The Thatched Cottage

After having dinner, Lin Ye felt it was still early, so she turned on the light in the cave and prepared the necessary materials to build the thatched house tomorrow.

She planned to make some bamboo nails. Previously, when building houses in the countryside, iron nails couldn't be used, so only bamboo nails or bamboo pegs were used instead. Bamboo nails had high hardness, strong penetration power, and were wear-resistant and impact-resistant.

First, she split the bamboo into small sections of roughly equal size, then shaved one end to a point, and the bamboo nails were formed. Shaving the bamboo was only the first step; next, she had to remove the moisture from the nails so they wouldn't get worm-eaten or moldy. Normally, the process involved boiling, drying, and roasting the bamboo nails. But due to limited conditions, Lin Ye could only use fire to dry the moisture in the bamboo nails, waiting until the next day to dry them in the sun.

Actually, the most important step was frying the nails. After the bamboo nails were dry, they would be fried in tung oil, which had a waterproofing function. Bamboo nails treated this way were not afraid of wind and rain, could resist termites, were durable, and could be used for over a hundred years.

However, due to limited conditions, the bamboo nails made by Lin Ye had not undergone too many processing steps; only the moisture inside had been removed. Lin Ye didn't expect the nails she made to last for decades; she felt that if they could last for five or six years, it would already be not bad.

She knew she should treat the pillars and beams for waterproofing and termite prevention first to make the house frame sturdier, but she really didn't have the conditions to do so, so she had to give up.

She dug eight large holes around the stove to bury the thick tree trunks to support the thatched house. Thinking of Yang's height, she built the thatched house three meters high. When erecting the frame, because she wasn't very tall, she made a small, tall bamboo table beforehand to use as a step stool for convenience.

She measured the size of the tree trunks to make the beams, then carved a notch of corresponding size on the thick tree trunks before placing the beams on them. To make the beams and pillars sturdier, Lin Ye not only used bamboo nails to secure them but also used vines to bind them. She not only secured the beams and pillars but also secured the bottom of the pillars together for greater stability.

The next step was to make the roof frame. The roof Lin Ye made was the most common "herringbone" style.

Building a house sounded simple, but doing it was not easy, especially when there was no one to help. Unprocessed raw wood was very heavy. Moving the wood up and down by herself was truly not easy for Lin Ye, and she was panting heavily after working for only a short while. Moreover, because of her requirement for the house to be sturdy, she did everything very carefully. She didn't want the house to collapse while she was living in it, which would be very dangerous.

Just like that, a whole day passed. It wasn't until Yang returned that she had roughly finished erecting the frame of the house. However, the most important structural frame was finished; the remaining walls and roof would be very easy to do.

Yang felt the house frame Lin Ye had erected was very strange. He still couldn't imagine what the house she spoke of looked like. He heard that the people of her tribe all lived in houses. Would these wooden frames used to build the house collapse?

In view of Yang's doubts, Lin Ye asked him to try pushing the house frame. At first, Yang was afraid of pushing down the frame that Lin Ye had worked so hard to build, so he didn't dare use force. But then he found that the wooden frame didn't budge at all. Finally, he used all his strength, but the wooden frame still didn't move a bit.

Yang's strength was immense; he could single-handedly carry prey weighing several hundred kilograms. Even if he pushed harder, he couldn't push down the house frame, which meant this frame was extremely sturdy.

Lin Ye was very satisfied with this test.

The next day, Lin Ye prepared to build the walls and lay the roof. Making the walls wasn't difficult; she chopped a lot of bamboo and used it to make walls. To let light into the kitchen, she also specifically left several windows.

The final step was to make the roof. She chopped several pieces of bamboo of equal length, carved a notch in the middle of each piece, then placed the notch onto the purlin and pressed down. The bamboo bent and became the roof rafters. Next, Lin Ye laid a layer of banana leaves on the rafters, then spread a thick layer of dry grass over the leaves to shelter from wind and rain.

Although this thatched kitchen was very crude, it was built by her own hands bit by bit, so she still felt very fulfilled.

When Yang returned at night, he saw a house standing in front of the cave entrance.