Courses

Pick up your hammer! This course is designed for students with little or no building experience who want to build a tiny home, small cabin, or workshop. The techniques for building a small frame building are not only for the skilled carpenter; nearly anyone can come away from this course…

Create for yourself a comfortable living space: a spare bedroom, office, studio, sauna, or whatever else you can dream up. The 18-foot yurt is an excellent shelter option that provides comfortable living arrangements for all four seasons. Working with skilled yurt builders, you’ll build a simple yurt, complete with a…

If you have ever dreamed of building your own small home, shop, sauna, studio, or cabin, this course is for you. Designing a space according to your own values and needs is a creative and satisfying endeavor. Instructor Mark Hansen has been designing and building small shelters for a variety…

Doors play a role in everyone’s day-to-day life, whether solid, windowed or screened. They do everything from keeping the weather out to guarding our belongings. In this course, you'll learn about the basic techniques of door construction. Styles include a basic interior door (32” wide) and a screen door (36”…

Masonry heaters originated in Northern Europe where winters were cold and fuel wasn’t always plentiful.  The natural response?  Create a wood-fired presence that was at once incredibly efficient and highly attractive, capable of generating abundant heat and ideal for cooking/baking.  Masonry heaters are built with fire bricks and utilize their…

Learning a new craft often involves starting with a small project to learn and practice skills before hitting the big time with a full scale project. The same is true for home construction! Build a practice house in this five-day introduction to stick frame construction. By building a charming play…

Tired of unimaginative, small outbuilding kits available from your local lumberyard? Explore all the basic elements of timber frame construction and take home a hand-crafted building. More than 100 timber frame buildings have been built and raised throughout the country by North House students since 1997.  During the first days…

Whether you’re looking for a spare bedroom, office, studio, tent, sauna, summer cabin, or just looking to reduce your footprint, the yurt may be the answer. Yurts are ancient, portable shelters and one of the classic inventions of human history: simple, efficient, easy to heat, sturdy, and beautiful inside and…