Our $150 Home In The Woods
(Page 6 of 7)
March/April 1972
By Mary Lee Coe
Our house was now ready for walls and Van and I began planning window placement so that we could get started building them.
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We put no windows at all on the north side of the house. It faces the woods (thus isn't open to much light anyway) and the solid wall plus trees gives us much protection against that chilly old north wind in the winter. On the east wall, which is the first one we boarded up, we located one window high on the northeast corner facing the loft and—beside it—cut a 2 x 2' air vent which we board over in the winter. The air vent is necessary since none of our windows open. Permanent windows are far simpler to install (just add extra vertical 2 x 4's where needed and nail in 2 x 4 crosspieces to complete a frame) and account for much less heat loss than windows that open and close.
The kitchen has another two windows in its east wall, two large ones across its south face and one tall pane of glass set into the west side. There are two more windows—a big one and a little one with vents above—in the living room area of the west wall and the loft has a large pane of glass set into its west side and facing our four seasonally inhabited Great Blue Heron nests.
Lastly, we positioned two windows in the south wall of the loft to overlook the lower roof and keep the upper level sunlit nearly all day. The eleven windows really open up the house and make me feel like I'm living with the trees. We compensated for their heat loss by making extra efforts to seal the walls airtight.
Those walls are a sandwich of one layer of boards, aluminum paper, spacers nailed into a pattern of open two-foot squares, aluminum paper and a second layer of clapboards. This method of construction—if you can get the boards free—insulates as well as fiberglass for much less money. It does require more construction time but, being near-permanent members of New Hampshire's hardcore unemployed, we have all the time in the world.
The door in the northeast corner of our cabin is constructed in the same manner as the building's walls and roof and, in spite of the many windows, we're warm and comfortable in all parts of the house even though our two stoves are inefficiently placed side by side.
To complete the outside of our new home, I stapled plastic around its lower edge, extended the plastic to the ground and buried it in a trench. This banks and closes the area beneath the house and keeps the temperature there about 35° Fahrenheit all winter . . . ideal for root storage.
Inside, we've left the cabin open rather than partitioned off into rooms, and the effect is one of sweeping airy space . . . making it the most unconfining home I've ever lived in.
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