Dunvegan on Forestis Haefen

Here is the view of our house from the back. It looks huge in the photo, but in real life it doesn't. And inside it seems just right, neither too big nor too small. When I designed it, I used my experience of our old house to help me- "The dining room would be just right if only it were another 2 feet wide." "I'd like the kitchen, which is a perfect size, to be open to the family room so that I can visit with everyone as I wash dishes." etc. The house is burmed in, so what looks like the bottom floor in this photo, is actually the basement. The front and left side are completely subterrainian, the right side and back have windows to let light in. The slope of the land was absolutely perfect for a walk-in basement, no need to mess with the slope at all. The basement is all storage now, and our temporary kitchen. Eventually the carpentry shop will be in it.

Here is the front room, used as our bedroom, office and meditation room these past two and a half years. One day our "real" bedroom, upstairs, will be done- but for now the upstairs room is Bill's workshop- where he mills the wood for our furniture and frames, and puts the pieces together. Downstairs, I cut out little pieces to paint or stain, and glue them onto the doors, then paint or stain the big pieces as well.

This is the living room, in the back of the house. This is one corner of a large room in which I do my work on the furniture, as well as much of my painting, especially when the weather is cold. In warmer weather, I have a studio upstairs in the front I paint in. It is also my sewing studio- a weird combination, I know, but it is working pretty well for me.
You can see the thickness of the straw bale walls around the doors and windows. I added a lot of clay to the bales to get that lovely undulation in the surrounds. They are like big sculptures, and I never tire of looking at them. I love all the imperfections, the curves and bends, the bumps and texture of the walls. I purposely did not put a really smooth and refined finish plaster over the clay base plaster. I smoothed them up cursorily with several coats of lime wash worked into the surface of the clay with a stiff paint brush, then painted on lime wash with colour pigment added, natural yellow ochre and sienna Italian clay, mixing the ingredients untill I got the shades I wanted. The dividing walls are regular dry wall, on typical 2x4 framing. Bill did most all the framing on the inside walls, and he did all the dry wall. He did most of the drywall taping and mudding. We both did texturing on those walls- I wanted them to look like clay walls- we would have made them of clay, but by the time we started on them we were pretty much doing it all ourselves, and time was becoming an issue.The perimeter walls were done with lots and lots of help. Daryl Berlin of Emerald Earth, here in Anderson Valley, was instrumental in our building process, and he brought groups of people that he had helped train in natural building skills, for us to hire. It was a lot of fun to have all these interesting people around working with us, and made it go very fast. The outside got its final coat of lime plaster from a team of Daryl's people after just a few months over a year from starting- it would have been less than a year, but the first time they came to work, we had an unusually wet spring, and it rained and blew so hard they could hardly work, got one wall done, and had to arrange to come back a few months later. Most of the inside Bill and I have been doing, though Juan did work with Bill on some of the inside framing. Our neighbor Steve, also a carpenter, and excellent cabinet maker, did the stairs, and also hung the exterior doors. We also had help with the basement from various people- more about that another time...