"The Tree" Comes Home

A few weeks ago I got a call from Mike Anderson, the guy that milled our oak tree into boards (see my 6/10/2010 post entitled The Tree). He called to say that the wood was ready to come out of the kiln, and he asked if I was interested in having him plane and square up the edges of the boards. His price to do the extra work was very reasonable, so I asked him to give me a call when it was ready.

Last Saturday morning, Mike called to say the wood was ready for delivery. His delivery charge would have been $90 (basically an hour and a half of labor), so I told him I would come pick it up myself. I got directions to his place, then headed out that afternoon.

To say that Mike lives in "the boonies" is an understatement. He doesn't live that many miles outside of town, but man, his place is remote. I took my wife's cell phone in case I got lost, and sure enough, I had to make a phone call halfway there to see if I was still on the right track. Somehow I went past the entrance to his driveway (which was a mile-long dirt road through dense woods) and ended up at his neighbor's place. I rang the neighbor's doorbell -- which I can only imagine hadn't had anyone ring it in a decade or two -- and asked if the gentleman would be kind enough to give me directions to Mike's house. Back up the road I went, this time turning into Mike's driveway which was demarcated by a mailbox in the shape of a gigantic fishing lure. How could have I have missed that the first time?

Once I traversed the woods back to Mike's barn, we loaded up the wood. It filled my pickup bed to the very top. My pickup was squatting just a bit under the load.

Mike was kind enough to give me a brief tour of his place. He showed me his solar kiln, which was impressive. It has a steeply sloping roof covered in clear fiberglass panels. On top of the kiln are two small solar panels that power a small circulation fan inside the kiln. Mike has even constructed a really cool rail platform that can be loaded with fresh wood outside the kiln, then easily rolled into the kiln.

When Mike offered to give me a tour of his house, I was quick to accept. First let me give you a little background. Mike's house is a log cabin -- actually more of a grand lodge. He and his wife began building it eight years ago, and they are close to being done. Mike's place is completely "off the grid", i.e. he generates his own electrical power via solar panels and a wind turbine.

The whole reason Mike bought the portable mill that he used to mill our tree into lumber was because he wanted to build his own log house. Every piece of wood in Mike's house was cut and milled right there on his property. The logs in his walls are ten inches square. His floors and cathedral ceiling are oak. (Mike: "We used the good stuff on the floor and used the lesser quality stuff for the ceiling.") He built his own kitchen cabinets from walnut that he felled and milled himself. He built a spiral staircase from walnut. His garage doors are walnut (single-slab doors). The main post in his living room (two stories) is a single red oak tree, stripped of bark, then coated in polyurethane. It is probably 36 inches in diameter.

The fireplace is massive. It is built of stone and rises, floor-to-ceiling, two stories (and twelve feet beyond the roof). Mike built it himself, and it provides all of the heat for their home. Right now, Mike is working on installing "air conditioning". It is a coil through which cool water circulates, and which has a fan that blows across the coil. The chilled (55 degree) water will be pumped from the bottom of Mike's pond, circulate through the unit, then be returned to the far side of the pond.

Needless to say, Mike's place (and his initiative) is really, really impressive. It made me think that our house remodeling project is "small beans" in comparison. Regardless, the oak tree in our front yard has returned home to be used in the remodeling project. It is nicely stacked in the basement for the meantime, filling the downstairs with the scent of freshly milled oak. If you take a deep breath, you can probably smell it, too.