Our first helper

We have just had for a week our first helper, thank you Pauliina! This week we peeled logs, we have started to peel only the bigger ones because we might have enough of small ones. When it was too cold to peel we cleared trees off the road and took branches off the trees that will be cut down. Also our neighbor came one day with her two kids and Leo had loads of fun with them, it's the first time he had kids as company in the forest and he was delighted!

 A fun way to travel back to work after lunch break

Lots of helpers peeling logs

The design of our house

The design now is a simple circular floor plan with posts about 2.7 meters apart to suit the size of trees we will use for the beams. There will be a large, at least 1.5m overhang to protect the walls from the rain and to give shading to the south windows in the Summer months. Mick really likes the idea of a central roof light to brighten the middle of our home so we might build one of them.

We had planned to have the roof and floor insulated with straw but now we are thinking of another option of cellulose. We were thinking if we don't get straw bales at all we could have the whole house of cellulose but how unromantic that sounds! "Our round cellulose house". Oh well, I'm sure we will get straw, at least the coming summers straw and we can use it as much as we need so we don't need to make a cellulose house.

Designing on paper...and snow!

Mick, Leo and Luna in our house out of snow (not in the real location).

Mick, Leo ja Luna meidän (lumi)talossa (ei siinä mihin talo oikeasti tulee).

Designing the house is not fast and we feel it shouldn't be done in a hurry. It will be something we live in for a long long time so designing it well is important. Some of the books Mick has been reading say one should spent a year observing the place where the building is going to come to see how it feels in different times of year and that way you really know where you want things. We wont be doing this but we do try to go to our plot to see it in different weather and to try different places for the house.

Mick has been sketching now for a week or two to get some ideas of our house on paper. He has done ideas of how the house will be built for example how often will there be support posts, what comes on them, how the roof is built and so on. We are going to plan the layout of inside together.

Another thing we did, more to do with how the actual house feels like from inside, is we built in our yard with the help of our friends Outi and Florian (thank you!) our house out of snow in the actual size. The benefits of living in Finland! We never got the walls very high before we started working in the forest but it did give a good feeling about the size of the house. We tried one layout by building the stove, kitchen, hall and toilet in the house. Later we realized that wasn't a good layout and we were meant to try other ones. We also put up poles to show where the posts will be. This snow house was really fun and its lucky we can try our house out like that. Unfortunately it was demolished yesterday because it was in the way of some trucks getting trees the neighbor had cut down, but if the weather is right and we prioritize we could built another house out of snow.

Our house build out of snow in the actual size. The poles are about 2,5 meters long. 

Meidän talo oikeassa koossa rakennettuna lumesta. Seipäät ovat noin 2,5m pitkiä.