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Straw Bale Building

Installing Sweet Shelves in Your Straw Bale Home

By Carpentry, Straw Bale Building, Strawtron
Decorative Shelves

Finished shelves installed in the straw bale walls of our house

Installing shelves in the straw bale walls of your home requires a bit of forethought. With some advance planning, you can design some pretty sweet decorative shelves that are quite sturdy and can be adjusted over time. Here’s a relatively simple plan we came up with to build strong, attractive shelving in our house.

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Ideas for Installing Baseboard in a Straw Bale House

By Carpentry, Straw Bale Building, Strawtron
Installing Baseboard in Straw Bale House

Installing baseboard just prior to the finish plaster application

Baseboard is an excellent idea to consider for a straw bale house. It’s not just pretty and decorative, but perhaps more important, it’s functional too. The bottom of the plastered wall is delicate, and a bit of trim protects it from the inevitable sweeping, mopping, or chair leg careening towards the wall.

A couple of days ago, I just got finished installing baseboard in our straw bale house. Having gone through that experience, I have some new ideas for how to install baseboard trim in the future. Here’s what I did this time, and what I’m thinking might work in future projects, too.

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Strawtron Enters the 21st Century

By Straw Bale Building, Strawtron
Electrical Wiring in a Straw Bale House

Electrical wiring gets installed in Strawtron

Over the past number of years, April and I have strived to live without electricity in our main living spaces. We certainly don’t live without it completely (this website certainly wouldn’t exist then), but we’ve enjoyed a candlelit lifestyle in Gobcobatron and planned the same for Strawtron. Now that our straw bale/timber frame is for sale, however, we’ve decided to go ahead and install electrical wiring in the house. It’s a bittersweet feeling — it’s not necessarily what we intended for the house, but I think it makes the home much more desirable for folks considering it as a possibility for themselves.

Strawtron is now firmly in the solar-powered 21st century, as it is now wired for Dancing Rabbit’s solar grid-tie cooperative.
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September is for Strawtron

By Straw Bale Building, Strawtron
Strawtron: straw bale house

We’re back in Strawtron, ready to make some exciting improvements

A couple of weeks ago, we decided to make a return trip to Dancing Rabbit to do some more finish work on Strawtron, our timber frame/straw bale home that’s on the market. We’ve arrived now, and have big plans for the next few weeks, including finishing the interior earthen plaster, putting another coat of lime and lime wash outside, and… wiring it for electricity. I never thought I’d say that, but alas…. there you have it. Strawtron will be firmly moving into the solar-powered 21st century.

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National Straw Bale Building Code is a Go

By Straw Bale Building
Straw Bale National Building Codes

A historic day for straw bale construction!

Thankfully, we’ve never had to worry ourselves about local building codes, but there are many, many more folks who regularly struggle with codes when attempting to build a natural home in their area. And so the following news is very welcome, not just for those folks, but for a potential ecological/cultural tidal shift, as well. Earlier in October, an appendix on straw bale building was approved for inclusion in the 2015 International Residential Code for one and two-family dwellings. The IRC is basically the foundation for building codes all across the US. Wow!

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Straw Bale Plaster Tips

By Straw Bale Building, Clay Plaster, Lime Plaster
Straw Bale Construction: Plaster

Plastering your straw bale house — a critical step to get right!

Plastering straw bale walls is time-consuming, it requires finesse, and it’s definitely something you want to avoid having to do over again, at all costs. Plaster is a barrier to the elements, to moisture, and it’s what will define the aesthetic appearance of your home. I recently appreciated Andrew Morrison’s succinct plastering tips article at Strawbale.com.

If you want a better handle on how to do a successful plaster job on your house, read this! It’s the most technical and critical part of straw bale construction.

Timber Framing and Straw Bale: The Perfect Marriage?

By Straw Bale Building, Strawtron, Timber Framing
Straw Bale & Timber Frame House 01

Straw bale & timber frame house in the works

I wonder: is timber framing and straw bale building the perfect marriage of two building techniques? Of course, I may be a bit biased, as I am building a timber frame and straw bale house as we speak, but I think there is much to say for the compatibility, efficiency, and beauty of these two systems. I’ll lay out my line of thinking here, including the benefits of timber framing and straw bale alone, and the two systems combined.

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Our Timber Frame & Straw Bale House Building Timeline

By Timber Framing, Straw Bale Building, Strawtron

Straw Bale House2012 was a whirlwind of a building season. Organizing and running two natural building workshops, building a timber frame house with hand tools, meeting deadlines, unbelievable heat…

Despite all of it, we accomplished an amazing amount of work. Again, huge thanks to our awesome building workshop crews, and every volunteer that picked up a hammer (or a really heavy timber) in our crazy journey. Here I present a recap of our 2012 Strawtron building season. In the coming weeks I will ‘fill in the blanks’ where I have not provided online documentation of our timber frame & straw bale house, so look out!

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How To Build a Timber Frame & Straw Bale House — Coming This Winter

By Timber Framing, Straw Bale Building, Strawtron

Timber Frame Home

Throughout the process of building my cob house “Gobcobatron”, I documented the entire process of its construction online here at The Year of Mud, demonstrating the process I went through to build my first home. It has been a rewarding experience for me, and the feedback and learning experience has been wonderful.

This year, since beginning the construction of my new timber frame and straw bale home, time has been particularly scant, as the timeline was even more compressed and deadlines were many, thus a less detailed documentation effort during the building season throughout the various construction stages.

However, this winter I have plans to retrace my steps, to present how to build a timber frame and straw bale house.

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