Last week, the Skillful Meanies visited our three current construction projects in the Central Valley of California, which by afternoon was roasting at over 100F. The first project is a large house overlooking a lake with broad views of the Sierra mountains. We met with the owner and answered questions she had in understanding the foundation work, and had fun envisioning how the house will grow from its site.
On site designing
We’re a little further along at our other project, where we had a baleraising before the 4th of July, and now have windows in place and the beginnings of earth plaster on the interior walls.
Cindy Lan
We picked this time to walk through the house with the owners and discuss many of the interior finish details–one of the advantages of design/build is the ease with which we can refine and adjust our design as construction unfolds.
Our third project is a “hard hat area”, a community Teen Center. Skillful Means is installing the bales in this building by Jon Hammond at Indigo Architects. The project features curved walls forming classrooms, an internet lounge, and game areas.
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We took this opportunity to enjoy the spaces formed by the curved bale walls, and to resolve construction details and plan work for the week ahead. See the completed building!
Meanwhile, we received this note from a happy client in a strawbale house!
Love Note! Today it got up to 96 outside, and I was chained to my desk doing academic stuff. The study was always cool, the ceiling fan going only slowly, whereas in my upstairs study in Santa Cruz on a day like this I would drip sweat onto the papers. In sum, THANK YOU FOR OUR WONDERFUL HOUSE!!!
April 3rd, 2011 at 8:21 pm
[...] summer we installed balees and lathing for the Teen Center in Riverbank, California. The Center opened a month ago, and when we visited [...]
April 4th, 2011 at 9:41 am
[...] pictures are here! and [...]