iDRY Vacuum Kilns

Sponsors:

Newbie Introduction - Building a Timber Frame Home

Started by Thomas-in-Kentucky, July 29, 2006, 08:33:24 AM

Previous topic - Next topic

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

mudburn

Thomas,

Good to see you back and read your updates. The herringbone floor with that quarter-sawn oak looks great! I know how keeping up with your blog can take time, especially when you're busy with so much. It's been busy here, but I think we are pretty much ready for the raising this weekend!

dp
Blogging my house project at Cedar Ridge Farm.

Thomas-in-Kentucky

Good luck Mudburn.  May the force be with you at your raising.  Try to visualize every way that something can fail, and take precautions to prevent it.  At my raising (which took months ::)), if I took a risk, I tried to make sure I was only risking timbers and equipment - not someone's health and well being.  If you get in a bind, tie everything off and wait for the next day.  If your raising takes more than a weekend, there's no shame, since the frame should last a few centuries!  I'm sure you all will do fine.  Wish I could be there.  Got to cut hay (or what's left of it after the drought) this week end.

-Thomas

ScottAR

Scott
"There is much that I need to do, even more that I want to do, and even less that I can do."
[Magicman]

anvil

Beautiful project!!

where in your blog are the pics of your stairs?  I would like to see what you did.

anvil

Thomas-in-Kentucky

Whew, nice to see that Jeff, our fine steward of the forestry forum, has recovered the pre-crash postings!

I've been working on ten things at once, but I thought some folks might be interested in the latest thing I've started... infilling between the timbers on our house.  Turns out, we decided to go with "fake" stucco.  But is stucco real to start with?  Oh well, in any case, we found some HardiePanels that are cement based and decided they would be just the ticket for inflling between our timbers on the exterior of the house.  You can patch nail heads and cracks, etc with regular cement patch.  Neat.  I've put some info about it on my blog.


Plus, I've been told I can have a timber frame barn - if I'll just remove it from the property.  Torn on whether to keep it for myself or resell it.  Finances and timing are pointing toward selling it.  That's on my blog too.



-Thomas

Thanks Anvil, the stairs are under "March 2007" on my blog archives.  I haven't done anything to them since March, but I plan to cover them with hardwood some day.  I'm not even sure if I'll worry about that until we move in.  Too many other things to get done right now.  Move in date still too far away to predict.  ::)

ScottAR

This fireplace business looks complicated...   It's very neat though...
Scott
"There is much that I need to do, even more that I want to do, and even less that I can do."
[Magicman]

ScottAR

Scott
"There is much that I need to do, even more that I want to do, and even less that I can do."
[Magicman]

Thomas-in-Kentucky

Just checkin in to let you all know I'm still kickin.

We finally got the chimney up through the roof  8), and have built a fire in the Rumford fireplace. 

Even with 3 more feet of chimney yet to build, it draws like crazy - maybe too good!  The damper I bought is all-the-way-open or all-the-way-closed type, so I'll need to modify it.  You can feel the negative pressure in the house when a fire is going and you open an exterior door.  Plus it consumes wood at an alarming rate and the flame looks like a jet with the afterburners on (I'm afraid to even open the fresh-air make-up beneath the fire... I'll wait until I need to smelt iron ore or fix some horse shoes).   :o I guess it's better to have too much draw than not enough.  I joked to my wife that we could actually let people smoke in the house so long as they sit within 3 feet of the fireplace.

The best news though is that our brick oven works great too.  In 10 days, we've cooked 7 meals in there. (even though we're not living in the house!)  Frankly, it's a better (more practical) feature than the fireplace.

-Thomas




ScottAR

 :o

Broken record time...  WOW!!!

The floors are really a feature!
Scott
"There is much that I need to do, even more that I want to do, and even less that I can do."
[Magicman]

ScottAR

bump...  Mods: delete this when the OP reappears... 
Scott
"There is much that I need to do, even more that I want to do, and even less that I can do."
[Magicman]

ScottAR

Scott
"There is much that I need to do, even more that I want to do, and even less that I can do."
[Magicman]

jpickering4468

Thomas,
My wife and I are planning to build a house in the spring and up until December it was going to be a stick built home.  Then we had some high winds blow through this little island we live on and a bunch of trees fell down so, I started looking into sawing our own lumber for the project.  I set out on the internet looking for information on sawing your own and that's where I came across your Blog.  Well that night I read and read, got up the next morning and read some more.  I was hooked and somewhere in there I decided that I wanted to be a part of this beautiful thing you call timber framing. 
      Around Christmas I picked up all the right books- Benson, Sobon, and Chapell.  Next the Wife talked me into buying the sawmill; I couldn't say no and we began converting our designs to fit a timber frame.  We are almost finished with our design and we will start cutting timbers soon. 
We are both very excited about our project and I want to thank you for unknowingly guiding me in the right direction.  -Jason Pickering
This forum has also been a great source for me.  Jim Rogers and all the others, thanks for the educational info.
Slow and steady.

Jim_Rogers

Jason:
Welcome and keep asking questions.....

Jim Rogers

PS. thanks for your kind words about the forum and this section....
Whatever you do, have fun doing it!
Woodmizer 1994 LT30HDG24 with 6' Bed Extension

ErikC

Quote from: jpickering4468 on March 01, 2009, 08:33:23 PM
        Next the Wife talked me into buying the sawmill; I couldn't say no and we began converting our designs to fit a timber frame. 

You be careful telling this kind of story around here, she'll be getting other proposals on a daily basis :D

And keep us fully informed on the project, sounds exiting for you. Good luck with it.
Peterson 8" with 33' tracks, JCB 1550 4x4 loader backhoe, several stihl chainsaws

ScottAR

Scott
"There is much that I need to do, even more that I want to do, and even less that I can do."
[Magicman]

Kobraken

Thomas, you are an inspiration to us all.  Love that compasss rose!!!  Ken

Thomas-in-Kentucky


I'm ready to admit to some timberframing sacrilege as of late:
my handrails are attached with lag bolts hidden by wooden pegs...
I darn near cut my white oak sill plate in two to make a hole for my propane hot water heater vent...
I've been drilling holes for light fixtures in my timbers...
I used an electric chainsaw to notch timbers for ductwork.
And I've been screwing plumbing brackets to the timbers in the basement...
....all things I would have shot someone for doing to my frame 2 years ago.  :)

But we've moved into our house!  A deer hunter/outfitter asked to lease our double-wide, so we jumped out of it and into our house.  We're lacking a few luxury items in the new house, like kitchen cabinets, baseboards, window trim, and doors, but we're enjoying living here nonetheless.

Since completing the frame, walls, and roof... things I planned for... I've had to bring on line the things that seemed too far off to think about way back when I was building the frame.  I plumbed the house, installed a wood gasification boiler, dug the well, finished installing the solar panels, and about a billion other things it seems like.  (with half a billion remaining) 

I actually fired up the woodmizer this summer again and cut the timber for my handrails... as well as a few logs that came down in a windstorm (stockpiling the timbers for my next project... which is probably years away.)

If I had it to do over, I would do it again... just maybe a few things differently.  In the beginning, the novel thing about our house was the timberframe.  The challenge for us now is ironing out all of the details of our off-grid water and electric system.  I don't remember ever putting "figure out how to eliminate iron from well water" on my list of to-do's 5 years ago, but here it is.

-Thomas

(Jason... how's it going?)

Woulde

Just spent the last hour reading this thread.  Can't wait to read your blog.

What an inspiration!

Thomas, you are one dedicated guy.  Thanks for sharing your story.

red

Honor the Fallen Thank the Living

Thank You Sponsors!