Yesterday our students in Women’s+ Basic Carpentry got the first roof rafters up on our sugar shack! A moment to celebrate!
I’m at the Burlington airport again, headed home to Corvallis, OR after a wonderful week in Vermont, co-teaching a Women’s+ Basic Carpentry class at Yestermorrow. I’m so glad to have had this opportunity!
I had just gotten back from Wrapping Up Tiny House Design-Build Cert 2025 when Chrissy called to ask if I’d consider teaching Women’s+ Basic Carpentry. WBC was the first Yestermorrow course I ever heard of - nearly 20 years ago now! I was inspired, so I signed up for the catalog - which was snail mailed back then - and I’d flip through it, circling all the courses I wanted to take someday. It was a couple of years before I finally signed up for the Sustainable Design-Build Certification and got myself to Yestermorrow in 2010. But I’ve been going there ever since! So it feels like I’ve come full circle, having the opportunity to teach the Women’s+ Basic Carpentry course.
My awesome co-instructor Lily introducing the materials we’d be using for our building project: a sugar shack play structure for a local school.
When I arrived on campus on Sunday I was able to do some collaboration and prep with my fantastic co-instructor Lily Cretekos-Gross. Monday morning we greeted our crew of 10 students and got them oriented to the school, each other, and our plan set. We learned what brought everyone there and what their hopes were for the week ahead.
Getting acquainted with the materials, the plans, measurements, and marking conventions.
Monday afternoon we headed up to the airport hangar to get started on our build project: a sugar shack play structure for a local school. We started out with unpacking and organizing our pallet of materials. Then Lily demonstrated how to use the circular saw, and I demoed the chop saw, so our students could cut the skids and joists for our floor system. Many of our students had never used any of these power tools before, so they approached them with a healthy level of respect. And they soon gained confidence in measuring, marking, and cutting our boards to length.
We had plenty of hammering practice and it was awesome to see people’s technique improve in days!
On Tuesday we worked on assembling the floor system, which involved a lot of hammering. It was impressive how quickly people picked up hammering technique, but galvanized nails and pressure treated wood are a tricky combination, so there was a fair bit of pulling nails, too. Our crew got pretty familiar with their cats paws and the crow bar as well. They soon learned when a bent nail could be salvaged and when it had reached the point of no return and had to be replaced. They were super supportive of each other, providing lots of encouragement, and tagging out when someone needed to growl at a nail and take a water break before coming back to it. Their persistence and team work was inspiring.
Working out the cupola for the sugar shack required some math and problem-solving and our students rose to the occassion.
On Wednesday one team finished up installing the deck boards while the other framed up the first long wall and cut the pieces for the second long wall. That afternoon we switched so that the team who hadn’t yet framed a wall had the opportunity to build one while the other team moved on to building the cupola to go onto the roof.
We did a lot of checking of level and plumb - and learned some good tricks to fix our framing if it wasn’t quite right yet.
It was fun to see people’s job site superpowers emerging. Lots of people were awesome at asking questions. Lots of people were excellent problem solvers. One person was fantastic at thinking a couple steps ahead. One person was great at reading plans and figuring out anything we didn’t have quite right so we could address it. One person was game to rework anything we’d flubbed up. One was great at sous cheffing for others, helping to hold things, pass tools, and anticipate needs and next steps. One person was awesome at doing the math and figuring. Several people were incredible at keeping a tidy site: organizing tools and fasteners, picking up offcuts, sorting the scrap pile, and sweeping up.
Students transferred knowledge from one team to another so everyone could try learning different skilsl as they worked on different parts of the building.
Thursday we worked on rafters, using the step-off method. We had some confusion about a measurement, so we ended up having to rework some rafters, but our team kept up morale and we managed to get the big rafters cut and installed. Meanwhile, progress continued on the cupola as the frame came together and the wee rafters were cut.
We did our rafter layout using the step off method and we all learned a bunch in the process!
There was a moment on Day 4 where I looked around and saw that everyone was safely, competently, and deeply immersed in some part of construction without any guidance from us. I was so impressed!
We got lots of practice cutting rafters using a circular saw and cleaning it up with a jig saw.
Meanwhile, last night I taught our third session of ADU Design from my dorm room at Yestermorrow. We discussed what people had discovered through their design exercises and their research of ADU regulations in their towns. Then we explored layout considerations through a presentation, conversations about the specific considerations for particular ADU types (in this case ADUs above a garage/workshop and detached backyard cottages) and a review of sets of ADU floor plans. Their “home work” is to develop bubble diagrams and create a scale layout so I’m excited to see what they’ve come up with by next Thursday!
The last afternoon we asked everyone to pick their favorite tool for a last photo before I headed out.
Today on the job site the Women’s+ Basic Carpentry crew built the end walls and continued the cupola. By the time I had to take off for the airport mid-afternoon we hadn’t quite brought the all pieces together, but I got a photo update that they got the cupola up before the end of the day. I’m so darn proud of them, not just for the progress they made on the building, but also for the progress they made as individuals and as a team, in just 5 days!
By the end of Day 5 our students had framed up an awesome sugar shack as a play structure for a local school.
When I was at Yestermorrow just a month ago it was solidly Ski Season in the Mad River Valley, but by the time I returned last week we’d just transitioned to Mud Season. It was officially the first day of spring today and we were greeted for our last build day by snow (a bit of a surprise since we’d had a couple warm days earlier in the week, but also not unusual for this time of year). So spring is on the way, but Vermont gets some Mud Season first. I’ll be curious to see what season we’re in when I return to Yestermorrow next…
We were greeted with a dusting of snow this morning, the first official day of spring, in the Mad River Valley - but don’t let either of those fool you. It’s mud season here!
Meanwhile, I’m headed back to a Pacific Northwest spring, where the daffodils have already followed the crocuses and tulips are starting to emerge. The natural cycles are such a refreshing break from the news cycles…