Bales stacked, framing started!

I guess I am too busy to keep an updated blog, I really am trying though. Maybe I would do better just adding pictures more often. I will try that from now on.
Anyway, we have finished stacking bales, we just need to add the lath so we can stuff the rest of the straw.
Below are the pictures of the progression of stacking the bales.

And now the interior framing......

Picture of the exterior at this stage

Next, we will tackle the other side of the house, more pictures to come.

It's been a Little over a month since my last post, heres the progress....

The last 20 something days have been quite interesting, from starting trusses to having them finished up by someone else. 

Almost a whole day at putting up this one truss, OMG, that was horrible! The group included My husband and I, daughter and her boyfriend and my father in law. The result is after numerous attempts with several different ideas. 

Next day with only My husband and daughter we installed two more, then called it quits. this pic has two installed, I swear we did three, I just didn't get a picture.

I have to say, putting those trusses up were really scary, so scary in fact, we halted progress to search for a framing crew to install them for us. If you have never noted the steepness of a 7:12 pitch roof, well lets just say looking up at it is way different than looking down from it.

The big deduction from our budget after finding a crew to install the trusses, fascia, soffit, decking, and roof underlayment...... $4150 = Ouch!
But that was cheaper than the other quote I got for $5400.

This took the framing crew one day!

Next day they had some fascia, soffit and decking done.

3rd day by around noon, almost done.

By the end of 3rd day they were finished to dry in stage. 

Ahead of the big storm this weekend we bought builders risk insurance on Friday and made sure we got the exterior all sheathed with plastic. So, below are the pics of where we are now. Tuesday we start stacking bales again.

Tech-shield roof decking for added energy efficiency

I guess from here on out it's going to be interior only pictures since we won't be lime plastering until we are done with the inside to allow for our lime to slake. The slaking will be another day though. I am still trying to figure the whole lime plastering thing out, Ugh!

And we are back up and running!

I know it has been a long time since I posted any progress on our house. That's because there hasn't been any!. I won't go on a long tangent about why, that would just bore you, I will just give it to you in a nutshell.... Too much rain and we started a new business for our daughter that needed all our efforts to get it going.

So what got us back up and running? Well, last weekend we went to the Mother Earth News Conference here in Texas and they had a speaker doing a workshop on straw bale building who I was able to speak with at the end. He was very helpful and pretty much talked us into changing our strategy from load-bearing to post and beam. Thanks Chris McClellan from http://www.unclemud.com you have got us going again!

So the idea is that we won't worry so much about the weather now because once we build the roof, we can hang plastic and stack bales whenever. The only problem is that the amount of work we put into it which we are now dismantling is sort of heartbreaking. Oh well, we will move on and all will work out from here on out, right?

Below are some pictures of what we have gotten done so far with the change, we decided to build our "pavilion" that will be the roof to our house with cedar posts, we will top that with a double 2x10 sandwiching a piece of plywood between it. I will post more pics as we do more, but we are only working on it when we have free time.   

We installed super heavy ell brackets secured with concrete anchor bolts.

Posts are 10' tall, we will cut them down 3" to compensate for our concrete lip.

You are looking at a 14' window buck, I know, it's awesome!

The interior ceiling height will be 10' tall!!! I love how height makes a room feel larger.

Finally Started Stacking! Lots of Pics!!!

This is really nothing but a picture post, I have don't have anything to say other than I am so happy we are finally building a wall.

1/2" Strapping we will use to tie bond beam to foundation

Strapping tensioner tool

We made these T's to tie the interior walls into the bales

We made corner frames to keep everything straight and square

Another pick of temporary corner frames

First bales being installed

It didn't take long to get this far

This is how I am dividing bales when necessary

The first window buck is installed.

Notice the wall T's? We installed them into the wall with rebar.

That is all I uploaded today, I will try to post more pictures tomorrow.

Starting The Bucks

Wow, talk about a lot of rain. When it wasn't raining, it was Thanksgiving. Then it started raining again. I was starting to think we were being cursed, but the weatherman says no rain ahead for the next couple of weeks give or take the small 20% chance on two different days during that span. Fingers crossed!

Today we started making the door bucks and cut all the wood for the window bucks, we will fasten them together and finish the big window along with the double door tomorrow. You will see in the pictures below that we opted to make the bucks out of  2" x 12" boards because we felt that would be a much better/stronger option to keep the doors and windows squared up well. Our doors are all 8' tall and almost all of the windows are 6' tall.

This is the wood we purchased to make the bucks

First door buck 36"x 96"

Another view of the first door buck

Second door buck 36"x 96"

Cutting window bucks

5 window bucks cut, just need to be fastened and squared

Wood that is left to make the double door and 14' long window plus enough leftover to make some unrelated chairs :)

Remember baby Freedom born on election day, here are a couple of pictures of his super cuteness below.

Starting to eat haygrazer

Freedom is nursing smashed between his momma Lily and aunt Daisy

More pictures to come, hopefully tomorrow after we finish the rest of the bucks and other framing related stuff.