Author Archives
Denise Thornton
BIRD’S-EYE VIEW AND A FREE TREE
A few weeks ago, our dear friend, Charles Heide flew over our house and photographed it from the air. He kindly sent us a CD with his photos, and I have spent far too much time gazing at them since. A bird’s-eye view of the world. What a wonderful sight. […]
MAPPING THE SECRETS OF OUR STRAW BALE WALLS
Underhill House is a blend of high-tech materials and natural building materials – like straw bale and lime clay plaster. But before they are, we need to map the mysteries that will be buried by plaster. Wiring, plumbing and wooden framing all need to be noted. Doug and I spent […]
THE FIRST PIZZA FROM OUR COB OVEN
Last summer, one of the crew building Underhill House asked if we would like to build a cob oven. Brad pointed out that we had all the materials on hand. stone left over from the slipform stone wall (see my blog post Creating a Cob Oven ) plenty of clay […]
THE SOLAR PANELS ARE UP FOR UNDERHILL HOUSE
This week we are finally getting the solar panels installed that will heat our floors and provide our domestic hot water! The process began months ago with Andy DeRocher our project manager at Full Spectrum Solar, who designed the system. Full Spectrum always uses Heliodyne panels, which have been made […]
FINISHING CONCRETE FLOORS SIMPLY
When planning to build Underhill House, we chose concrete floors because we want the most energy-efficient heating and cooling. Concrete is a great place to store heat. Our house is designed so that in the winter, the sun will pour in on our floors, and warm them all day long. […]
HOW TO CHOOSE YOUR PAINT
Trying to build as greenly as possible means constant decisions. When we got ready to paint Underhill House, we had two basic questions. 1. What company to go with? We started out getting paint from Sherwin Williams because we were familiar with them and liked them. We got the paint […]
THE PERPLEXITIES OF PAINTING UNDERHILL HOUSE part one
It’s time to paint the interior of Underhill House! Doug and I agreed to do the painting ourselves when we worked out the contract to build with Whole Tree Architecture and Structures . It seemed like one of the ways we could get our hands into the project and save some […]
PATCHING PUNCTURED PEX
Everyone I’ve talked to who has in-floor heat says they love it. Heat radiating from the floor feels like sun warming your back on a summer day. And it sure beats convection current coolly wafting past you, blown from a distant forced-air register. I’ve been told that people will comfortably […]
OVERVIEW OF UNDERHILL
As we get closer to completion of Underhill House (expected move in – mid December – Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!), I wanted to take a step back to appreciate the process that has brought us this far with a time lapse series of photos that follow our winding […]
Digging in the Driftless 