Cross Laminated Timber

I had a rare opportunity to participate to setting up a Cross Laminated Timber house.
In Finland it is not that common. CLTs are wooden elements that can be cut to any shape in factories.
This gives unique freedom with strange shaped houses.

First we made the footing for the foundations.

Pumping is a nice way to deal with concrete.

Filling in the hillside preasurewalls.

Stones stones..

Then we got the foundation ready for the house..

Filled some more pillars..

Build the wooden base according to the design.

Finally the Cross Laminated Timber came with trucks from europe.

First corner getting fastened!

 

A doorframe :)

Some of the pieces were huge!

Moving to install the roof..

And here it is! It took just two days to get it up.
What a nice modern design for a house.

Bedtime Story

I got a nice task to build a loft bed for two children in to a block house apartment in Helsinki.

The family happened to be on holidays, so after receiving keys from the janitor I made some room to begin.

I set up a level laser among the toys..

And after carefully measuring the spot..

Went outside and cut the necessary pieces.

I attached the first parts firmy to the walls with screw anchors.

Then made the stairways and the middle pole ready

Tried on the pole, fixing the frame for the middle wall..

 Set the partition up to it's grooves.

 Attached the safety rails..

And after fixing all the shelves and filling all the screwholes with chemical wood,  I protected everything for painting.

And after few layers of paint..

Life found its way :)

Rotten log repair

For my expertise in log crafting, I was called to join a venture on an island in Lohja to fix an old log mansion.

The place was beautiful and there was a lot of work to do..

The main concern was the back wall of the main building.. But since the damage was not that bad, and we chose that we will put a door there with a terrace for the lake shore, we moved to fix the "small" house that was a bit smelly.

 After some disassembly we could see the variety of construction errors, and chose to redo the whole porch.

 The column on the left (or what is left of it) shows the seriousness of the damage with moisture, and pretty much everything had to bee changed.

 We also opened the wall a bit to see how the damage was worse then originally thought.

 It was this bad..

Actually far worse :D

 Took out the monster..

 And replaced it with a good one we got from the neighbor.

 

 Then the hard part, fit one between!

 :) Like new-old!

Drilling and filling like any dentist!

That's gonna hold it!

 The old house thanking in its own way!

Only one more thing to do..

To enjoy the evening, sauna, the lake and the Finnish summer!

The permit- and story-barrel of two strange parrots

What you get when you add up these strange panels with parrots from postcards, a shell from a toaster and a broken lid from old barrel?

 Of course the

 "Lollun ja Lillin lupa-automaatti ja tarinatynnyri",

meaning this strange machine that produces permits tickets - for anything! 

Or alternatively creates storyes out of thin air by those two birds named Lollu and Lilli by our two-year-old.

 Being creative is about playing. When time to tinker is diminished by the need of loved ones in a family setting, there is only one proper solution, integrate!

It is the greates thing to be excited about the same kind a idea with a child and create it together 

-as much as possible.

Here's how the machine works;

 First use those buttons vigorously and talk to the parrots, of course! Then draw some figure on the paper going down from the backside so the permission slip comes out nice and has some carecter.

 Then stamp it with invisible magic ink from the parrots to give it ist power,

and use the looking glass to make sure the stamp came out well,

but only a child can do this part.

Except if you recognize to be a grown-up-child, but then you really need to know what you are doing!

After pressing some more buttons pull the ticket out of the machine and rip it. 

After that place it on the slit and validate it by pulling the lever.

Now it is ready to be used! You can give it to your stuffed animals for a train ticket etc, or just look at it an tell a improvised story with a serious face - as you would be reading it from the slip.

Works every time for those who still remember how to play :)