Building Archives - Backwoods Home Magazine

PVC pipe in the home, garden, farm, and workshop

By Charles Sanders Issue #94 • July/August, 2005 Perhaps one of the most important innovations in modern plumbing has been the development of polyvinyl chloride (PVC), chlorinated polyvinyl chloride (CPVC), and related plastic pipe. These materials...

Our Unconventional House

By Judy Zent Website Exclusive • December, 2002 Fig. 1 - Tire walls with roof framing. Need a prolonged workout? Want to do some major recycling? Want to stay warm and cozy with the help of the...

How to build a good fence for your homestead

By Charles Sanders Issue #103 • January/February, 2007 One of the basic fixtures on a homestead is fencing. Fences are used to keep animals in, or...

Vise Dremel Moto Tool mount

By Dana Martin Batory Issue #84 • November/December, 2003 Sometimes it seems two hands are not enough—three would be nice, four even better. This economical, easy to build jig solves that common workshop problem. Designed to...

Build your own home in two years — Get a PhD in homebuilding

By David Lee Issue #115 • January/February, 2009 There is an old Chinese curse, "May you live in interesting times." Curse or not, times are interesting. We have world crises, national troubles, state level problems, county...

The house that Dorothy built

By Dorothy Ainsworth Issue #86 • March/April, 2004 This isn't the first time we've had an article by and about Dorothy Ainsworth. Throughout the text are editor's notes refering you...

Build a compost tumbler

By Joe Mooney Issue #151 • January/February, 2015 A few years back, I caught myself becoming a bit frustrated with my compost pile. It seemed that I just couldn't produce compost as easily as I'd seen...

Making a wooden kitchen countertop

By Patrice Lewis One of the advantages of living a homesteading lifestyle is participants can kick aside the ever-changing concepts of what constitutes “classy” home interior design. Those model-perfect suburban abodes often hold no appeal...

Renovating old walls

By David Lee Issue #106 • July/August, 2007 Some years ago my wife and I were out searching for a new building lot when we fell into The Trap. We had recently built and sold a...

Building Eric’s house

By Dorothy Ainsworth Issue #112 • July/August, 2009 This is the first in a series of several articles documenting the building of a stud-frame house from start to finish by an amateur owner/builder, using the pay-as-you-go...

Build a Trail

By Claire Wolfe Standing near the top of the trail, looking down. The bright sunny spot in the middle distance will be the site of my future camping "pagoda;" it will...

Make adobe bricks

By Rev. J.D. Hooker Issue #110 • March/April, 2008 Last winter I got a phone call from an old friend in Arizona. One of his sons had fallen in love, gotten the girl in trouble, and...

From triumph to tragedy to triumph again. Dorothy Ainsworth makes her valiant comeback

By Dorothy Ainsworth Issue #50 Mar/Apr 1998 BHM readers are familiar with Dorothy Ainsworth, the log home-building Ashland, Oregon, waitress who spent more than six years building a beautiful log home, only to have it burn...

Build a Simple, Inexpensive Greenhouse

By Jennifer Poindexter Issue #157 • January/February, 2016 Since my family is homesteading on a budget, the task of building a greenhouse had to be done as inexpensively as possible. Luckily, my husband is extremely crafty;...

Building your chicken coop

By Jackie Clay-Atkinson Issue #139 • January/February, 2013 Here's a coop we built from pallets and scrap lumber. The goats lived in one end and the chickens lived in the other. It was free and worked...

Making and using a solar cooker

By Joe Radabaugh Issue #30 • November/December, 2004 Solar cooking is a delightful alternative to conventional cooking methods. The solar cookers available today really work and they deserve serious evaluation by a much larger audience. For...