The health care industry uses enormous amount of energy and generates a vast amount of waste. What is going to turn this power-hungry, polluting ship around? Hopefully the next generation of medical care providers. If you would like to follow the progress of a new medical student who is focused […]
Underhill House got a thorough once-over last week. Scott Godfrey, Director of the Iowa County Office of Planning and Development in Dodgeville, had asked if he and a group of other regional zoning/planning colleagues from surrounding counties, all members of the SW District of the Wisconsin County Code Administrators, could […]
We are determined to make a sustainable home for ourselves and those who live there after us, but as much as we have focused on this goal during this intense building year, we need to step back periodically and remind ourselves that this structure is not just a shelter – […]
Doug and I participated in a 6-day straw bale workshop a few years ago, and I loved every minute of it, but though that was also a round timber home designed by Whole Tree Architecture and Structures, it was a single story building, and the ceiling was pretty level all […]
PLANNING TO DOWNSIZE WITHOUT REALIZING IT Things were happening fast 9 years ago for Doug and me. After years of searching for land in the Driftless Area, we happened upon the 44 acres that would change our lives the weekend before Labor Day. We came back for a second look […]
If you read our last blog post, you know how pleased we were with our hand-made, whole tree post and shiny, black mail box, ready to start receiving our mail from our rural delivery person. We just put it in last week and our change of address has occurred. We […]
I’ve always loved getting mail. I still write letters to my friends. And I look forward to my trips to the post office. Perhaps it’s genetic. My grandfather was a rural route mailman. When he first began making his deliveries, it was with a horse and wagon, and he loved […]
I’ve missed 10 days of posting because of a crashed computer, and our impending move to temporary quarters between the old and new house(now 10 days away) has made life pretty hectic. But exciting progress has been happening at Underhill House, and I’ll start catching up, beginning with the roof. […]
When you decide to build a new house, you are committing to move out of your old house, but getting these two activities to align is almost impossible. Putting a house on the market is a very uncertain process these days. Will it sell tomorrow? Will it sell a year […]
Underhill House is being built with a combination of natural building and high-tech green techniques and materials. Our exterior stucco lime plaster wall surface is one such convergence old and new. The prep work was state- of- the-art steel mesh and highly adhesive sealing tape (see Underhill House Gets Plastered: […]
Digging in the Driftless 