Tuesday, October 15, 2013

termite season

In these last warm evenings before the rains, the flying termites come out of their nests and start covering everything.  I hate them.  I actually stand outside with a racquetball racquet and a shoe and swing at them.
They also come in under the doors, shed their wings and start crawling around looking for somewhere to set up shot.  Here's the tiles by the back door.  Luckily a vast majority of our house is termite proof, but still. 

Thursday, October 10, 2013

Re-using old wood for new stuff

Taking some old deck boards and working them up.  First, take off the old brackets:
Then, use a hatchet to split off the rotten bits of the 4x6s:

And build a new raised bed box for a garden: 

I'm going to try this idea of putting old (rotten) wood at the bottom, under the dirt, to act as a sponge for the winter water.  Luckily, I have plenty of rotten wood around.

Design Mistakes in my cob house

So, I have long meant to create a list of mistakes I made when designing the finishings on our house.  Now that we've lived in it for a ...