– photos from Yasenchack and Merritt
Merritt & Navazio Residence
Pekin, Indiana
HarvestBuild assisted with the design and consulted on the natural building portion of this one-and-a-half-story straw-bale and timber-frame house. David Yasenchack Timber Framing & Design also assisted with the design and built the furniture-quality timber frame for the home. It features our baling-on-the-edge exterior straw-bale wall system, and earth and lime plasters throughout. Our colleagues at Fox Natural Building were the subcontractors responsible for the straw-bale and much of the plaster work. The homeowners, Jean Merritt and Bob Navazio, applied a few specialty interior finishes.
Testimonial
"Mark was the catalyst that made our house possible. In the process of exploring natural building choices for our retirement home, I was lucky enough to find Mark's website. This was when the dream began to move toward reality. Mark helped us explore our options and make reasoned choices on design and materials."
"Southern Indiana is not a prime location for finding people knowledgeable about natural building, but Mark was able to help us pull together a team to get the project into plans and then out of the ground. This was possible even though we were living in Maryland during the planning. It was a pleasure to work with Mark and his ability to communicate via phone and email kept the geographical separation from being a problem."
"Now we just need to lure him to Indiana so he can see for himself the wonderful house he was so instrumental in getting built!"