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cordwood building for mortgage freedoM

July 30, 2020

One of the first things you learn from cordwood building expert and teacher, Rob Roy, is that cordwood construction can be easily executed by anyone regardless of age or skill level. Roy’s son, Rowan, was himself teaching the inexpensive and energy-efficient building technique to others when he was just 10 years old in the mid-1980s. The second thing you learn, as we did on a recent 5-day workshop at Earthwood Building School with Roy and his wife, Jaki, at their home in upstate New York, is that cordwood building is also quite tedious. A process of laying up short logs one by one into a hand-churned mortar mix, some might even regard it as painstakingly slow.

And while this is a relatively valid statement—with eight people working for two and a half days at a build site on Lower Chateaugay Lake, we were only able to complete maybe one-third of the masonry for a garage extension—it should be mentioned that even at the sluggish pace of a novice, cordwood building is still far faster to achieve than paying off a mortgage.

This is the reason we’re here. And it takes some reminding, especially when the Denver to New York jet lag hits and the deer flies begin a maddening orbit of your head. 

But we’ve been studying off-grid solutions for a while now, and we’ve seen that building something without the crutch of a mortgage is indeed possible. In popular culture, there’s even a name for it: the Mortgage-Free movement. Akin with the F.I.RE. Movement, which stands for Financial Independence/Retire Early, the mortgage-free movement centers around the philosophy of living debt-free and saving early for retirement.

Rob Roy has already been practicing this concept for decades. He authored "Mortgage Free! Innovative Strategies for Debt-Free Home Ownership." Published in 2008, the book is among 21 works written by Roy to inspire stumped, budget-conscious Americans like us on how to live the dream without subscribing to the "death pledge," literally an old French translation for the word mortgage, as Rob is quick to point out.

A low-cost building solution, cordwood homes also happen to look pretty damn cool. Aesthetics range tremendously from builder to builder, with Rob preferring to practice a "random rubble" style of cordwood masonry that almost resembles stonework upon the inevitable weathering of the quarter-inch sliver of exposed wood on the exterior. 

workshop participants learn cordwood masonry at rob and jaki roy’s home on Lower Chateaugay Lake in upstate new york.

By the way, if the only wood you’re familiar with is firewood or perhaps the particleboard that comes out of an IKEA bookshelf kit, then there’s a lot to learn about your choices. The workshop is, among other building concepts previously foreign to us, a crash course on critical wood considerations such as tangential shrinkage that we didn’t even know existed.

But once you understand the basics, you’ve got a new knowledge set that also comes with a tremendous amount of creative freedom.

Rob and Jaki Roy have incorporated numerous decorative features into their cordwood homes, including custom shelves, cubbies, constellation features using wine bottles, and window features inset in hollow logs, to name a few. all of these features are built right into the masonry wall itself.

A couple we met in July of 2019, Mike and KimAnna, hand-built a 192-square-foot cordwood structure after hosting one of Rob and Jaki’s workshops on their off-grid ranch in Del Norte, Colorado. KimAnna inset so many wine bottles and colored orbs into the walls of their uniquely named Mermaid Cottage that she’s since earned one of Rob Roy’s most affectionate honors, "Queen of the Bottle Ends." 

Not only do I now aspire to achieve this moniker, but there are other considerations that are hard to ignore.

The Mermaid Cottage, for instance, cost the owners a mere $5,000 to build. And while it took them about eight months to complete, it’s become so popular and widely featured in publications large and small that the effort was well worth it. Mike and KimAnna rent the vibrant but tiny casita for $189 per night on Airbnb, and when we spoke to them last, there were no shortage of guests lined up to experience their unique property. The owners happily shared that the extra income had been extremely useful in funding other projects on their land.

This is the pretty much the moment we started asking ourselves questions like, what could we build with the cash we currently have saved? And a year later, here we are, our gloved hands slopping a grainy mixture of sand, lime, Portland cement, and soaked sawdust in place under the watchful eyes of the Roys themselves.

And although cordwood construction dates back to the 9th or 10th Century AD, as evidenced by a Slavic Fort at Raddusch in eastern Germany, it wouldn’t be a surprise if you’d never heard of or seen a cordwood home. Cordwood construction is more prevalent within northern US states and Canada. And while they’re present in many areas across America, they tend to be built in rural areas and apart from deed-restricted communities and hyper draconian HOAs with restrictions on things like grass height down to the half-inch.

As Roy says in his books and in person, cordwood buildings are meant to be in harmony with nature and the landscape surrounding it.

Rob and Jaki Roy have built several cordwood buildings at Earthwood in West Chazy, New York, and their summer home, Mushwood, on Lower Chateaugay Lake. most of these structures utilize a living roof, a low-maintenance roofing solution.

Rob Roy reads a Rob Serbis poem, The Cremation of Sam McGee, to workshop participants during a fire within his hand-set stone circle at Earthwood Building School in upstate new york.

On our last day at Earthwood, eight participants in masks are spread apart in Rob and Jaki’s basement and classroom in their earth-sheltered home. Rob is busy clicking through a slideshow, demonstrating cordwood homes throughout the world, and Jaki is upstairs preparing another round of delicious tea cakes and soups from ingredients in their expansive raised bed garden.

I’m looking around at those of us who have chosen to be here, to learn this perhaps curious and lesser-known practice, and I can’t help but feel extremely humbled by Rob and Jaki’s willingness to continue on with the workshop during an already historic pandemic that at age 70 stands to threaten them both. 

As William Arthur Ward once said, "The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires."

Many thanks to you both,

Photographs and text by Elaine Skylar Neal / Travels and Curiosities

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