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.
Here’s a rough drawing of the kitchen design. In this sketch you can get a sense of the shape and arrangement of the building. On the east is a wide covered porch for outdoor cooking in the summer. The building has a sizable greenhouse on the south side for starting seedlings and additional heat in the winter, and a west-facing balcony can be accessed from the loft above the dining area on that side of the structure. There are three roof lines — I think the building sorta looks like a duck in this drawing. Outdoor eating will be on the east, along with a cob oven and perhaps even a cob wall along the north border of our “warren” (plot of land) for privacy / a windbreak / aesthetics / sound protection.
If I could find our floor plans drawing, I would post that too, but I actually want to make a more accurate one now that the trench has been dug. Unfortunately it’s hard to measure the drainage trench when it’s covered in snow. Anyway, expect those soon!
The design for the kitchen is coming together bit by bit. Thomas and I have recently touched upon wall systems in our dicussions, and I expressed my interest in doing the west and north walls of the kitchen in balecob style.
There are but two printed resources for balecob building, both of which are short articles in the Cob Web, which is published by the Cob Cottage Company. The bale cob building technique seems pretty clearcut to me, but I’d love to hear from natural builders who have worked with bale cob and can speak to their experiences with the technique!
If you have bale cob information and experience, please comment on this website! I’d love to hear folks’ opinions on the matter.
Winter is the time for planning for the year ahead, and there’s a number of building-related projects in the works for 2010.
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The rubble trench for the kitchen has been completely dug and filled with gravel, thankfully in time before it’s gotten to be too cold.
Hi there, I’m Ziggy. In 2008, I launched The Year of Mud while building my first natural home. This website 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. In 2012, we started offering Natural Building Workshops, so you can learn essential hands-on skills to build your own natural home.
