Well, the trip may be officially finished, but for Lucy the current happenings still count as new adventures. We are in England now, at Adie's family home in Cornwall. Camel Week, the annual sailing regatta, is well underway, so we are busy with that every day. Lucy has had to shift her brain from traditional wooden tall ships to modern dinghy racing, complete with spinnaker and trapeze duties, but the transition has certainly been exciting. We don't have any good photos of that, but there's been plenty of rain, wind, spray and (maybe too many) capsizes.
Because the computer was so infuriatingly slow at our host's home in Sweden, we've realized that we didn't share very much about our time there. The main story that we have yet to tell is about the project that we were able to complete: an outdoor shower with a reciprocal roof. After our hosts decided not to pursue the reciprocal roof on the outdoor kitchen patio, we turned our efforts to a smaller project. Lucy had inquired about an outdoor shower, mainly because showers were few and far between with the current set up, so Marjo decided to bump up the priority on this project since we were all interested in building something.
We began by designing a regular structure since the kitchen roof had been greatly complicated by the fact that everything about it was irregular. So we planned for a regular octagon, with a semi-spiraled entrance, eliminating the need for a door. We actually purchased wood for this project so that it would be pressure treated and could withstand the water of many showers.
The initial site: an existing drainage area for the outdoor kitchen, on a slope by the sauna guest house and the sheep pasture.
First, we had to create a solid foundation by moving eight boulders into corners where they would support the floor joists.
Adie, the boss man, kept everyone in line.
And then he had all the fun!
Adie and Greg with the square joists.
Attaching boards around the edges to create an even support for the floorboards.
The finished frame. Finally a measured and properly-fitted construction!
We spent a great deal of time jostling the foundation stones to make them all level. This hard, tedious work paid off, for the floor ended up being as level as we could ever have hoped for! While we took our trip to Stockholm and Järna, the other guys continued the work, managing to install the vertical posts, the rings of boards for the wall edges, and nearly all the floorboards. We returned and the shower already looked like this:
Next up was weaving the walls (that's what all the sticks are for in the picture above). We cut and stripped small saplings to create woven walls, like the wattle in wattle and daub building. It was a long process to weave nine wall sections but turned out to be quite fun.
Two down, seven to go!
Upon finishing the walls, we realized that the sides facing the outdoor kitchen were actually too low. Because the shower is down the hill, standing in the kitchen afforded a view right into the changing area. Luckily, we realized that we could just unscrew the boards at the top and bottom and shift each section upwards. A surprisingly easy process!
After completing the foundation, floor and walls, it was time for the roof. Once again we were attempting a reciprocal roof, but the small size made it infinitely easier. The roof poles were light and maneuverable, so we had the flexibility to adjust them as we went and try different orders to get everything lined up.
On the morning of our last day, we successfully installed the roof, notching the poles and the tops of the vertical posts so that the poles would sit in place, and securing them with screws to the posts and with a wire lashings to each other.
Of course, we had to say goodbye that night, but hopefully the roof will get a covering of off-cut boards like those around the walls) as shingles. And the shower itself has to be finalized - we just hung up a camp shower bag for the time being - but that can be sorted out fairly easily.
It was great to accomplish this project that we undertook and to leave a mark after all our time there. We only hope that the roof won't collapse under a Swedish winter's snow load!
The gang on our last night: Simone from Italy, Thibaud from France, us, and Greg from England.
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