By the way, the end-most window of the house, the “Star Window”, looks over the landscape and toward the ecliptic, so that we’ll be able to see the rising Full Moon as well as planets Jupiter, Saturn, and Mars as various times during the year.  This photo is of the rising...

ICF is great for energy efficiency and confort.  It’s excellent at stopping all three forms of heat transfer: conduction, convection, and radiation.  In addition, it provides a large thermal mass to stabilize inside temperatures while absorbing exterior heat or cold.  While the...

Here you can see an overview as the main level construction just begins, taken from the hill of dirt left over from excavating the basement.  The structural steel columns can be seen, as well as the tarp covering the ICF forms.  The basement excavation has been backfilled, and the wooden...

When she wasn’t busy earning money to pay for the project, Michelle worked as well, here screwing down floor decking.

Before there was a roof, there was a floor.  At left you see the steel floor trusses.  These were the crew’s first venture into erecting steel.  All of the steel, including both the floor and roof trusses, came as straight sticks that had to be located (in the unsorted, poorly labeled...