My First Building Project in Years

It was a hassle gluing up these 6 laminated curved rafters (out of 16′ long redwood bender board — 4″ wide by 5/16″ thick). I brushed glue on both sides of each piece, then bent in a floor jig and clamped every 20″ or so. Tedious, could only do one every day or two. Enter Billy, who planed therm down and strategized with me, and figured out how to get them into position, pinned down at the plates and evenly lined up in height. It surprised both of us how good it looked when we got them in place.

This is a 10′ by 10′ shed, and I wanted the curved roof for the feeling of spaciousness it affords in small spaces, witness vardos (gypsy wagons) or Basque shepherd’s wagons. Steep gable roofs for tiny homes are, to me, claustrophobic. And, while I’m at it, the typical tiny home loft at one end, reachable by a vertical ladder, is just plain bad design. In vardos, the bed is at one end, floor lever, with drawers beneath it.

This place is going to have a deck for sleeping under stars, facing east. Like most of what I do, I don’t have a definite plan, just designing it in the process of building it. Boy is it fun to be building (even something small) again.

About Lloyd Kahn

Lloyd Kahn started building his own home in the early '60s and went on to publish books showing homeowners how they could build their own homes with their own hands. He got his start in publishing by working as the shelter editor of the Whole Earth Catalog with Stewart Brand in the late '60s. He has since authored six highly-graphic books on homemade building, all of which are interrelated. The books, "The Shelter Library Of Building Books," include Shelter, Shelter II (1978), Home Work (2004), Builders of the Pacific Coast (2008), Tiny Homes (2012), and Tiny Homes on the Move (2014). Lloyd operates from Northern California studio built of recycled lumber, set in the midst of a vegetable garden, and hooked into the world via five Mac computers. You can check out videos (one with over 450,000 views) on Lloyd by doing a search on YouTube:

6 Responses to My First Building Project in Years

  1. Can't wait to see the final outcome. Bet it will be beautiful. I love the vardos too with bed on the ground floor. Hooks for a hammock would be cool too.

  2. I was planning to write an article about Keith Levy. Meanwhile, I found your blog. I myself is a blogger and I can tell the world that your blog, at least for me, is the best in the world.

    My only request is please never leave your blog die like Keith Levy. It is painful for many people who love reading blogs. A blog is the soul of a blogger, it should never die…yes…the bloggers may die but their blogs never. The readers can still read the blogs…they are like books which never die. Are Daniel Defoe or Shakespeare dead? No, their books have made them immortal…so are bloggers.

    A true blogger is the person who pens till the last day of his/her life.
    LB Thapa, writer, journalist & Blogger
    Nepal
    My Blog:roamingpost.blogspot.com

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