Timber Frames

Mikki Castillios, Catalunya

This Project is the result of one Catalan woodsman's dream. Mikki Casas Lopes attended a timber framing course with us at Woodenways in 2007. He then went away to buy a farm on a mountain with a ruined house of 60 years. Dan Franklin went over and made some designs based around the ruins in 2009 and looked at the local timber in the area. In 2010 local mason Pau Sanglas had cleaned the ruins up and started to from the base. Dan went over again and showed Mikki and Domenak how to operate the Peterson portable mill. Mikki had found some oak through his forestry contacts in the mountains. And we cut the joists and lintels for the first floor, which was now taking shape thanks to Pau and son Jordy.  The idea was to create a base on which to frame the rest of the house later in the year (no other flat space). At this Point Dan and Pau were getting the same ideas especially as Dan's mixture of pigeon Spanish and Catalan was improving. Later in the year the Woodenways team, consisting of Marcus, Jules, Flint, Ben and Dan took the old truck full of tools over the mountain. After a frenzy of sawmilling and framing things began to take shape, the idea being to build a structure suitable to take the roof in 5 weeks. Long days, excellent food from Marta Mikki’s sister, working around all the other trades people and their great Catalan humor, with Mikki sorting everything out resulted in a very special House. Thanks Noria for the consistant photo record!