I am a Primitive Man
Chapter 141 – Wooden Windows and Mountain Walls
Han Cheng was busy directing the installation of windows.
Without electric hammers or expansion screws, ensuring sturdy doors and windows required attaching them during the house construction process. The bottom of the windows was set at a height of just 1.2 meters above the ground. Han Cheng had carefully considered this size, as the people of the Green Sparrow tribe were generally shorter, and there was no need for tall windows.
After the front wall reached a height of 1.2 meters, it paused temporarily.
Only after Lame finished making two windows did they continue.
Installing the windows was not too difficult. Lame and another person placed the loose windows on the framed front wall. Han Cheng, observing from a distance, gave the order. Immediately, Eldest Senior Brother, prepared on the side, applied wet clay underneath, firmly pressing down on both ends of the intentionally longer wooden frame.
Once the wooden windows were secured, wet soil was poured into the space between the wooden supports. As the loose soil increased and the compacted soil was consolidated, the wooden windows were firmly integrated into the wall.
There was one thing to note. Due to the lack of convenient tools, no frames were added to the left and right sides of the completed windows. To prevent the soil from squeezing over and blocking the windows during the wall compacting process, wooden columns split in half from the middle were attached vertically on both sides of the windows in advance.
These wooden columns were placed with the round side facing the clay wall and the flat side facing inside the window. This blocked the soil and enhanced the appearance, making the wooden windows look like they had four complete frames.
The same method was applied to the doors. They needed to be prepared in advance, but they only built the door frame into the wall at this stage. The actual door would be created and installed after the house was completed.
After completing the foundation and the 1-meter-high stone wall at the bottom, the construction of the simple earth wall proceeded quickly. In just a few days, it was leveled.
“Leveling” meant that the wall had reached the predetermined height. The wall was not too high, only two meters and one meter in height. Han Cheng was not constructing a house with large bricks and tiles; this height was already sufficient.
Although the houses being constructed this time differed from the deer pens, there were still some similarities. Eldest Senior Brother and the others, observing the deer pens and then the current houses, believed that the next step for the Divine Child would be to raise the front wall higher and, like the deer pens, use wooden beams, rafters, and lattices to create a sloping roof towards the back.
As the Green Sparrow tribe did not believe in the greatness of the Divine Child, Han Cheng couldn’t let them guess his plans correctly. He didn’t instruct people to continue raising the front wall; instead, he raised the two side walls, often called gable walls.
These gable walls presented a major challenge, especially needing to connect four in a row. Without rulers, ensuring they were all built to a similar height would have been quite troublesome.
After Han Cheng explained the next steps, those who had speculated beforehand felt once again the Divine Child’s wisdom and unfathomable nature. Following the Divine Child’s guidance, they began constructing the gable walls.
Triangular gable walls were more challenging than straight walls, but not insurmountable. Under Han Cheng’s command and with the diligent efforts of Eldest Senior Brother and the others, four gable walls with the same height and roughly similar shapes gradually emerged.
Although referred to as triangles, these triangles were not entirely complete. Mainly, there were two small platforms, each 30 centimeters long, on the upper sides. These two platforms evenly divided the edges into three sections.
Apart from these small platforms, the triangle’s apex was flat, forming another 30-centimeter-wide small platform.
These small platforms were not intentionally designed to disrupt the aesthetic appeal of the gable walls; instead, they were prepared for the next step, which involved placing wooden beams.
The people of the Green Sparrow tribe were currently lifting the wooden beams onto the roof. These beams were burned to break and refined using stone axes and knives. Except for the ridge beam on the roof, which must be perfectly straight throughout, the other beams could have some curvature, reducing the difficulty level.
“One, two!”
“One, two!”
The Eldest Senior Brother shouted the rhythmic chant he had learned from the Divine Child, standing on a platform and pulling a rope together with the Third Senior Brother. The other end of the rope was tied to the bottom of a beam.
The beam was set against the west wall, leaning on a frame attached to the west wall.
As Eldest Senior Brother and the others exerted force, the end of the beam touching the ground began to lift, and Shang, standing on the inside of the west wall frame, held the beam against the frame to prevent it from toppling.
Since the beam was to be placed on the gable wall, its length was wider than the room, and with the half-meter-wide frames erected on both sides, this further reduced the room’s width.
As Eldest Senior Brother and the others pulled and tugged, the end of the beam gradually rose and straightened. Once this end reached beneath the frame, pulling it up without some method would be challenging.
On the other side, Shang and another person started working. They held the end of the beam against the frame and began pulling it toward them. As they did, the other end of the beam emerged from under the platform where Eldest Senior Brother and the others stood.
With concerted efforts, the lifted beam, in the hands of both groups, was placed on the small platform prepared in advance on the gable wall.
Because the beam’s two ends were of different thicknesses, adjustment was needed after the beam was placed. The thinner end was shimmed with small stones and pottery fragments to make it level and increase stability.
Due to the difficulty of obtaining sufficiently long beams and the challenge of lifting them onto the structure, the beams were cut into sections. For the three rooms combined, fifteen beams were required.
Except for the platforms on the outer walls at the far east and west, where two beams were placed, the other two gable wall platforms needed two beams each.
To prevent the side beams from falling off the platform, they needed to be securely tied together with ropes.
Another thing to note was that the beams placed on the outer walls at the far east and west did not align directly with the outer sides of the walls; instead, they protruded ten centimeters inside. After the house was completed, these gaps would be filled with mud, making the beams invisible. This protected the beams from exposure to the elements and prevented them from rotting or developing mold.
After the beams were installed, the next steps were similar to those used when building the deer pens. They needed to tie rafters and then lay lattices. Lame was not involved in making the lattices; he was already busy, so two less physically strong women from the tribe were handling this task.
Fortunately, lattice-making wasn’t too complicated. They had seen Lame do it many times before, and with his hands-on guidance, they had learned. The lattices they produced were of good quality.