A New Project

OK, we're on to something different now. Rachel and I have been in Hawaii over a month now, and we've done lots of good stuff. we spent a few weeks with a bunch of family here (luke's brother paul's girlfriend's family from texas and belgium!), had a lovely christmas and new year with all of them, and really got to see the sights of the island. now, we are on to why we are really here...For the last two or three weeks, we have been working on a live-in pole barn with brother Paul. paul and maxine live in an old plantation house in hilo, but paul takes care of an orchard 25 minutes' drive up the coast, so it's a lot of driving. they want to be at the orchard to be able to better care for it, not to mention getting out of town and into the country.

The barn structure is a timber-frame style design, built with green eucalyptus posts, recycled scaffolding from a local bridge repair, and other salvaged materials. As you can see from these drawings, there will be two floors, arranged in split-level fashion. Ground level will be storage, 1st floor kitchen, and loft bedroom.

To minimize material usage and impact on the land, we dug shallow footers and poured eight custom pier blocks to raise the posts off the ground and provide a solid foundation. i always thought a foundation was a standard thing in any house, but apparently, that isn't the case. luke said that because the ground never freezes here, there is no need for a sunken slab. the shallow footers and pier blocks are actually pretty fancy--some folks just build their houses right on the lava rock.

The formwork for the pier blocks was improvised from cheap plastic flower pots. The white block in the picture is only to hold the anchor straps while the concrete sets, it will be removed before the frame goes up. we poured the footers and the pier blocks on two separate days. the first day, i was just the gopher--hauling bags of concrete when needed, pouring water into the mix, just whatever i could do to make luke and paul's job easier. but the second day, paul had other work to do, so luke and i did the pier blocks ourselves. it was the first time i had ever worked with concrete (boy, does it make your skin dry!), and i really enjoyed it. it was a process to get everything level. we used a cool thing i had never heard of before called a water level to make sure each pair of footers was exactly even. i think they are quite pretty.

Paul and I selected 4 trees from the eucalyptus plantation 1 mile up the road. We felled, cut to length and dragged 10 posts from forest, then loaded them in his truck and coasted down the hill to the building site. i was pretty impressed with the boys' forestry skills. not to mention the truck. what a gnarly load. as they say here, "that truck is mean."

For the past few days, Paul, Maxine, Rachel and I have been like elves in Santa's workshop... marking, sawing, and chiseling mortises into the posts. No power tools except the occasional chain saw use, no generator... ocean views and sea breezes... This is the way to do it!

as you can imagine, this whole building thing is totally new to me. but it is really interesting, and i like that we are doing most everything by hand because it makes me feel like i can do it. i don't know where to start with all those intimidating power tools, but i can grab a chisel or a hand drill and get started. my chiseling skills are improving, slowly but surely.

mighty fine chisel work, if i do say so myself! okay, okay, luke had to come in at the end and clean in up a bit, but i am still pretty proud of it!

this is one set of posts, ready for the next step. you can see the opposing joints that will face each other when they are set on the peer blocks. these are the lower corner posts. we are almost finished with the upper corner posts. then the four inner posts. by the end of the week, we'll be ready to start putting the pieces together!