Remaining doors and windows in (mostly)

South side with photovoltaic panels and some NON-low-e glass (finally)

Joe and Ben got the windows, storm door, and sliding glass door installed before everyone arrived for Common Ground Fair.

West wall

The extra enclosed floor space was, I think, much appreciated by those with sleeping bags! Joe and I treated ourselves to three full days at the fair, going to workshops, touring gardens, watching livestock demos, and eating wonderful food. In the evenings we got to connect with visiting family and friends and show off the completed cordwood.

The sliding glass door, although double-paned, is NOT low-e glass: the only non-low-e window in the house. The low-e windows help keep the house cool in the summer, and help prevent heat loss on winter nights, but really reduce passive-solar warming, making our house sun-tempered rather than truly passive solar. In addition, low-e glass does NOT grow plants well. The plain-glass sliding doors, when permanently closed for winter, will become the site for our winter seed-starting shelves, and allow some much-needed late-afternoon sunlight into the house.

So except for some finishing work around the doors and installation of the wooden nine-light door inside the storm door on the west wall, the exterior construction of Sunnywood is complete! It has been a long haul, starting with cutting the cordwood for the walls in June of 2007. The post-and-beam structure was put up during the house-raising of September 2008. We began laying cordwood in July of 2009. Last fall we closed in enough house with windows, doors, and a temporary wall to make the inside habitable (depending on your definition of the word) and move in, in time to cook Thanksgiving dinner. Now we can expand into the rest of the house and complete interior walls, ceilings, lights, shelving, closets, and perhaps begin upgrading the water supply. And get back to work on the Sunnywood Farm project.