Strawbale House Project

Photos in reverse chronological order.

Thanksgiving 2009 - Well truly a Thanksgiving this year...WE ARE FINALLY IN! Still a number of things to do...including closet systems to get our clothes out of laundry baskets, tweaking whole house gray water, composting toilets and radiant floor heating/domestic hot water systems. Working to find water treatment system that doesn't use chemicals or hundreds of pounds of salt, and lots more little stuff. Been hosting lots of friends and family and looking forward to our annual skating party and mostly just enjoying finally being IN!

Summer 09 update (site updates quite tardy) - yes, yes, yes, we are still working on the interior. Beautiful urban cherry and curley silver maple cabinets are up after yet another last minute reconfiguration...thanks Derek. Silver maple floors in finished and looking good...thanks Roger and Chuck. Custom made cherry, maple and frosted glass interior doors are in--awesome Roger. Local Carroll County tile and Italian tile flooring and showers are in with special decorative features..thanks Eric, Dan, Tom...Diana and Paul. Still waiting on maple for stairs an countertops...hurry Dan.

Summer 07 update - yes still working on interior. Cabinetry is mostly complete and looks fantastic...nice work Derek. Staining nearly complete. Trim is going to be cherry with white sapwood left on and natural edge. Beautiful cut sandstone from local Briar Hill Stone (our piece only 36 million years old) has all of the colors of the house in it. Stone going on fireplace hearths, exercise room window sills and mantle. Silver maple hardwood flooring has arrived (urban harvested from non-commercial tree cutting). Aspen 1X3s being used on second floor to allow radiant floor heating tubes to be set between subfloor and finished floor. Like Summer 06...Planning to have Thanksgiving dinner in the new house...for sure this year!?!

Summer 06 update - Working most of the summer on wiring, sanding posts and beams, reworking window sills (booo), selecting final colors, milling wood for interior doors, cabinets, hardwood floors, interior t&g pine/cherry paneling, ... Starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Planning to have Thanksgiving dinner in the new house.

February 06 update - finish plaster goes on. With the help of Fox Natural Building, finish plasters of yellow, grey and terra cotta are being applied. Washes/slips using milk paints, natural pigments, clay and lime will provide the final color and lots of depth by allowing some of the texture and tones of the finish plaster to show through. Tomm Baron continues to help on misc carpentry tasks and to fix sill leaks on the Southern exposure windows. Post and beam sanding finally underway and looking great. Lousy dirty job, but the finished product will be worth it. Next step will be to start the stain/clear coat on the ceilings, beams and posts.

January 06 update - whole-house composting and grey water treatment system goes in. Yes, following the lead of the famous Humanure Handbook author Joe Jenkins, we are going to compost our toilet wastes instead of pumping them into a leach field. With the help of Equaris Corporation, we are installing a self-contained Biomatter Resequencing Converter (BMRC)unit. It reduces toilet wastes to about 15 gallons of biosafe compost material each year. All the wash water is plumbed separately and through aerobic means, cleaned before sending it to a leach field 1/9th the size of a normal field. See www.equaris.com for more info. Dan Ogonek of Oganek Custom Hardwoods used his bandsaw mill to cut downed cherry logs into the rough blanks needed for our custom interior doors, tongue and groove panneling, cabinetry and trim stock.

December update - Feel'n hot hot hot. Radiant floor heat is in and house is warm. Our Takagi tankless water heater is up and runing for radiant floor heat and will be piped in for domestic hot water, i.e., open heating system. Whole house composter is onsite and scheduled for install in Jan.

October update - interior walls up, rough plumbing in for composting toilets and grey water systems. Rough electrical in, fireplace stone facing complete and open circuit radiant floor heating system has arrived--hopefully have it and the gypcrete floor installed before the snow flys.

August update - finally "closed in" with all the doors and windows in and the rough-sawn siding on. Stone work on fireplace complete.