When the road to building a “green” house is paved with a little mud.
by Jen Pennington
The sustainable marriage test.
Okay so my husband and I know enough about construction projects to make ourselves very dangerous. Though we’ve never actually built a house before, Bob is extremely mechanically inclined and I’ve done my fair share of art installations, and light construction on other people’s homes. We’ve both read a bunch of owner/builder books, articles, and said to ourselves, “pishaw…we can do this.”
The first new shed built
But just like any good personal relationship, you need to have a relationship with your projects. Courting smaller projects with the kind of puppy love we all have at the beginning of a project is important. It’s only after that, that we can work up towards more meaningful projects where becoming jaded and exhausted is par for the course.
Bob and I bought five acres on Whidbey Island just after we were married in 2003. We decided it would be best to test the strength of the marriage right off the bat by doing a few small projects together. The first project was a small cedar shed enough to keep our tools dry. We camped in our 82 Volvo station wagon on the weekends during this time. With Bob at 6’5” and me at 5’10” there ain’t a lot of room to get comfortable. But we were newlyweds and it was fun. The shed turned out really cute and as it was the first building it was our crowning accomplishment together. The marriage was still intact, so we were game for another project.
Lots of digging and leveling
Next project, a small 110 sq. ft kit sleeping cabin. It actually wasn’t building the cabin that almost killed us. It was the leveling, squaring the foundation piers, building the floor, fighting mosquitos and shoveling. Lots of shoveling. (Shovels have since become our icon, with our mantra being, “keep shoveling honey.”) It took us 4 weekends to do by hand. We would come home exhausted on Sunday nights, get out of the car, and feel like we had been through some forestry version of Boot Camp. Everything hurt, and there was no way either one of us would cook. It was this routine that earned us voice recognition with Pagliacci Pizza operators and many unnecessary pounds.
Finally after hauling in five kit loads with the Volvo, we laid out all the pieces, a convoluted puzzle with the craziest of instructions which I read out loud to Bob. Luckily the cabin itself went up in one weekend. After we had finished putting on the last metal roof piece, we walked inside and the rain just came down in buckets sounding like a 14-yr kid shooting BBs straight down on us. It took us a while to stop ducking. Nothing leaked! The feeling of accomplishment was overwhelming. It is a beautiful place and we built it together. After that we were hooked. Our marriage had again triumphed even through me barking instructions and Bob actually having to listen them.
Later that fall we knocked out a 3rd storage shed in two weekends and realized we were actually getting good at this. We wondered how hard could a house be…
Large scale puzzle kit
A popsicle stick cabin
Completed cabin
