Olson Kundig Cabins

I'm fairly certain that these have made more than a few rounds out there in blogland but they're new to me. When a friend sent them over last week, my jaw dropped. Then I sent them to C and his jaw dropped. And then he started planning.While that little studio that I keep talking about is still a long while away from becoming a reality, the scheming and collecting is in full force. We've now collected all of the windows we'll need and we're moving on to scouring for doors. Sketches are being thrown around and when I say, "Wallspace! I need wallspace!", C's brain goes into overload and figures out how to give me more wallspace.Our studio will obviously be simpler and more amateur rustic than these beauties but one of the best parts of planning is gathering the inspiration.***all images from Olson Kundig Architects***

this summer is almost over and i can hardly remember when it began. i've been lazy with posting, mainly because it's been kind of busy around these parts. i'll try to post some more photos this week. we're pretty darn excited about all of the work...

remember way back when we bought all of that redwood off of craigslist?

we deemed august the month for using up that wood and we (well C, at least) have certainly lived up to that promise.

we knew that we would be using a good portion of the wood to rebuild our rotten front porch. what we didn't expect was that we would not be doing the work ourselves. after ripping up the all of the wood porch, we took one look at the non-existent foundation and the one rotten loose 4x4 that was holding up THE ENTIRE house and knew that we needed some professional help.

first a few pictures of the porch before: we interviewed a few people and picked the one who seemed least frightened by our floating house and most willing to put up with our constant questions. now we have a beautiful concrete seismically-sound foundation and a water-proof basement.

to save ourselves some money, we opted to finish off all of the non-structural work ourselves. at this point, the porch is still unfinished and waiting for the redwood decking and railing.

we saved the siding (it was all redwood!) when the guys tore down the wall and asked them to reuse as much as possible when they rebuilt the front. we just spent 3 days patching old holes and cracks, caulking gaps and sanding the surfaces so when we repaint the house it won't look so frankensteinian.

i won't bore you guys with gobs of construction photos (just a few dozen), but i do think it's pretty darn exciting...

also, there's one very cool secret hidden under the new porch that i'll share with you later this week.

the past 2 weekends have been a bit unusual in that C has been focused on one insane project up on our hill while i've spent my time inside working on a separate project. a nut-job friend of ours got the idea that we need a deck at the top of our hill, and that it needed to be done by august. C happily obliged and the two of them have spent the past two weekends digging 6 enormous holes (in dry clay dirt), hauling 24 80lb bags of concrete up the hill and then carrying concrete footers up after. progress as of last weekend:by now, they've constructed the footers of the deck and will start framing on friday. more photos to come.

while this chaos was unraveling, i quietly set out to collect all of the wild plums in our backyard and make jam. they're not very tasty eating plums but make yummy jam. they're yellow, just larger than a big cherry and require pitting...after 2 weekends of collecting and tinkering i've made 14 jars of sour plum jam, 20 jars of plum lavender jam, 8 jars of plum chutney, 2 jars of pickled plums (per this recipe) and 3 big jars of plums covered in vodka that will hopefully become something lovely in a few months. we still have at least 2 trees that remain covered in plums not to mention the neighbors trees that they're begging me to harvest. any other plum recipes i should try out?