I hope to have 101 marbles hidden in before it’s all done. I try very hard to make them barely visible and to insert them in such a way you can touch them, move them but not actually remove them from the wall. Not all are visible, sometimes I tuck a few into the same joint, so that if someone gets one out, there’s another to take its place.
Someday I’ll do a full web page called “Why Marbles.”
There are a handful or marbles hidden in the photo at the top of the blog. You can catch glimpses of them in the joint between the boulder and the stacked wall.
This is an aerial view of the start of the flagging work. Despite my best intentions, it usually ends up looking like my tool bag exploded over the entire project. And no matter where I set up, the tool I’d really like to have is just out of arm’s reach. This is dry laid work, thicker stones bedded in pea gravel. I have my trowel out because it’s a good way to move the gravel and shape the bed for the bottom of the stone.
This garter snake moved into my wall late on Friday. It’s always been a great joy to me that I get to build habitat. I doubt he’ll stick around, as there’s still some work to be done. Snakes are very sensitive to the constant percussion of hammering that is stonework.
Things have been altogether too hectic lately, so this late night picto-blog will have to do for now.
