house coloring sketch...one day...

A few months ago, I read an article in DWELL magazine talking about the “slow build movement” happening in this country. Here I thought we were just slow builders, but it turns out we are actually part of a “movement.” While I’m not too sure the “slow build movement’ is going to catch on like wildfire, (mostly because people don’t like to live too long with unfinished projects), we realized the time we’ve been taking to build may have actually led us do a few things right. We know this because we are still married. Pointing out what could have been done differently is a bit too easy, because it hits you like a cast-iron frying pan on the head. So I thought I would note a few things that have made a huge difference on our project.

Study the land. We spent 4 years figuring this out. Making our way through paths of prickly salmonberry bushes, old skidding trails, taking short courses on forest stewardship, coloring the woods with strange looking ribbons, and noting the changes in the position of the sun in the winter and summer. Watching where water pooled or vernal ponds formed. The best money we spent in the very beginning was getting our property surveyed and knowing where our lines and corners were. The architects and I used the PDFs the surveyors gave us to figure out all kinds of things.

Ted Hunter organizes panels on top of the slab.

Surround yourself with great folks and seek the right help. Find people who won’t dismiss you when you tell them you are going to build your house yourself. Architects Tara Romano and Neil Stevenson from Neil Stevenson Architects gave us a great modern house design, with an open floor plan that would allow us some flexibility. Our contractor, Ted Hunter came with his own crane truck and preferred to work alone with owner/builders. Steve Thornton, a friend and designer/builder became our sounding board and offered up great advice along the way.

Build community. When you build on an Island, everyone knows each other. Building suppliers, equipment rental places and landscapers become a big part of your world, so pay your bills on time and it’s amazing how many people will want to work for you.

Getting electrical through the conduit in utility trench.

Utilities first. We first dug a 400 ft. trench and put in all our lines ourselves, leaving the connections to the experts. We carefully hung the water and telephone lines above the propane and electrical conduit. (Care had to be taken with this trench along the driveway as it went through part of our wetland). More important than a toilet (you can rent those), was having access to the internet, electricity (no noisy, gas powered generators) and a wired phone line since cel reception is spotty. Putting in the lines in first also allowed us to build a gravel driveway to accept heavy equipment in Summer. (See video of utility trench).

Design for dual purposes. Instead of wasting space, much of our space does double duty. For example, a larger hallway is not just a corridor but massive storage space allowing my husband to roll out big metal racks that travel down to the living room/photo studio. At the other end of the house, my office contains a recessed wall bed to quickly become a guest room.

Amazing screeders Conner and Jason Chang

Concrete love. Our first floor is all one big 6-inch concrete slab with a radiant floor heating system. Taking great advice from Jason Chang, our fabulous screeder, I designed a joint control pattern (cuts that are no deeper than 2-inches) that connected all interior corners and left no areas more than 100 square ft. Not only effective but very cool looking. As soon as it was done, our contractor Ted had us put 4×8 sheets of masonite on the entire floor to protect it. It has made a huge difference.

The second floor goes up on a very cold day.

Prefab is fab. We chose to build with a Structural Insulated Panel System or SIPS. Our design was prefabricated and shipped to us and I am amazed at how little waste we have had on site. We’ve been building for two years, and we are only now about to make our third trip to the dump with a small Toyota Rav and a small 4×8 ft. trailer. Are there things that are a pain about building this way that no one tells you? Oh yeah, but I am beginning to see and feel the benefits. One of which was how easy it was to fit and level the windows and doors.

Bob prepares to install a door in his own unique way.

Don’t scrimp on windows and doors. This was our biggest expense next to the SIPs and I have no regrets. (I can live without that fine Italian couch, Herman Miller desk set and Espresso machine.) Between the SIPs and the windows, we noticed the difference immediately when we were able to heat up an unfinished, enclosed room in the middle of winter in just two hours with a couple of electric heaters.

An organized jobsite is a happy site. I am a piler. It is both an attribute and a fatal flaw. When working with SIPs the panels had to be organized in a certain order so the crane could pick them up in succession. I built a workbench for our little tools, bits, blades, squares, etc., and put it on wheels and put together some of our other wheeled shelving for heavier duty tools. Lumber is still stacked in the big room on dunnage. Garbage cans were laid out for food waste, usable wood trimmings, and recycling. A massive stack in the front of our property divides up the good and bad wood scraps. Folding all visqueen and plastic sheeting scraps, saves tons of room. Sweeping up at the end of every weekend, made it so much easier to work.

Draintile surrounded by gravel and wrapped in groundcloth before burying.

Go with the flow. In the Pacific Northwest, water is a major issue and due to a slope in the back of the house, we have installed three lines of defense against water intrusion against the foundation. The first is actually a FormaDrain footing form. Slits in this recycled plastic channel allow water to flow around the perimeter of the house and collect in an outlet on the SW corner. Meeting up with that is a draintile about 2 feet out from the foundation running around the entire back and sides of the house. (Another is planned later). Against the stemwall foundation we installed a Delta Foundation Drainage system to waterproof the stemwall. We have even purchased metal furring strips from Furring Master for a rainscreen that will provide an airspace between the house siding and the weather wrap. Lastly, a cistern will collect runoff and draintile water and be used as fire protection in summer. In winter any overflow is part of a plan to make the hydrology healthier in our wetland through yet another level-spreading infiltration trench.

Jen Pennington is the owner and designer for Rhizome Design & Images. She lives and works part-time in Seattle while building a green house with her husband, photographer Robert J. Pennington on Whidbey Island.

Now that we had that sorted out, it was time to move some dirt around. The back of our house site has a slight grade to it. With the help of Jim Lux, our amazing Bobcat acrobat/landshaper, part of the slope was cut and brought down into the lower areas to flatten out the grade. (See Jim’s Bobcat Ballet video below). Big boulders were delivered, and Jim artfully placed them behind the house for the beginning of a retaining wall. We then got some fill to even it all out and a couple of weekends of renting a JBC front-end loader and dirt compactor from Double R and we did the rest. Most people think we are crazy to do this, and far be it for us to let them think otherwise. This is not for everyone. And most people hire it out which is way smarter. But then again digging is in my husband’s blood and part of his DNA makeup. His father was a mining engineer in West Virginia, Wyoming and Utah. He once made Bob help dig a swimming pool. But that’s another story.

As for me, I got good at the front-end loader. Must have been from watching Jim all those times. Never thought I’d say that or have a reason to. Then Bob and I would switch off and I’d walk around with the dirt compactor. Two-hundred-fifty pounds of a vibrating, shaking plate that compacts dirt in six to eight inch layers. While tedious, it is not that hard. My husband in his own charming way found the only bright spot about me using it had more to do with the jiggling movement of certain upper body parts. “Yeah, keep laughing clown boy, you won’t find many wives that will do this.” But hey, if it keeps him motivated, so be it.

After that was finished, we spent two days measuring out the foundation and setting pins in the ground. Then the batter boards were set in. We even used lime as opposed to spray paint to make our markings. When we were done it looked like some new field game played on a square court. We were now ready for the arrival of Uncle Ted, our builder and setting up the forms for the stemwall.

Above: Images from the foundation pad in progress.

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