The long and winding road....

It has been a month since an update, possibly more. I have excuses, and only a little regret. It has been cold. It has been dirty. It has been restless, uncompromising, anxiety-ridden. It has been harder than any other feat I have ever set my mind on. And as usual, it has paid off.

Dain and I finished the tire walls, the roof, the front facing windows, the attic insulation, all in the past few weeks. We woke at sun rise. Made breakfast while it was too cold to eat it, sometimes it would freeze before we could eat it, and than went to work. Non-stop, sunrise to sunset, every day. The cold got us going, but at times was painful. The day light here is so limited that we did all the work we could before the sun went down, and were restless and cold in the evenings.

Needless to say, it was all worth it. Every freezing cold minute of it. It was getting down to ten degrees or so at night. We were bundled up in a tent covered that was covered in blankets, us under even more blankets, and the cat on top of us, trying to keep warm for herself. It was cramped and not the slightest bit enjoyable.

Here is a picture of Dain, one of our last nights in the tent. Notice the jacket he is sleeping in.

I will go in chronological order, from the last blog post until now. Even though these days of hard work are over for the next week or so.. (we are officially on vacation)..

First we made a form out of cans in order to pour our bond beam across the roof. This took about eight hours of insane labor. Our neighbor friend came over and was more than a help. It would have taken us three days without him, instead it was just one HARD, LONG, long day. We were able to collect enough water to mix our cement, and were able to borrow a cement mixer as well. It was an awesome amount of work, but it paid off. The last picture is from above. It is where the cement was poured. All our work was so constant and happening so fast, that I was unable to take a few extremely important pictures. BUT, i will have other pictures, of other rooms in the future, so no worries. That said, there is no picture of the bond beam. Just picture that can wall full of cement. It also had brackets and bolts put in it, which is how we connected our trusses to the bond beam.

A birds eye view of the bond beam with the wood bolted to it, and a bracket (where we will eventually attach our posts for the attic). >

Than we started building trusses. Each truss ended up costing only the price of the screws we used. These were built from scrap wood from a local saw mill. We have used a lot of this wood so far, and are getting good at making it work for us. These trusses hold 20 inches of fiberglass insulation (another thing that never got photographed because it happened so fast). Almost done building them.. it took about a full days work to make three of these. We were going at it non stop. Skipping lunch, skipping breaks. It was insanity and joy. Sweat and tears. Blah, blah and blah.

From And finally, it became a room!

The cat was the only one enjoying herself. She loved this jungle gym we were building her..

We finished the trusses and quickly went and spent a small fortune on cedar lumber for the front face (window frames) of our room. We built this wall in about seven days, the other three walls.. well, they took over five months.. (they are the tires, of course).

And in about three days we had all of our glass cut, doubled up, and put into it's frames.. whew..

Here is a picture of our current unfinished ceiling. It is simply holding the insulation in right now. Later I am going to do some wood work, and put in some tin tiles. And possibly a chandelier... of the DIY sort.. of course, who do you think you're reading? The current "roof" is just wood, with three layers of thick plastic on it. It will probably be there for about the next three or four months, until we get the hallway/greenhouse built, which is going in front of this room.

And thar she blows: And moving in hasn't been as fast as it was the when we moved into the cabin, but it has been more than satisfying. It is about 70 degrees inside of this thing all day, already, even though it's only half buried so far. And it hasn't gotten below 40 degrees yet. This is a COMPLETELY UNFINISHED ROOM! We are SO going to have a constant PERFECT temperature, all for the price of A MILLION HOURS OF MANUAL LABOR! Unbeatable in the long run. >

It's like a studio apartment in the middle of nowhere. Or, heaven. It is so amazing. I feel so accomplished. And now, time to get a job!

I am cutting this "short". I need to get off the computer, out of the library, and back to my slightly temperate, slightly temporary home.

PS- Please send me your address, that way I can send you a lovely card.

Such a blogger Deadbeat!

We raised roofbeams and the pictures didn't get up here! That was weeks ago.

Update: We have roofbeams. A fully poured eight by eight inch bond beam! We will have roof insulation tomorrow! 60R, whoa overboard! We have the ENTIRE front of our room framed off for it's windows! We own a door! It isn't hung yet! We are three days away from living in the room!!

THREE DAYS AWAY! Five days before our six month estimation/deadline (that will be december 4th!)! I am so tired. I promise to post pictures. I promise. I will do it as soon as we put our glass up.

P.S. It looks beautiful!

Wraping up phase one

I have been an extremely disfunctional blogger. I barely have time or energy to put clothes into the hamper, let alone drive to the library, sit down for an hour, organize pictures, upload them, and then tell my two to ten readers what we've been up too.

But for the sake of those two to ten readers, here you are. A nice, clean, fresh update about what goes on in rural northern New Mexico. The land of enchantment.

I roll out of bed tired and roll back into bed even more exhausted every day. I roll with only a little gusto. Though, it is all worth while. Soon, possibly even sooner than our first estimation, we will have a finished house and home. Five years from now, HERE WE COME.

We are nearly done with the tires (JUST ONE DAY AWAY!) for the first room, which will eventually be my bedroom. We have also gotten started on a can wall at the top of the room, which will be where we pour our bond beam for our roof.

Pictures Roll:

This is about two weeks ago.

We are using cardboard for our outer insulation, our "thermal wrap". This will save us a few thousand dollars. Collecting the cardboard is easy. One dumpster fills our truck to the brim usually. It's just a little more time consuming.

more cardboard:

piles and miles..

The cardboard is two feet thick, and wrapped in a couple layers of plastic for protection. It will be the height of the house, eventually. This is all experimental on our part: WISH US LUCK. >

The look of insanity:

About 30 tires away from finished (with room one), 250 down I believe.

Can wall to hold the bond beam. This will be plastered over eventually.

It's getting bigger every day. Slowly but surely.

FRIENDZ VIZIT

It's Tarantula season! This is on a walk by the river, at the white place.

PICTURE UPDATES

I am at a lose for words.

Rain sent me to the library. I know I need to update this. I will do so with pictures as a narrative.

This is not fun: In the future we will have water through this: Future home in a pile: Oh look it's becoming a bedroom: Six Feet Under, This is the back of the kitchen, where we are now ready to start building the wall dividing the kitchen and the living room, yikes: Our airconditioning system: (It took a week to dig out and 10 minutes to re-bury).

OK one important note: We have changed our game plan. We are now building my bedroom first. This, because it will be easier to finish than the kitchen. It is already getting cold. We should have a real roof beam over our heads by December. Wish us luck. Luck. Luck.

We had our two month anniversary of house building on the fourth. We have made some great progress. I did not think we would be at this point after only two months. We have half the wall of our kitchen finished. We have even put in our first water pipe.

This is where our water will come in from the cistern outside. It will "gravity feed" into our house. Meaning, that we will not need a pump to get the water from the outside of the house, to the inside of the house. Once it enters the house, it will be pumped through a series of filters. After three filters, it will be usable for cooking and cleaning. Our drinking water will run through a forth filter, a charcoal filter. The reason this filter doesn't get used for all the water is that is slows down the water flow a great deal. This will all happen during the winter. Right now we're concerned with the walls, the roof, and we don't even have a cistern to collect the water in yet ($).

From the outside/back of the house: from the "inside" of the house: We have dug air vent trenches. Or, rather, we're in the process of digging them. These trenches are one of the hardest things we've dug so far. This week we will be putting a twenty foot long, by ten inch in diameter metal culvert into these trenches. This is our air conditioning system. How does it work, how does it work. Well, I have not yet seen them work, but I am hoping that they will work the way they are supposed to. The vent is to remain sealed off until your house is too hot. Then, you open the vent to the culvert, and a window in the front of the room as well. (All the rooms are sealed off with glass walls on the front face). Cold air coming from the buried culvert will blast through the room. The air is the temperature of the ground, 58 degrees. The air will want to escape through the front vent which will be located at the top of the front wall. The cold air will want to heat up, and rise. Thus, creating a cold airflow.

Cross your fingers that this works. These culverts are costing us a pretty penny, we bought six of them today. Two for the kitchen and living room, one each for the two bedrooms. The process has been tried and true at the earthship community. This is at least a tad bit comforting ($). ($). Send money: p.o.box 443 Medanales, NM 87548.

Gigantic 200 lb. 20 feet long culverts (In our "backyard", need to drag up the hill): Our awesome local library was giving away free local squash! This, and our post office has a free box, filled with cloths, kitchen stuff, etc. And, not to mention our wonderful librarian who gives us farm fresh produce. We really lucked out with the community we have moved to.

New Mexico is a tourist state. There are festivals and fiestas, art walks, gallery openings, and happenings going on constantly, all summer long. Unfortunately we've been nearly too busy to go to any of it. This is a little depressing. Next year. We have to get this house done. Well, this room at least. We work at least 3-4 hours a day, and that's a half day. A full day is 6-8 hours long. Hot, hard labor. I can't wait until the day I can be bored again.

The lizards are fighting back, thank god. I really think our cat has an unfair advantage over them. And she also doesn't bother killing them. Just injures them badly.

The cat goes on walks with us now. We're ridiculous, the three of us. Almost every evening. She'll follow us anywhere. It's great. But then we saw our first rattle snake. This is a western rattle snake. Deadly of course. We attempted a prompt removal of it. And failed. That story is for another time. And of course:

From Shack Living