A little history: Last year, John built an Asian-style pagoda for our neighbor across the street, and together we turned the main rafter beams into dragon heads. It was a wonderful collaboration – which even ended up inspiring a painting – and we’ve been looking for a chance to repeat it ever since. Enter my mom’s house … carving out bear heads for the second-floor overhang has easily been the most enjoyable step in this building process. Here’s how it went:

1. The Template: After spending a long evening Googling countless variations of “bear head”, we gathered enough photo reference that I felt comfortable drawing a bear in profile. I sketched the outline out on a piece of plywood, and John cut it out so that we could trace my drawing onto the beams.

2. Sawing and Gluing: To make the beam ends large enough to fit the bear heads (and to give the roofline a flared lip), we needed to make each one out of two pieces of wood. First John carved out the lower jaw with a chainsaw, and then we glued the top piece on before he sawed out the rest of the profile. The eyes and ears were also drilled out shallowly. Here’s a bear after the rough-cut stage:

3. Routing and Sculpting: Sculpting the bears was another 2-step process. First John and I traced the curves of the bears’ fur with a router, which etched a hard outline into the beams. Then we used angle grinders to round off the bears’ forms, sand the noses smooth, and carve into the eyes. Renée came to visit us in in the middle of this step, and it was great to be able to give her a first-hand tour of our bear factory (and to see how pleased she was with them).

4. Staining: We ended up using four different stains to finish off the bears – dark brown for the fur, tan for the snout, ivory for the teeth, and black for the tips of the noses. Staining them was a bit of a shock for me, after having spent so much time with the natural wood color, but we’re all happy with the results.

5. Hoisting them up: Actually putting the bears in place took quite an effort, but it wasn’t nearly as demanding as raising the trusses that they run off of! Each truss demanded three big lifts: up from the ground onto the lower roof, up onto the 2nd floor sill plate, and then raised vertically into place. Thankfully John’s employee Murray was able to work with us on the first couple of trusses, after which they became progressively easier … until the last one, which had to be hoisted in a vertical position from the outset, since there was hardly any sill plate left to rest it on.

The bears themselves were each sandwiched between two trusses, using liquid nails and a whole lot of timber screws. It’s a little strange posting pictures at this point, since the last set of bears and the roof itself will be such an integral part of the final effect. Tomorrow we’ll finish off the last bears for the end beams, which will be full beams running all the way up to the peak of the roof. Here’s a shot of our raw materials:

Until next time….

Time flies when you’re having fun! Work on my mother’s house has been a blast, and we’ve come a long way since my last construction post (way back when we had just laid plywood for the lower floor). Since then, we’ve:

• framed and sheathed the first floor walls
• framed the second floor walls
• roughed out the main stairs
• laid plywood for the second floor
• milled and installed beam ends for the first floor overhang
• sheathed and covered the lower roof, including two curved cricket areas
• raised the second floor trusses and installed special beam ends for the second floor overhang (see my next post)

Here are some pics from along the way:

It’s hard to believe it’s been a full month since my last construction post … the days are just packed with work and experiencing, and I’ve been juggling all sorts of endeavors – from webwork, to house building, to some portrait painting, to my first ever workshop … I even had a birthday along the way :)

For the building site, this was an especially big week, with two concrete pours on Monday and Tuesday – one for the main crawl space floor, and one for the garage floor. Thankfully, with all of the backfilling done, the concrete trucks could maneuver much more easily, which meant that we could happily leave our wheelbarrows at home. This finally marks this the end of our concrete work, which not only means that we are done mucking around in the mud, but also that we are moving on to working with wood (John’s natural element).

Some persistent rains kept the main floor surface wet for quite awhile, so on Wednesday John ran around buying materials and prepping things. Then we spent Thursday welding, grinding, and painting support posts for our floor joists, and on Friday we installed all of our beams and joists in a long, hot, but fast day’s work. Now we are ready to install plywood for the main floor on Monday, with walls to follow shortly!

Interestingly, we were at just this step around this time last year, building a similar structure for a friend/client in the Adirondacks … we actually laid 28 sheets of plywood on my 28th birthday! The footprint for Renée’s house is larger, though, so it will take us quite a few more than 29 sheets this year….

I’m happy to report that Saturday’s sepia workshop at The Art School went very well! We had six people painting (including me), which was a nice number … large enough to fill the room with energy, but small enough to still feel intimate. Kathryn was definitely the hero of the day for posing so patiently for us … although we all agreed that her nose was the villain! But considering that none of the attendees had worked transparently in sepia before, and many hadn’t worked in oils in years – if ever – everyone’s painting came out fantastic.

As for me, I was well on my way to a nice little portrait of Kathryn, but I ran out of time before I could really make it sing. I did get far enough to give a solid demonstration of my working methods and thought process, but it would have been nice to be able to talk more about finishing touches … next time I’ll try to move onto rendering the model’s features a bit more quickly, even if I don’t have them in quite in the right place yet.

In the end, I hope everyone who came had a good time and learned a lot … I certainly did, and I’m full of ideas about how to improve on everything the next time I run a class!

Speaking of which, I am presently finalizing dates for two more single-day workshops and a weekly evening class for this Summer … so stay tuned….

Week 2 of my mother’s house building involved more concrete work. We rented our forms from a very nice Indian man who had purchased them from a contractor John used to know. I started off the week in the “kitchen”, oiling forms and handing them off to John while he assembled them. Some of the pieces had quite an “antique” finish (to be kind), which meant that they just drank up the oil … these were absolutely some of the greasiest days of my life! On Wednesday John and I worked together, and through some very creative math on his part, we were able to use every last piece that the man owned! We also managed to avoid having to plug in any gaps with plywood. We weren’t ready for our hoped-for Wednesday pour, but we rescheduled for Thursday and everything fit together just fine.

The pour itself was slightly less physically demanding than last week … but no less hectic. John noticed only minutes before the trucks arrived that there was a 2′ discrepancy between his plans and the engineer’s, so he spent the rest of the afternoon worrying that we were building the house two feet too small! (The error turned out to be the engineer’s, and the house is NOT too small). The concrete in the first truck was also a bit wetter than John would have liked, resulting in quite a bit of pressure on our forms. Thankfully we escaped with just a few bulges here and there and no blowouts. And since the trucks could maneuver around better this week, no wheelbarrows were needed – just a few bucketloads here and there to top things off.

On Friday we peeled off the forms in a joyful and effortless two hours’ work, just as cooler weather and a nice rain set in to help the concrete cure. The concrete settled in very well without any voids, and the whole structure looks and feels great. Now after a good cleanup we’ll be able to put the sills in, which is an exciting step. Stay tuned!

Ironically, now that my new site is live there is very little painting news to report! My big plans for the Spring and Summer are to help my friend John build a house for my mother, and we hit the ground running this week. After having been shut out for months by an early, cold Winter, we were finally able to pour the concrete footers on Wednesday. It turned out to be a marathon effort in unseasonably hot weather … the trucks could only pull up to one spot, so there was a whole lot of wheelbarrowing to do.

In the end, we were just short of having enough concrete, but the next day John was able to fill up several trash cans full from the concrete place, and we patched up the remaining bits without trouble. Now our forms for the walls are all stacked up and ready to be assembled on Monday … if all goes well we’ll do another pour on Wednesday, and that will be that.

With the footers in, the whole building site feels much more substantial. John can’t wait to get to the woodwork, my mom can’t wait to move in, and I’m just happy to be a part of it all!

The Finished painting: