Spring is finally here and it feels great.  The currants in the garden have leaves again and everything is starting to bloom.  All the windows are open and the spring cleaning has started.

I cut a couple of dead trees down and saved the logs to use as posts.  One tree was a kayak stand, so here they are in their new home.

Worksite

Brick Walk Way

Straw Bale & Outlet

Finish Plaster Crack

Lime Plaster Scratch Coat

Ship Lap Ceiling

Wire Through Floor Joist

Dancing Rabbit  is testament that tradition and evolution make for beautiful and sustainable homes. Naturally built homes here come in all different shapes and attitudes. Be it a rudimentary home for one or an elaborate design that grows to accommodate a family as it grows. There is great appreciation for building knowledge passed down through time.

Cob is a basic building material that has been used for thousands of years and forms a home that can be very long lasting.

Straw bales are a farming by-product with a relatively high r-value which makes it an economical and useful building material.

Recyling is HUGE.  So Dancing Rabbit converted a grain bin left on the land into housing.

Timber framing is a time tested technique that uses less wood than conventional framing design. 

Sometimes the best thing to do is reuse. This converted bus is a home that resembles found art.

A fine way to express art and beauty in a naturally built structure is with lime plaster, a preferable material to cement / stucco. plaster.

Dancing Rabbit is full of innovative and experimental means to live stainable, like my bricks made of clay, sand, and straw.

This winter I have been working on a number of projects, most of them in the loft of the Timber Frame addition. While everyone else was inside keeping warm, I was sawing and sanding as long as I could each day. The biggest project was the floor. First the pex tubes were laid in place. Then the sand was poured in underneath the fished floor as thermal mass. We spent weeks drying the wet sand on Jennifer’s wood stove. As I inched further on the wood floor, we would spread a few more buckets of sand. After I finished laying the cherry tongue and groove came two days of sanding. Then one day of finishing it with several coats of linseed oil.

Once the floor was finished I started the hatch.  It has ship lap on the bottom (to matching the ceiling of the first floor) and cherry on the top (to match the rest of the floor).  It is supported beneath my two oak runners, so it is nice and sturdy (yes, you can stand on it).

Lately, I have been spending the majority of my time working on the observation tower.  All the glass is in (finally) and I have been working on the trim.  It is cut from oak stock and requires an immense amount of chiseling out around the metal post that hold the glass in place.  It is not yet done, but here is my progress so far.

There is a wood stove installed now too, so I am staying super cozy at night time.

I made my first sliding dovetail this week.  I used it for a sliding vent that will be used during the summer as part of the passive cooling design.

Here it what it looks like installed and in operation.

Hi all, once again it is Dave back on a new blog. I have many new projects I have been working on this winter, while taking a break from my old blog.

My Room

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