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May 21
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Building the First Course of the Urbanite Foundation [Kitchen]

By Foundation, Wabi-sabi Kitchen

urbanite-foundation01Last 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.)

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May 20
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Collecting Urbanite for the Kitchen Foundation

By Foundation, Wabi-sabi Kitchen

urbanite-thisisurbaniteIn April, I went to gather urbanite for the kitchen foundation (which has finally been started as of last week!). Urbanite is, of course, reclaimed concrete from old roads and sidewalks.

I’ve collected and used urbanite for my home, but this time, walking in a giant yard brimming with the stuff, I got a decidedly post-industrial feeling about the whole thing. There was something sorta post-modern about the whole affair: scrambling over giant piles of rubble from dozens of demolition jobs, looking for the right size pieces of concrete to reuse in a completely different sort of building. I imagined that if I didn’t pick through this stuff, it would likely still be there the next year, and the next, and probably until well beyond my life or that of even our current capitalist, globalized society.

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May 15
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Ever Make Your Own Handmade Door?

By Carpentry

For the small mud room addition to the house, April and I are considering making our own door(s). I’m really unsatisfied with most of the commercial doors out there. They really lack character. And it’s tough to find nice reclaimed doors, too.

But trying to dig up information on how to build your own exterior doors (esepecially insulated doors) is pretty tough. So I turn to you, readers – does anyone have links to resources on building your own exterior, insulated doors?

I have a good image in my mind of the door I’d like to build, but my experience with that level of carpentry is pretty nil. (I picture a nice heavy 32″ wide, left handed, solid wood door with two or three layers of wood, or two layers with some kind of insulation between, nice black strap hinges, preferably with some heavy glass in the upper half, and preferably arched.) Guidance is welcome!

May 02
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My cob house featured in PARADE Magazine

By Uncategorized

Haha. A few weeks ago, a woman from PARADE Magazine contacted me about the grain bin renovation here at Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage. With my email response, I included a link to this website, and the writer decided to feature GOBCOBATRON instead of the grain bin home.

So now 70 million people have read about me (‘Ziggy Liloia’ – I actually almost never use my nickname and last name together) and building my cob house here at Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage. Weird.

Unfortunately, they did not include either a link to The Year of Mud or Dancing Rabbit’s website. But here’s their story on it: Home, Strange Home.

May 01
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The temporary outdoor kitchen project

By Carpentry, Wabi-sabi Kitchen

temporary kitchen - roofing

Wabi-sabi has been busy building a temporary outdoor kitchen the past several weeks. Before we really get underway on the ‘for real’ kitchen construction project, we are setting up this outdoor kitchen as a place to cook and eat while we are building. Right now, we’re eating on a sort of glorified tent platform with a simple rocket stove, a filing cabinet for food storage, and a bucket with a spigot for washing dishes. This temporary outdoor kitchen will have, most importantly, walls and a roof, which the current setup does not. It will have rainwater catchment for dish washing water, a lorena-style stove, and hopefully plenty of storage for food. It will not have seating space, however.

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Apr 23
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What is Wabi-sabi?

By Wabi-sabi Kitchen

Wabi-sabi is the name I and my fellow sub-communitarians have adopted for our collective here at Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage. Our small sub-community formed two winters ago, when several of us gathered to talk about forming a collective to share our interests and work on common projects together, including gardening and possibly building a kitchen to house a food co-op. Our community within a community would also be a tight network of support for each other.

In the spring, we began to more seriously discuss the prospect of building a kitchen, and over the summer we started eating with each other outdoors on Thomas’s warren (a.k.a. leasehold), using a simple rocket stove for cooking. The kitchen design began to take shape over those months. It would be a roughly bean-shaped structure with indoor cooking, dining, and social space, with a sheltered porch for outdoor cooking in the summer, and surrounded by gardens. Since we all have similar ecological ideals, it was not difficult to determine that we wanted to use mostly hand tools to build, and use as many local and natural materials as possible. (We even discussed the possibility of trying not to use any plastic in the construction at all — that would be quite a challenge, though… but it’s possible, I think.)

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Apr 23
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Amazing Traditional Carpentry and Timber Framing Website

By Hand Tools, Resources, Video, Wabi-sabi Kitchen

I was very fortunate to recently catch wind of Carpenters from Europe and Beyond, an incredibly valuable traditional carpentry resource from France’s Ministry of Culture. The website is host to a wealth of information about the history of carpentry, the people who honed the craft, and videos of modern day traditional carpenters continuing to work by hand, especially in the timber framing tradition.

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Apr 13
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The Year of Mud expands

By Uncategorized

The comments I received on my earlier post seemed to be enough to sway me towards combining this website with my kitchen construction blog, so except many (and more frequent) posts about building the bale-cob kitchen here in the future! For the sake of my own sanity and time, this seems to be the best option. I’ve imported all of the content (there isn’t that much yet), so you’ll see it throughout the existing posts.

You may notice a few other changes on The Year of Mud to accommodate this change, as well. I’ve reworked the About page to include a brief cob building overview, and moved my cob house timeline to its own page. And the kitchen construction project has its own page as well, which will surely be updated as progress on that building continues.

Stay tuned for more, and thanks for the feedback!

p.s. No new title yet. I gotta admit that I’m sorta attached to “The Year of Mud”, even though the name is kinda irrelevant now.

Apr 13
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Question for readers: Combining kitchen building blog with The Year of Mud?

By Uncategorized

I’ve been pondering a possibility for the past week or so. Last year, I started up a new blog dedicated to my latest building project, a sub-community kitchen here at Dancing Rabbit that I’m working on with a few other folks. However, I’ve been finding it difficult to want to maintain two separate websites, although in theory I like the idea of the content for each website being devoted to each particular project. It just seems more organized, you know? But it’s really hard to want to upkeep two pretty regular blogs… well, regularly.

And so I ask you readers: do you think that I should combine The House That Millet Built with The Year of Mud, for the sake of simplicity? Or should I keep them separate, for the sake of organization?

It should be fairly straightforward to have a kitchen subsection on this website, with it’s own set of categories.

Well, what do you think? Would it detract from the straight aim of this blog to start talking about a whole new project?

Apr 07
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Cob Bench Demolition Video

By Cob Bed and Bench, Video

Holy crap. I knew taking cob apart was not easy, but to actually try to destroy cob makes it really clear just how strong this stuff is! This is a brief video of me (attempting to) demolish the cob bench outside of my house. This bench no longer fits into the design since I plan to add a small mud room/airlock to the house, and the bench would be in the way.

I tried a sledgehammer, but it wasn’t as effective as a pick axe. Actually, it was easiest when the bench was soaked with water and then struck with the pick axe. Hitting it wet with the sledgehammer resulted in cob flying everywhere.

Cob is stupidly strong. You can see the minimal impact a full pick axe blow has on the bench. What made it somewhat reasonable was prying the urbanite out from underneath the bench, and then really wailing on the cob to break it up.

This cob bench demolition experience is making me sweat when I think about taking the whole cob bed and bench apart inside the house! Good lord… it’s gonna be backbreaking…