The Wood's Croft

Over the past couple of months the weather has made work progress slower than expected. A colder than usual winter in southern Sweden made it hard to dig (or very expensive) so we just had to accept the situation and wait for better weather.

It's been a really long time since we last posted any updates, mostly due to a lot of other work, but also less interesting things to write about. In this post, we'll try to summarize what's happened during 2023.

The past 6 months have passed pretty quickly with lots of administrative work and repetitive tasks like paneling and insulating.

After almost a full week of digging down various types of tubing and pipes we have the sewer system done, the new water well is connected and we ready for the electric company to connect our house to the grid. Very happy to be done with this work.

Lot's of things happening this time of year. Hot humid weather but good progress with a new water well being drilled, more insulation and the sewer system installed and ready to use.

Been busy with life in general so progression haven't been slow in the last few weeks. Most of the time has been spent on continuing to insulate the rest of the house.

And so came the great easter weekend of 2022 with high hopes of lots of progress but as many times before, things didn't work out entirely as planned although we did manage to make some good progress.

Another long easter holiday is approaching and we're planning to do a lot of work with help of a few friends. We've ordered a lot of insulation, paneling and flooring for this and did so early to make sure we got everything in time.

Up until this point we've only had some simple boards to cover the small doors and the larger one at the east gable end has only had a sheet of plastic stopping people and animals from getting in. We commissioned the local carpenter to help build the doors and together we installed them.

As we learned, it's hard to make progress during winter with less daylight, colder weather and overall less energy to spare. However, we did manage to make some progress over the past few months.

Fall is here yet again with shorter and colder days. In the past few months we've gotten more cladding in place, got all windows in place and we bought a huge old drawer cabinet for the local hardware store.

Long time with no posts but things have been progressing nonetheless. The gables are up, all sheathing are in place, most battens are in place and about 20% of the burnt timber cladding is in place. A lot of learnings in the process but it's nice to finally see some parts of the build actually fully finished.

As we never managed to get north facing roof covered with the first protective layer, it's been covered by 3 large tarps until now. With a new scaffolding purchased we got hold of a great contractor who came in a did a great job in just a few hours covering the whole roof up.

With the frame up we go to work with the next thing we could do ourselves, the sheathing. While to roof is not done yet the sheathing was something we are ok with doing ourselves.

We've been busy the last couple of weeks with the last preparations getting all material, screws, scaffolding, nails, machines etc. in place for the planned easter weekend framing. There was a lot of things that needed to work out right and while not everything went as smooth as we were hoping it's fantastic to finally see frame fully erected.

When we designed the workshop roof, its slope was decided based on what we were planning to do on the house to make the roof a distinct connection between the two buildings. However, after a few weeks of thinking and designing we've decided to change the roof slope of the workshop.

Winter is here for real. While it's very beautiful outside it does introduce its fair share of issues when you have a cabin without heating and the temperature drops below freezing.

We're almost at the finish line with the workshop foundation. The only thing left is to pour the concrete slab. An important milestone for the workshop and at the same time a pretty nerve wrecking experience making sure we have not forgotten anything. Once we've poured the slab it's kind of point of no return for a lot of things.

Now that the insulation is in place we're almost at the point where we can pour the concrete slab and finish the foundation but first the in floor radiant heating needs to be put in place.

With a level gravel foundation in place, the next step is to place all insulation that will decide the outer perimeter of the finished slab as well as the floor height of the finished building. It all started an early, rainy but exciting Friday morning...

Before the insulation can be put in place we need to level the entire foundation off with a more granular stone crush. The coarse 0-90mm would not be very suitable for placing the insulation on so we had 20m3 of 4-8mm stone crush delivered and got to work.

With the foundation marked out we were now ready to take the next step and actually start work on the foundation itself. First up is getting a pipes, sewer system and connections in place.

To prepare for all the plumbing work including septic system, sewage, water supply, etc we've come to the point where we need to mark out the foundation. Most things regarding contractors helping us has been decided and it's time to get busy.

We're planning a raised wooden path between the workshop and the house, similar to what you'd find in japanese gardens. Today it was time to clear the path and prepare for some digging.

We've tried a few different ideas for cooking over a campfire but none has really worked that well. They've been pretty crude and not really meant for campfire cooking but when we saw a Muurikka we thought it would be great for us.

There's been a lot of back and forth wether we should buy a sawmill ourselves, rent it or simply have someone else fo it for us. In the end we decided to spend the money once and hopefully get years of nice lumber at a very low cost.

Today it was time to fix the driveway and get it covered with gravel. After a lot of gravel, the end results looks great!

We finally break ground on the build. Today we got started digging the foundation of the workshop.