A House, is it a Woodworking or a Carpentry Project

A House as a Woodworking Project

Yes, thats right, thats how I’m looking at this rehab. I know most of the work will be carpentry by its very nature, but we are going to approach putting this house back together from the mind of a woodworking. When it comes to space and workmanship I want maximize the potential for the use of forgotten space, and work at a higher quality of workmanship than most carpenters in todays housing market. While making it as energy efficient as we can.

A house, or a used truck?

With the money this house cost we could of bought a late model used truck, At 895 sq ft and 75% gutted, setting on a nice lot with plenty of trees and the outside in fair condition it wasn’t a difficult decision to invest in this little house. While we are constrained to the footprint of the house it is basically a blank canvass for us to design a house within. there are a couple factor’s that we have to work around.

Getting the feel for the function

I worked as much as a carpenter in my life as I have as a cabinetmaker and woodworker so I like to design function into the form. when designing a small space function becomes the driving force in the design. I start this project by just getting a chair and a pad of paper my camera and spending time in each space, taking pictures and making some sketches, I do this for each room. I also ask others who will live here to be involved in the design phase, and then we compare ideas, you will be surprised how many great ideas can come from doing this.

There’s a brainstorm a coming

Brainstorming is a great tool that many of us overlook. I normanlly try to take on all my design work with very little input from people around me. When I worked in a large cabinet shop the designers never asked for our (the cabinetmakers) input until something was screwed up then they wanted all our ideas how to fix it. Someone once told me the only bad idea is the one you keep to your self. My wife is very good at finding storage space without killing the living space and this excites the designer in me. Some of the things we want to do is build cabinets instead of framing in closet walls, building build-ins where we can, building the kitchen with concrete counter tops. We are going to use pocket doors to save space and add more widows  to give the house more light.

Stick around and follow me as we rehab this house

My shop is full of all our furniture and belongings, and we will be living in a camper while we do the work.

1.  framing bathroom
2. a toilet and plumbing
3. hot water heater and a tub/shower
4. furnace
5. framing bedrooms
6. wiring lights and plugs
7. drywalls

Well wish us luck and come back a visit often there will be weekly updates, along with maybe some post about the beer, mead and hard cider we are brewing and sour dough bread we bake.