I’ve been enjoying the addition of the completed mud room to the house. It makes for a convenient place to kick off shoes, hang up jackets and other items that don’t clutter the house, create a better transition inside, and it gives us a tiny extra boost in the storage department! Click ahead for a few photos of the final room.
A couple of weeks ago, we got around to re-plastering the north side of the house (most of the plaster on the lower half of the wall was completely weathered away), the east, and the finished mud room. April slaved away on this mosaic above the bench and around the window that day, and I think the final product is really swell. The stones are from a Tennessee river bed and the white pieces are broken tile.
The grape vine (to the left in the photo) exploded with all of the rain this year, and it frames this mini seating area and has climbed well up onto the roof. The bench itself is cantilevered in the wall — two roundwood branches (one osage orange, one black locust), and the boards are hand-planed and oiled black walnut. It’s cozy!
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!
The past three days I have been busy applying finish earthen plaster to the interior of my cob house. I expect it will be done tomorrow. Here are a few photos of the plaster work in progress, along with some of the mosaics that are being installed underneath the rafters of the reciprocal roof.
A few days ago, Tamar suggested that perhaps I’d want to do a mosaic on the outside of my house. I’d been doing the exterior earthen plaster and was nearly complete, and I had only a small portion of wall remaining near the entryway. I took her up on the offer.
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.
