The final touch for the floor

One side fit snug and the other needed a bit more chiseling.

A perfect fit

In order to get the perfect fit Ira shaves off wood with the tip of the bar.

Preparing the trestles

Ira is cutting the ledgers that will rest on the posts.

Preparing the posts

Ira scored the posts - 1" deep by 3.5" wide and cut into those spaces with the saw. We hammered out the pieces that were left and chiseled out the remaining wood to size.

Pallet-Shower Construction

Here Ira is digging a posthole: These will hopefully be the last pieces pressure treated wood we use. Future posts will be made from black locust trunks which are resistant to rot and do not require the use of cement. Instead, road bond gravel can be used which helps prevent wood rot better than cement. Cement is so caustic that untreated wood will deteriorate. A good treatment for wood is borax (1 quart of borax mixed with 1 gallon of warm water and sprayed on moist wood). Due to the square pallets and a time constraint. The shower will allow us to comfortably stay overnight and motivate us to build a sauna asap. We are using oak pallets which once carried sacks of cement. These were reclaimed from a local hardware store.

"Hardwood lumber, such as oak, was used for 67 percent of the wood in pallets at the turn of the twenty-first century. Manufacturers used a total of 4.41 billion board feet of hardwood lumber for pallets. Other wood materials used included stumpage, logs, and cants. Waste materials were sometimes used by pallet manufacturers to make fuel wood, bedding, pulp, or charcoal, among other products".
for more info: http://www.answers.com/topic/wood-pallets-and-skids

Stone Stairway

These flat stones came out of the microhouse foundation. They lead up to the what will be the main entrance to the microhouse. They were arranged and placed by Eli.

Black Locust Post

Here is a black locust tree I debarked with the draw knife. It's 20' long, I cut it in half to use as two posts for a future work shed.