My friend Nathan who lives at Dancing Rabbit is interested in hosting natural building professionals who want to experience life in an off-the-grid community. If this description fits you, please read ahead!
I realized that something may not be obvious about the cob house I am currently living in. My home, GOBCOBATRON, is actually electricity-free. I have chosen to live without electricity in my home. There are a couple of reasons for this…
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your own natural home?
Check out our Natural Building Workshops outside Berea, KY. We offer courses in cob and straw bale building, timber framing, and more.
When designing my cob house, it was an important goal to keep my building costs very low and to obtain as many building materials as locally as possible. Natural materials were my first priority, and recycled building supplies were preferred over new materials. Few materials were purchased new, and about as few are synthetic.
In this very detailed entry, Recipe for Building a Cob House, you can learn what it took to build my cob house for about $3000 in material costs. You’ll also learn exactly how much cob I made (all by foot!), and specific amounts of material that went into the construction. Read More
So I haven’t uploaded any interior photos of Gobcobatron yet… I promise I’m getting to it. I’ve just been delaying until the interior was sufficiently furnished… I suppose I’ll have to get on that now! Expect those photos soon!
Anyway, here are two photos taken by Ramin Rahimian, a photographer who recently visited Dancing Rabbit to take some photodocumentary-style pictures. I like ’em.
You may remember reading about how I stumbled upon a perfectly sized tractor tire that I decided to use for the frame of my skylight atop my reciprocal roof. Well, I finally installed the actual skylight to the tractor tire frame a couple of weeks ago with the help of my friend Tamar. Read ahead for all the details!
The very last thing to be completed in the house was applying finish earthen plaster to my cob bed and bench. (The bed and bench were still not completely dry by the time I was ready to plaster the walls, hence I did it after doing the finish floor… not ideal, since it was a little tricky to keep it neat, but it worked.)
It feels great!
In June, I finished installing the earthen floor in my cob house. In October, I built the base layer of the earthen floor, a 2.5″ thick mix of sand, clay, and straw. It dried over fall and winter (very slooowly), and once I finished plastering my walls, I moved onto completing the floor this spring. Here’s how it happened:
I have officially moved into my cob house! On July 11, I carted my possessions from my grain bin apartment to my new home. I set my books upon the cob shelves, moved in a set of shelves and a (pretty crappo) desk, threw some temporary air pads and sheets on the bed, and settled in.
Apologies for a recent lack of updates, but I’ve been away for over two weeks and recently returned home. But I am now days away from moving in after oiling my earthen floor over the weekend.
Expect more updates very soon about finish earthen plaster, laying and oiling the finish earthen floor, and moving in!
(p.s. The silly looking jugs in the garden in this photo? They are to detract voles and/or moles from eating up the vegetable plants. [Which is actually more important when the plants are very young.] It actually works, although it’s not the prettiest sight!)
Once you have mixed your deliciously smooth finish earthen plaster, it’s time to apply it to make your cob walls shine. It’s a seemingly simple process, but there is a certain hidden finesse that will make the job easier with time and practice. I’m no expert, but here’s how I went about plastering the interior of my cob house.
(This entry is a continuation from Finish Earthen Plaster: Part 1: Materials and Recipe.)
About The Year of Mud
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.
