An Under-$10,000 Ozarks Home

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I intended to excavate the root cellar by hand-digging an 8'-deep, 12'-square hole beneath the kitchen and dining room area—but after 2-1/2 weeks of backbreaking work I finally surrendered and hired a man with a backhoe to finish the job. Then I shoveled in and leveled a foot of coarse gravel to create the cellar floor, and set a post at each corner. (The four root cellar posts had to be extra long, since they extended 8' below ground level.) I toenailed treated 2 X 6s horizontally (at 24" intervals) between the posts, applied a bead of caulk, and then nailed treated 1/2" plywood to the outside of the 2 X 6s. And last, I draped 6-mil polyethylene plastic around the cellar walls, lapped and caulked the joints, and backfilled the walls with coarse gravel. Our cellar stays dry even after a heavy rain.

Since our building site is sloped 1' in 10', my next job was to provide a level surface on which to build the first floor. Rather than simply, cantilevering the floor out over the slope and leaving a crawl space beneath, I built an insulated retaining wall of treated wood around the lower outside perimeter of the poles, enclosing the sloped area beneath the house—the area that would otherwise have been crawl space. Then I filled the en closure in with soil dug to make our root cellar, until the surface within the retaining wall was level to a height at least 6" above the outside ground level.

ROOF

After setting the posts and installing the upstairs floor beams, I notched the 2 X 12 rafters and bolted them to the top of the posts with 5/8" bolts. Then I nailed 2 X 4 purlin ties to the sides of the rafters (the ties were perpendicular to the rafters, extended 9" above them, and were spaced 24" apart) and nailed the 2 X 10 purlins to the ties, parallel to the length of the house (see photo 3).

With that done, I nailed prepainted metal roofing (twenty-two 36"-wide sheets 17' long) directly to the purlins. Sheathing isn't necessary with metal roofing, so the cost of the system (about $42 a square) is cheaper than that of conventional roofs, and requires much less labor to install—it took only about 20 hours to complete our roof. Moreover, because it has a baked-on epoxy finish, this roof is extremely weather-resistant and shouldn't need to be replaced in our lifetime.

House Design Highlights

• Measures 20' wide (north-south), 30' long (east-west). Built on twelve 6" X 6" treated posts spaced 10' apart. Steeply pitched roof (12/12) with upstairs bedroom loft.

• All beams, framing lumber, siding, and paneling are rough-sawn southern yellow pine purchased green from local sawmills (at 17 to 20¢ per board foot) and dried for one to three months before construction.

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