LITTLE HOUSE OF THATCH

You are invited to Day One of thatching our roof, if you’d like to meet some cool people (you) and learn a little about how it’s done. No date yet; we’ll let you know.

Greenbuilders has been having the time of our lives building an experimental structure using agricultural material. Okay, we’re alternating with conventional materials — why? because we’re not CRAZY!

Here’s what we mean— see? locust underpinning for the deck, under conventional joists.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We saved this gorgeous white oak (below) — okay, we couldn’t stop them from cutting it   down (we tried), but we did save it from the chipper and used it for our deck so we wouldn’t have to buy new wood. So some OTHER tree is alive, we hope.

Here’s the white oak, one slice, scribed into planks from the same tree.

 

 

 

This is a Virginia pine. On our property, the hardwood has been logged, leaving these pines which were never intended by nature as canopy trees — so they grow too high, and then, every time there’s a storm, they blow over. We cut six of those trees and combined them with steel.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The walls are load-bearing straw bale and plaster, combined with nothing (okay, that’s a little bit crazy). The roof will be a green roof (combined with EPDM) and the main roof, the steep bit you see above — that will be thatch. Brad Pitt, eat your heart out (yes, our thatcher did Brad Pitt’s house but it’s a secret …)