Hand Cut Posts

So I decided I needed some extra supports for the loft in the shed, and have tenative ideas about pulling half of the loft out in favor of lighting and a ceiling fan sometime in the future. It would give the structure a less claustrophobic, hobbit hole kind of feeling and open up some needed headspace.

It would also reduce my total square footage, not that the loft space is very big to begin with. We will see, but the supports are needed whether or not part of the loft gets cut out.

Off to find some support beams.

Here, we have rough lengths from a standing dead knobcone pine that was cut down several months ago.

This is what the poles look like when I drag them out of the woods.

I cut all the pine cones, branches and rough cut limb ends down with a handsaw. I strip the bark off with my pocket knife.

Pine beetle damage underneath the bark. This is what killed the tree.

All peeled, bucked, cleaned and sanded with rough grit sandpaper.

I finished one post this morning and am more than halfway done with the second post. When I am finished, these will be cut to length and then the ends will be sliced up to be put into the walls.

Cordwood Shed Build, part 1

A few months back, I decided I needed a hay shed. So I grabbed some warped 4x6s from the scrap lumber pile and drove them into the ground. They weren't square what with the poles warping and my lack of carpentry skill...but hey, it's just for hay! 

Then I added loft framing, and roof rafters. Here is the framing on the shed almost complete.

By this time I had started thinking,
"hey this thing is pretty cool, wonder if I could enclose it for a studio?"

Uh-oh, sounds like I've just talked myself into a lot of extra work.... and I'm STILL going to need a hay shed one of these days!

I added plywood to the loft area first.

Then I added plywood for the roof sheathing.

I used rolled roofing to cover the shed.  Then I sawed off all the ends that stuck out from the loft framing.

The ladder makes the roof looked bowed, but it is not. The ladder is pushing down on the roofing overlap.

Scrap lumber to cut down to size for the walls.

I used cinder blocks with rebar driven into them for wall foundation. I am using this Cordwood method for just two walls for now, to see if this is a good building idea or not.

Cement added to the middle of the cinder blocks and around the rebar anchors.

At this point, I realized that these walls aren't going to be square. Buy hey, no cordwood wall is ever perfectly straight!

The next step was to mortar all the cinder blocks together at the ends. I tried to be careful but my masonry skills just are NOT up to par. Anyone who tells you cordwood masonry takes no skill, is a liar!

Two and a half rods of cut down rebar, eleven cinder blocks, two and a half bags of concrete (mixed and poured by hand), and about half a bag of mortar went into two small wall foundations.


This wall is totally gonna look like a girl built it...... because guess what, she did!

When the foundation was finished, I used the extra mortar mixed in with about 20% wet sawdust and filled in a small part on the base of the smaller wall. I am still waiting on more scrap lumber ends and 6 inch cordwood rounds!

My frank opinion of this building method, so far, is not that great. This is a lot of heavy lifting, lots of mortar and concrete to mix, there's a ton of bending and stooping involved, and more time consuming than I thought imaginable. This is a LOT of work to put up a wall!!

The economic savings aren't very big, but hopefully this will insulate sufficiently so I won't have to insulate and finish the inside of the walls. If nothing else, it sure looks cool...

To be continued --