Finishing up the Light Clay Wood Chip

Here is a video update of the shed.  Winter and other projects and responsibilities have slowed down the progress of the shed, but I have been working more on it lately.  I am just about done with the light clay wood chip infill, and am getting ready for the plaster.  This weekend we installed the door and started putting up the chicken wire over the pallets in preparation for the plaster.

Looking back on this project, I have decided that it has taken A LOT OF WORK!  This way of building is not for the faint of heart.  Some of the painstakingly time consuming things I have done so far are:

1. The foundation:  stone by stone trying to save as much mortar as possible by fitting each rock neatly within the wall.  Usually masons will slop on a large wad of mortar and roughly fit the rocks together.  It takes much less time, but uses about twice as much mortar.  I used 15 bags.  Even easier would have been to pour cement footings.  The way I did it saved me money, and used up a pile of rocks and used cement curbing dumped in my yard by my neighbor (dumped before I bought the lot[he did insist on taking care of the pile, but I told him I had a use for it])
2. Salvaging the materials:  I spent hours dumpster diving looking for useful materials. Then, when I got them, I usually had to take out nails, cut of bad parts, or reinforce sections.  Pallet wood is tough and ornery.  The nails don't come out easily, it is hard to cut, and never straight.  
3. The light clay wood chips: Even though I used a cement mixer this process took forever.  We dug by hand a hole big enough for our trampoline to get enough clay.  We found that the term "light clay wood chips" isn't really "light" at all.  When you try and use a light clay slip to hold the wood chips together, they just become flaky when they dry out (even worse if they freeze while still wet).  It takes a lot of clay to keep the chips stuck together.  Our recipe ended up being something like 1/2 parts water, 1 1/2 parts clay, 1 part wood chips.  The end consistency ended up a lot like plaster.  In fact, I ended up using it much like plaster to patch holes.  That is another problem with the way I used pallets; There were many gaps that I missed while filling up the walls that I had to patch later.

Other time consuming things I have still waiting for me to complete include plastering both inside and outside and putting down the earthen floor.  The upside of both of these is that I will be using far less material to make both products.  The walls of the shed are about 10 inches thick and took a few tones of clay and wood to fill. I plan on putting just two coats of plaster on the walls, so they shouldn't take as much clay .  I will need to sift the clay better, but a good chunk of the plaster will be made of sand.

I am not saying that the methods I have employed are bad, but they are just more than I originally reckoned for.  When I am done, I will have a large, sturdy, environmentally friendly, warm, and comfy shed.  I think I'll turn it into my glass shop.

Stained Glass Cherry Blossom Door

 This is a Stained glass door that I finished a little while ago.  It is one of three doors we salvaged that had been stored in an old barn.  The owner of the barn found them in there as he was getting ready to tear it down.  He doesn't know how old the doors are, but expects them to be quite old.  We refinished this door and decided that I should put in stained glass.  I looked around and decided that I liked the cherry tree in blossom idea.  So, I drew up the design in Google Sketchup and had the local print shop print them out to scale.

 The project took me several months to complete with many, many hours on the job.  The door has about 1200 pieces.  We decided that this door would be our bedroom door and the other two doors would be the entry doors of our straw bale house we are going to build.  The other two doors will have side light windows which will be included in the design and add another five panes of glass.  Because this is meant for the bedroom, all of the glass is opaque.

 These pictures really don't do the door justice.  We are storing the door in the basement where there isn't good light.  Plus, these are tall doors and the ceiling is too short to stand the door upright down there, so the  pictures are a little off, but the door really is stunning to look at.

This was my first stained glass installation.  So far everything else I have done has been for hanging up in windows or put in picture frames.  On this window I had to buy glass panels to put on either side of the stained glass and basically make a triple glazed window.

 Now that this one is finished, I need to start on the other two.  They will both be basically the same pattern expanded for the side light windows.  I have made a few design changes which will make them even better.

 Once I have the doors installed, I'll post pictures and maybe a little video so you can see how awesome they really look.

Putting up the pallet walls

Pallet construction

Putting the walls up

40" Pallets leave a 16" gap on top where I had to cut up a pallet to fit

Once the foundation was finished it was time to put up the pallet walls.  I looked up the standard pallet size on line and it said it was 48"x40"  So I made my plans accordingly.  I was able to get a lot of pallets for free, but only a fraction of them were the "standard size".  I also found out that not all pallets are created equal and that there is a huge variety when it comes to quality. 

After scrounging up a whole lot of pallets (over 130) I was able to find enough to frame up the walls.  After watching a bunch of YouTube videos, I decided to use 2x4s in between each column of pallets with 4x4s on the corners. 

With many of the pallets not quite square (along with wavy but free 2x4s) it was necessary to use clamps quite a bit to keep things as square as possible.  If you do decide to make anything with pallets, I highly recommend getting some 5'+ long clamps along with some 8" long clamps.  It will make your project go much more smoothly and look much better.  

To speed things up while working alone, I build a few columns on the ground with 2x4s on each side, then raised them up and placed the loose pallets in between.

Using clamps helps keep it all square

Clamps also help hold it up square when I'm working alone

Skinny pallets in the corner so I have plenty of room for the door ( I didn't have the door yet, so I didn't know the size)

Starting on the floor joists for the loft

  

Sarah working on filling gaps between slats.  Yes she is using the  power tools.

The north side with the walls all up and getting ready for the loft floor to go up 

 The pallets in deck on the loft were made up completely of 40" x 40" pallets.  I seemed to get a lot of these and ended up needing to use them on the walls as well.  There are sections of the walls that use regular framing like around the windows and the door.

The loft floor half way complete

The floor from underneath

The Joist were salvaged from a house being torn down.

I ran 2x4s along the joists to sit the pallets on

So far all of the 2x4s are salvaged

View from the north east corner

Building a Shed

Image of the Google SketchUp Model

Started collecting pallets and rocks

spreading out the rocks

This project has "Crazy" written all over it.  First of all the reason behind it.  Our son has autism and qualifies for services such as SSI, DSPD, and Medicaid.  There are several requirements to be able to quaify and one of those has to do with assets that we own.  One of the asset stipulations is that we cannot own property that we don't live on.  Well, back in December we bought some property to build our straw bale house on.  When we did that SSI put us on hold with their services for one year.  We figured that we could survive for a little while, but now the bild still hasn't started and we are being told that come December if we don't live on the property we will loose SSI.  Because the other programs are based off of our eligibility for SSI, we will loose them as well.  By the way there is a 4 year waiting list to get back on.  We have gone the rounds to try and find a solution, but it boils down to needing to move on the property while we build.  

The first day of foundation wall

Long story short, we just bought a camper trailer and I'm going to build a shed.  The purpose of the shed is to give us extra space to store things, a place to hang out and a place to eat together.  After the house is built, the shed will serve as my glass shop until I can build an official shop and then the shed will be a really cool hangout for the kids.Here is the link to the SketchUp model: http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/details?mid=f8e22fec33d9919499a2ba6ee90ca252

The corner at the right was the shallowest and everything after that took more rocks and a lot more time

The code here says that anything over 200 square feet needs a building permit, but anything under that doesn't, which also means that it doesn't need inspections.  So, I am going to build a pallet shed with an earthen floor, light clay straw/wood chips/foam insulation inside the pallets, a rocket mas heater, and an earthen plaster finish inside and out.  I was hoping to do all of this under $500.  The original plan was to use a living roof, but with the materials at hand the living roof would be too heavy, so I'll probably use a metal roof manufactured here in town instead.

That's me working

The foundation used a lot of stone and urbanite (used concrete) mortared together with a cement cap to make it all level.  Anchor bolts were put in between the rocks and mortared in.  The mortar cost $75, the cement $41, the rocks and urbanite came off the property $0 and the anchor bolts (and a lot of other materials for this little project) were salvaged from a dumpster $0. 

Trying to bring up the wall to the right level

 I have been able to find all of the 2x4 material, pallets, windows, door, joists for the loft, wiring, screws, trim, and carpet (for the loft) all through dumpster diving as well as some of the treated toe ups, and most of the plywood.  As we get further along I'll keep you up to date on what I have salvaged and what I have had to purchase.  The reasons we are trying to keep it cheep are 1) Duh who wants to spend extra money, and 2) we are trying to keep a good down payment for the construction loan for the real house.

First corner finished

This process takes a lot longer than just pouring a cement foundation

I spent hours doing this.  After sitting like this for a few hours , It would take me several minutes before I could stand up straight

Almost done with the foundation

A concrete slab to level off the top

Salvaging for a new home.

Free Toilets in good condition

These doors are solid wood from the early 1900s

We are officially getting ready to build our new house in Ephraim Utah. We are going to build a Straw Bale House, which will be the subject of several posts I’m sure. Because this blog is dedicated to sustainable living (recycled glass and gardening) I have decided to add the home construction in as well. Besides, right now there is a lot more going on with the house construction than there is with either of the other two topics. This entry will be dedicated to salvaging materials for the new house.



Here in Ephraim there are a few houses slated for demolition to make way for a new shiny parking lot. We were given permission to go in one of them (hopefully in the near future the other two as well) and take out anything we want. The house had already been picked apart by some other people, but we were able to salvage 10 doors, two toilets, several light fixtures, an armoire, the electrical breaker box and a few really old window frames as well as a few other odds and ends. Over all we have probably saved a couple thousand dollars towards the new construction. Next we are going to try and pull out the old wood floor and some of the cool old moldings.



These are the original windows from the house.  We found them in the root celar



The first batch of wood floor.  We will have to pull the nails and plane each peice before we can refinish it.

Another amaizing door knob