It Started with straw
John and I purchased this land in the late summer of 2018. We cleared a little over an acre for house, gardens, and barn, and began to build a straw bale home! We hand cut a timber frame from all of the trees we cut for the clearing and then finished it with stacked straw and lime plaster.
Featured in the April edition of Down East Magazine, to read the article and see more pictures, click here
You can watch the build on Discovery Channels “Building Off the Grid, Maine Straw Bale Cabin”
John sitting on our new walls!
Firing up the saw mill, we have got a lot of wood to mill for our straw bale timberframe
Milling our own lumber for our timberframe house
Hand cut tenons
All of the logs were barked by hand with a draw knife.
Leveling up the framing bed
putting up the first wall
Barking the trees made me super strong!
Hand hewn!
There's a tree in the house!
Esa on Break
Hand cutting notches for the wind braces
Puckett men doing what they do, hand cutting scarf joints
Hammering together mortise and tenons
Final framing wall going up!
Frame is done! Now onto the walls!
Mortise and tenon joints fitting nicely
Timber locking the wind braces
Stacking Straw Bales all the way to the ceiling! 18'
Cutting notches for the window bucks with a chainsaw
Stacking Straw bales for walls
And stacking
Thank goodness for friends that felt like throwing bales up 20' on their weekends
Stacking straw around window bucks
always on break
Sewing in the lathe through the bales to make curved sills
Sewing in the lathe to create the curved sills
Trimming the straw to prep for plaster
Who ever thought I would be weedwacking the house?
First coat of lime plaster on our straw bale walls!
My brave mother in law helping me sew in the inside sill curves through the straw
Found this on our newly installed door jamb
We're dried in, and have a couch!
John working late night to cut notches for the loft floor joists
Final coat of lime plaster on the interior
Fitting stones from the yard around a live edge slab, soon to be counter
Making a backsplash with pebbles I found in the stream
Finished backsplash
New live edge Beech Bar top we just milled from our firewood pile! What a score!
Solarium finally added to the front of the house! It heats the house and grows things year round!
John in his happy place with his Thor Hammer
Check Back! More to come….
Contact Us
If you would like to know more about the build, specifics about straw bale or plaster, or just want to say hi, please contact us! We aren’t professionals, but we know how much it helped us when people would answer a never ending list of questions for us and we would like to share our experiences with you!
