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…
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.
We had some extra earthen plaster from re-plastering the portion of the house where the cob bed was, so we slapped it on the oven in the temporary outdoor kitchen. And then I made this little whale mosaic. I kinda like how it came out!
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.
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…
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!
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.
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.
Can this plant lower indoor humidity levels?
April and I have been doing research about how to lower the indoor humidity levels in the house. Recently, the outdoor temperatures skyrocketed to the mid-80s after several weeks of 60 degree temperatures, so everything is really humid and damp… Including the house.
So humid, in fact, that mold started to develop all over the earthen floor, especially around the rugs. We took all the rugs out and I mopped the floor with water, but that was a bad choice… since it didn’t dry easily. A couple days ago, we wiped the floor with vinegar to help kill the mold, and set up a box fan to blow air over the floor (thanks to our neighbors for lending us electricity!) to help it really dry out.
Last week, we set out to make some progress on stacking the urbanite foundation for our kitchen. There were a few things I learned from my own foundation, and a few things we wanted to do differently for this building. At first, we thought we’d want to dry stack the entire thing, but realized we would definitely benefit from some mortar, especially around the area where our giant posts will be sitting on the foundation.
I have not been super pleased with the clay/sand mortar I made for my own home, so I haven’t been pushing for a mud mortar. It wicks moisture big time and was a pretty big issue over winter and into the early spring — in those early days of spring, earthworms had managed to tunnel through the mortar into the house! (The mortar has since dried out. I think it was mostly wet from snow contact against the foundation over winter.)
Hi there, I’m Ziggy. In 2008, I launched The Year of Mud while building my first natural home. This blog is a collection of personal stories and experiences building with clay, straw, and wood over the past 15+ years. A few of the things that get me fired up are natural plasters, timber framing, & Japanese architecture. Since 2012, we’ve been hosting Natural Building Workshops so you can learn essential skills to build your own natural home.
