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Aug 08
Love0

The Mud Room Addition Nearly Complete

By Earthen Floor, Design, Cob Building, Cob Shelves, Moisture, Lintels
mudroom-ext

The new front door (that will soon receive a new coat of paint to cover up that blase beige)

The cob walls of the mud room addition are finally complete and all that remains now is to plaster the walls once the cob has fully dried. I’m very happy with how the addition process went and the end result. We’ve now got a great (tiny) little space for storing shoes and hanging coats, and it gives us an extra bit of buffer against exterior temperatures. Here’s a few pictures of the new front entryway of the house…

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Aug 05
Love0

My Cob House Featured in Yes! Magazine

By Media
gobcobatron in yes! magazine

GOBCOBATRON in Yes! Magazine

Whoa! Yes! Magazine recently contacted me about a feature they were creating for their newest issue about resilient communities — they specifically had interest in covering Dancing Rabbit, but it turns out most of the article ended up being about my cob home. They even selected our photo for the cover shot! (Thanks to Stephen for the photo help.)

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Jul 15
Love0

GOBCOBATRON Photo Shoot

By Media

Gobcobatron

This morning we had a mini photo shoot for a possible magazine cover image. Thankfully the weather was just lovely. It was nice to see the house slowly lit up by the beautiful morning sun… If we’re lucky, this photo will actually make the cut. Thanks to Stephen for the photo!

More to come later…

Jul 12
Love0

All the current goings-on

By Cob Bed and Bench, Foundation, Earthen Floor

foundation-wide

Man, goings-on is a weird word. It just never looks or sounds exactly right. Anyway, there have been a number of these so-called goings-on lately. Here’s the lowdown on what’s been keeping me busy…

By now you know that the cob bed has been completely removed, but the wall has been replastered, and the floor redone as well. Just yesterday, I finished oiling the finish layer of the floor, so now it is curing. I can’t remember how long I waited last year for the oil to cure, but it must have been at least a week. Most of the past month of work on the house has been waiting – waiting for both layers of the floor to dry, for plaster to dry, for oil to cure. The actual work has been quite quick and simple. But we should finally be able to move back into the house very shortly.

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Jun 27
Love0

A Few Cob Building Blogs To Check Out

By Resources

Just a quick update to feature a few cob building blogs that I’ve been checking out lately:

earthen acres: Danielle is building a very small cob cottage and documenting her progress. So far her home has a completed dry-stacked (and beautiful!) urbanite foundation with the first layers of cob on the wall. I am excited to see how this little structure gets on.

mud for everyone: I haven’t ventured very far into Erica Ann’s blog, but damn if that cob loop-de-loop isn’t cool! Check out the June 1 post.

clay sand straw blog: I’ve enjoyed perusing these folks’ website and the wealth of photos of their building projects, so I anticipate future updates on this new blog.

Any others you would like to share? Comment and lemme know.

Jun 19
Love0

Builidng Up to the Final Course of the Urbanite Foundation [Kitchen]

By Foundation, Wabi-sabi Kitchen
foundation-2ndcourse

A section of the second course

Wabi-sabi is moving slowly but surely towards completing our urbanite foundation for the kitchen. I’ve gotta say… stacking stone is one of the things I’d really love to learn well with an experienced builder. Granted, urbanite and stone are different animals (and stone comes in many shapes and forms itself), but I often stumble over what is “good enough” when it comes to stacking the material. I have a good handle on what is “acceptable” but still — there are so many cases when you sacrifice one thing for another if you just can’t make the perfect fit or find the exact right piece. How to balance that is something I’d love to learn more about…

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Jun 18
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Cob is Resilient! Cob Bed Demolition Photos and Video

By Cob Bed and Bench

bed-demo-01

Unbelievable. This is the third incredibly wet year running now. Rain, rain, rain. It really gets old. (And mucky.) But that didn’t stop us from the cob bed and bench demolition project inside of my house. I had been dreading this task for a while now, but boy am I glad we got it accomplished! And it wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought it would be to destroy thousands of pounds worth of cob… but normally, you cannot really say that of cob, because it is so incredibly tough and resilient!

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Jun 08
Love0

All Moved Into the (Temporary) Outdoor Kitchen

By Uncategorized
tempkitch-int01

Counter space with spice shelves, and stove to the right

We’ve moved into the new temporary outdoor kitchen. All of the food, utensils, pots, and pans got carried over last week, and we set up the ol’ single burner rocket stove outside the door. We’ve finally got a roof over our heads (a truck topper roof, no less), sufficient counter space, the faithful filing cabinet for rodent-proof storage, high shelves for extra canning jars, plenty of hooks for utensils and cast iron pans, rain catchment with a gravity-fed sink, a big hotbox/seat/counter, and a very experimental three burner lorena-style stove inside.

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Jun 07
Love0

Built By Hand: A Beautiful Photo Book of Traditional Homes and Architecture

By Resources

I love a good building book for inspiration, especially when it contains photos of inventive and intelligent homes from around the world. Imagine houses with six feet-thick seaweed roofs, deep-nestled and hand-carved cave homes, and pigeon-harboring huts made of mud. These and more are all vividly documented in Built By Hand: Vernacular Buildings Around the World, a most inspiring bit of natural building eye candy. Built by Hand is a hardcover collection of photographs by Yoshio Komatsu of traditional buildings of all styles across the globe.

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