Imagine

Recently, I had a reader ask me how I went about building things as far as making drawings etc. or did I just work completely from what I visualize in my head? Well, it's kind of a combination of the two. For the most part, I can see completely, in my mind, what I want to build, whether it be a building or a bowl. It took me a long time to realize that apparently, not everyone can do this. I mean, it would only make sense that artists can do this, so I thought everybody did. From what I gather talking to others though, some people lack this ability. I can see what I want and even walk around inside, in my mind, opening doors etc, moving from room to room. It does help quite a bit though to make a sketch from this. There are always a few corners or such, or shapes that I can't quite see clearly, so drawing things helps me to see these. It's an odd thing to describe to those who cannot work this way.

Here in these drawings you can see a few of the sketches I did for the chicken house. Most are fairly rudimentary. In the top photo, down in the bottom, right corner, you will see the sketch that comes closest to what I'm actually building. I did more sketches than normal on this one to work out the roof lines, since it is actually two buildings joined together.
For a building, I will then generally do a footprint drawing or cut, to work out my foundation etc. and also to do a materials list from. It helps me count up how many 2 x 4's etc. I will need. I was also calculating my roof pitch and such and, as you can see from the many scratched out places, I had trouble remembering the formula to figure rafter lengths! It had been so long since I have done that I messed up several times. So, see, even those of us who build can forget if we don't keep in practice. I finally saw what I was doing wrong in the formula (I could remember that part) and figured everything out. Still, even with the drawings, I ended up changing things as I built to save on material and such. For instance, the front wall is not a full 8 feet tall and the roof pitch is not a full 3/12. So, I don't know if this helps anybody! When I built the house we pretty much went by the drawings but we might occasionally move some framing just slightly. On something like a shed or so however, we might move stuff quite a lot.
So, I guess to answer the question; I do make drawings but they are just a suggestion! and to help me make up a material list. Also, since I often built with salvaged material, I have to go with what I have sometimes and that affects framing, looks etc. I guess my artistic side allows me to "go with the flow" on building.

'S Wonderful

I knew if I sent my crappy little truss drawing to the architect, it would incite him to draw something really cool. And it worked! I think this is going to be really great! A little time consuming to enlarge and lay out but well worth it. We still have to run it by a structural engineer and get his blessing on it though. I hope this drawing makes sense to everyone. I know what I'm looking at but sometimes when you come at a drawing cold, it can be a little disorienting. This is basically a steel I-beam. The abstract designs that are the webbing will be cut out of 1/4" steel and welded to the 1/2" flat stock that will make the top and bottom flanges. The whole thing will be just over 24' long and 1'-8" tall. I'm not sure if ya'll will be able to read the details when this thing is posted. That top drawing where the designs are imposed over a grid are just to help me enlarge the design onto a paper template.
If I understood the architect right, the design was kinda inspired by a stained glass window that he saw at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in D.C. And we even thought that later I might could install some pieces of stained glass in some of the open areas of the truss.
What do ya'll think? I love it myself and Allen even likes it. We are all having alot of fun with this.
I should have some more to post this weekend as we are going to go ahead and deck the part of the roof that we have framed and continue the rafter tails also.

Just My Imagination

Well, this week has not been all that good. In between wretching my guts up with what I think was food poisioning, I have been trying to come up with a design for that truss. I finally sketched up something and sent it to the architect who may or may not send it to the engineer, depending on whether or not he thinks it will work. So far he does not think it will. The drawing may be a little hard to make any sense of. The long, straight pieces at the top and bottom would be two 2x6 oak (or similar wood) boards and the design work in between would be cut out of 1/4" or 3/8" steel and the edges sandwiched in between the oak boards and then bolted where you see the little black dots. The truss will have to be 24' long and about 2' tall. This drawing is not to scale as I was just trying to show the architect a basic idea of what I had in mind. So, anyway, we'll wait and see how bad they tear it apart. Unfortunately, this weekend may just be another weekend of tying up loose ends at the house and not making alot of noticable progress. That's the way it is sometimes with building; you have stages where you see alot going on and then you have stages where it seems like nothing is happening. Of course, framing is when you're suppossed to see alot going on, so this is very frustrating to me at times. Ya'll just bear with me and maybe we'll have more to show before too long. Allen says he will be starting soon on the hydraulic ram he is going to build to pump our water and I am anxious to see that!

Second Time Around

OK, we finally got the guest bathroom figured out and can frame it this weekend. I had more trouble with this than anything. I had it in my head that the entrance to the bath had to be from the living room but that was just not going to give us much room. It's funny how you get something stuck in your mind that it just has to be a certain way and then you can't think of anything else. I knew there had to be a solution that I was just not seeing so that's why it pays to have someone else look at it. Of course, he came up with a very logical answer once I let go of my irrational demands. Life in general is this way alot of times too I think. The writings of Joseph Campbell come to mind on that. Anyone else like to read his stuff?
We have changed some of the roof line also on this section so the clerestory windows will not run all the way across the house. The roof over this bedroom and bath will be a regular gable with a flat ceiling inside and the clerestory will only be in the living room/ kitchen area. This is pretty much what I wanted from the get-go. I think it adds a little more rhythm to the roof; not just a straight line all the way. I dreamed last night that we got the whole house finished but the only windows on the south side were clerestories; we had forgotten to put any windows in the walls! I hope I don't really start stressing over this thing as it progresses. Allen got the lumber this morning for all of this so we will be framing shortly but don't know how much we'll get done because there is suppossed to be some rain coming in.
These are the main books that I have been using for information and reference. I like them all very much and would recommend them to anyone interested in such subjects. Hopefully things will pick up a bit on the house now. I believe we have gotten most of the big decisions made and can really go to it now. The truss deal has pretty much decided itself. I called around to get prices on renting a small crane with an operator and such for hauling and setting that water tower leg and it was more than I thought. It would have been about $800- $1,000 just for the crane and operator. There's no way we can swing that. Allen might could have found someone to haul it for less but he doesn't have time or doesn't care to, so in my mind, we exhausted our options on that one. The truss we are going to build ourselves will be really cool I think and we can build it in place also, so there will not be a need for a boom truck.

Change Is Going To Come

Here is the latest version of this elevation drawing. I think this is very close to what we will actually build. The pitch of the roof has been lower from a 6/12 to 5/12, but since we are using a metal roof that's okay. This shortens the clerestory window quite a bit but I think it needed that. It seemed too tall before and I was afraid we might have too much window area! There is sort of a delicate balance with the south facing windows because you can't just go wild with them or you will overheat, especially in the South. I have had trouble convincing 2 certain people of this but I'm sticking to my guns on this one. The clerestory window is staying where it was but the wall in the kitchen has moved out. I'm not sure how that wall will top out though. Windows have changed and the door location. The covered walkway has been cut back to expose just the kitchen windows but it has been noted that one of those same certain persons was very disgruntled about that.
Sorry I have not posted much this week. I have been working from sun up to sun down and am really getting tired. I will try to post some more tomorrow and I know Friday. This weekend promises to be a good one though, as we should have good weather and good friends joining us again.

Hallelujah Chorus

These are some of the drawings we have so far but they are not THE drawings. But they are pretty close. We just have a few details to finalize and move a few little things around some. Maybe. Anyway, like I said before, I wanted to wait until we had final drawings but since its been going a little slow I figured I'd just go ahead with what we have. Besides, this shows a pretty accurate view of the process of designing a house. The grid overlay on this drawing makes it a little hard to see some of the stuff but I think you can tell pretty much where everything is. The kitchen windows are going to change some; I'm not sure that we need that many. One of the windows in the pantry is leaving; don't want it to get warm in there. The deck out front will be bigger. The side with the 2 bedrooms and a bath is not even done, we are still moving quite a bit around in there. As you can probably figure out, we are just building the side with the living room, kitchen etc. right now and then will move into that section and then build the remaining part of the house.
This view is one I showed before and now it has evolved some. This is standing on the west end of the house looking back at it. We are really having some difficulties with this covered walkway in the back there. I really like it and the way it looks but its going to block all my sun and thermal gain coming in through the lower part of the house. We would have to rely solely on the clerestory for solar gain. I don't want to try that plus I like sun in the kitchen. We've thought of skylights, cutting the walkway down etc. Now, the grid pattern and the windows, etc. are what is on the inside walls of the house. I was very confused by this when I first saw the drawing because I knew I did not want those big windows on the west end. Too much heat in the summer. Those windows and door are going to be on the wall next to the dogtrot. Those things projecting off the front of the house are the deck and a large planter. There are still plenty of details to add and other stuff. This weekend we hope to put down the subfloor and then next week I must finalize the window sizes because we'll be standing walls the next weekend!! I have to decide between double-hungs or casement windows etc. I like casements but we may have to go with double-hung (which I think is what he has drawn anyway) because of cost.

Shelter Me

I've been waiting to put up any drawings of the house until we had something final (these are preliminary) but since things are going a little slow I am going to show a little of what we have so far. This is a cross section of the living area (the section we are building now). Now this is very, very basic; we have not clarified how the roof will be supported or anything. This mainly shows what we are trying to accomplish as far as using the sun. The formula is very simple; orient the house length-wise on an east-west axis, concentrate glass on the south side, insulate well, provide adequate overhangs on windows for the summer. It is very important not to exceed 7% of your total floor space in south-facing windows though or the house will overheat. So if you had a 1,000 sq. ft house, you should have no more than 70 sq. ft. of glass on the south side. In cooler climates, they say to limit the north and east windows to about 3% but here in the south, we can have more because they help with cooling, which is our biggest challenge. The clerestory windows will help throw sunlight onto the north side of the interior and if we have an interior wall constructed for thermal mass, they will help warm it. I have been using a number of books for reference but I really like "The Solar House" by Daniel Chiras. Its very easy to understand and he gives you lots of references. You must calculate the size overhangs you need also so that all those south-facing windows will be shaded in the summer. I went to www.susdesign.com and they have a program you can use to figure that out. It is the coolest thing. You must know your latitude and longitude and the size windows etc. and it actually animates the sun passing over the window so you can see what it will be like.
This is Allen's version of the house that he drew some time ago. Now, he could actually build the house just from this but I told him I wanted just a little more to go on. We have one more I have not put up that shows the house from the outside but it is going to change considerably. We feel that the house should "reflect the vernacular of our area" as I once heard it put. I suppose that could bring many things to mind. It will employ some old southern methods of cooling such as a dogtrot that will also give it a retro look as well as the metal roof and lap siding.