Solar Shades

Made four little stands to hold up those $1 beach mats over the skylights:

This keeps out the hot noon-day sun while still allowing the morning and evening sun to brighten the rooms. I decided to keep them off the bathroom skylights (far right ones) as heating up that room seems like a nice idea.

Bathroom light cover

So, one of the last things on the list for the inside of the house was the covers over the bathroom lights. (I actually like how bright they were). Here you can see how they were just sticking out of the wall:

and here's the home-made redwood & airplane cloth Japanese-style lantern cover, to match the rest:

 And here's a picture of Mr. Wrong Side, next to his nemesis, the door.

The Water Cabinet is Up!

So, this experiment in new (old?) materials is up and functioning.  I wanted to build a little thing with all the cut branches from the tree work, since so many seem straight, and there's so much of it... so I took a shot at building a little cabinet on legs for our water filter.   I also wanted to follow through on an idea we had had about using hazel sticks as a sort of paneling. 

 Since it was actually a big job to go find all those hazel sticks - it's not that we don't have tons of it in the woods, it's finding the right size that are straight enough without getting distracted and clearing brush for a few hours - I decided to leave the back open, so the 'plumbing' parts would be easy to get to.

 We have a batch of these 1.5 liter wine bottles we use for water, and I made the shelf just the right height to hold a batch of them and the one being filled.  Notice in the above photo you can reach in, turn on the faucet and fill the filter without having to hold the hose.

 The thing is a little wobbly, as it's tall and thin, with joints that are a bit hacked (though those through mortises don't look too bad in the pictures, huh?) but with it being tucked in next to the buttress, there's really nowhere for it to wobble to.

Oh, and did I ever post the finished little deck bit?  There's that too.  It's small like that because the main idea of the west side of the house is to have a big patio, so I didn't want the deck taking up that room.

Clay and Dirt

Well, another repair job on the clay plaster under the stair runners was needed. I didn't take a picture of the big chunk that I peeled off (about a foot long) but here's a shot of the first round of limewash going onto the patch:

And here's after about 6 coats, all cleaned up (you can see it if you're up close, but this looks pretty good):

 Meanwhile, Melissa is digging away at the patio area, getting it ready for gravel, sand and stone. She uses flour to draw her lines on the ground.

 and has made all sorts of calculations based on the tops of the post footings.  We don't want the post footings to be low spots (where water could settle and then soak into the posts) and with the slope going down to the west, we have to figure out stairs and such... so each footing becomes a bit of a marker.  Unfortunately, we didn't really think about that back when we dug those footing holes...so they don't follow a specific pattern.

Kitchen work

Another perfect loaf of bread comes out of the oven... we bake about every 5 days or so.

I dried a bunch of wild blackberry leaves for tea, and decided to chop them up in the blender thing... that may not have been a good idea, as now they're so powdered they will go through the tea strainer. oh well.

self made exhaust fan

In an attempt to get my fridge exhaust chimney to draw better (to get the heat out away from the back) I built a little 12v fan from scrounged parts.

 I got the actual fan from a CPU out of the dumpster of computer parts at the dump.  Got the evil eye from one of the employees, so I showed him what I was taking and he said, "well, this one time".  wired it up and found a $4 used laptop transformer power cord and away we go!

Round Table Repairs

I started noticing the round table we use to eat at was more loose than normal, so I started taking a closer look and found now only was the latch and hinge a bit messed up (the top flips up) but the legs were all loose as well.  So I took it apart:

 Turns out two of the 6 pegs holding the legs in had broken at some point, and the glue job had failed:

 Also, one of the two screws that acted as a hinge had snapped off, so I had to drill it out.  Notice the cool 'egg beater' hand drill doing a great job.

 Then, gluing it all back up and replacing the hinge screws with new ones, we're back in business.

Adventurer Guests!

The lovely Josh and Zora and their super smart kids were here this week, checking out the extreme end of the 'green lifestyle'.  So nice to have people come visit and stay over.

the local paper was writing about 'living sustainability', and in describing the spectrum, we were definitely the crazy far end.  funny.  Anyway, it's a great time of year for visitors.

Monsters

Digging away at the patio area these days, already trying to stay out of the sun in the middle of the afternoon as it's too hot.  The wheelbarrow is becoming more of a Frankenbarrow; I've built a wooden wheel, re-enforced the axle connections with wire and extra wood, and now added a plywood front, as the plastic was starting to crack and buckle during dumps. I wonder how long it will last. 

and check out this beast I dug up near one of the madrone stumps. amazingly, it didn't get cut in half with the shovel. still, pretty gross looking grub. 

Taking Things Down

As you know, we had a lot of mature madrone trees on the property before we bought it; they were cut down by someone for firewood, which also helped open up the area and made it look better.  Well, about 8 years later, a lot of these stumps have produced 'shoots' around them, some of which are getting big.  Here's a before shot of one uphill (east) of the house:

 and here's the same spot after I took that big one out.  I then have to cut up all the branches, compost the leaves, and buck up the big parts, and have yet to split those big parts into firewood.  Still, nice to have the opening.

 In the meantime, Melissa has decided to start on taking down the dirt in front of the house to get the area ready for our stone patio work.  She's going to dig down about 10 inches:

Spring is in the air

Since the main rains have come to an end, it's time to start thinking about patios and stone laying. Thus enters the second 'season of rock':

 and in the middle of the day, it's starting to look a lot like summer, with a solar powered dog and solar powered cooker:

 The grape cuttings are managing to leaf out a bit, so I'm hoping to increase my vine collection by quite a bit. I hope I can keep these going!

 and this wild lily, a Tiger Lily, came up in the meadow.  Now that I'm mowing with the scythe, I can go around these things easier.