My friend Jon reminded me the other day of this effort to build a castle in France using artisans pursuing only the period techniques circa 1200 or so.  There was a BBC article updating the world on their progress recently (link below) and it’s always something to learn from things like this.

The craftsmanship is amazing, the dedication astounding. It predates my project by hundreds of years, but nonetheless… wow.

Recent BBC coverage:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10440300

The Official Website (English edition):
http://www.guedelon.fr/en/

The article on Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gu%C3%A9delon_Castle

Some videos from YouTube: