Building and living in my first cob house
Welcome! I hope you'll follow along as I continue to build my first cob house. Please consider subscribing to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
On July 11, 2009, I moved into my newly completed cob house. It’s now been over a year since the move-in, and there have been many learning lessons along the way. I’d like to present a number of those lessons here in my one year report of living in a cob house.
Here we go…
Michael Janzen of Tiny House Design is building a tiny, 80 square foot house… for free. And word is getting out about his project, which is one of many in the new tiny house wave. From Michael:
The core values of the tiny house movement are that living simply in small spaces empowers us. Committing to a tiny house removes many of the burdens we accepted when we bought into the idea of a “normal” American lifestyle. Instead of focusing on how much we can afford, the tiny space forces us to consider how little we really need.
Check out more about his nifty free tiny house project at Yes! Magazine and visit his website for more news and musings on the tiny house movement! Cool stuff.
Last week, after being sick of sleeping on a carpet with some blankets on the floor, I finally hunkered down and made a bed frame, not without some consistent prodding from April. The idea had been to use some osage orange logs for the corner posts, and I had cut some low limbs weeks ago, but I was nervous about the prospect of using something so round and irregular to make a very square piece of furniture. But it turned out to be quite successful, despite my lack of experience with woodworking.
A tiny hearth for a tiny stove
It’s been a long time coming, but the little Morso 1410 wood stove finally got moved into its final living place. I spent a day or so making this tiny little hearth for the stove, which was a pretty fun little project.
Tiny dry-stacked woodshed foundation
As if there wasn’t enough to do this year (between house changes and a mud room addition, and building a temporary kitchen and of course the full four seasons kitchen, and a whole mess of other stuff), April and I have decided to build a small cob woodshed. Cob woodshed? Isn’t that overkill? Well, sure… but with all of that extra cob we have lying around from the bed demolition, it’s the perfect use for it!
I’ve mentioned before that GOBCOBATRON will be featured on the cover of the latest Yes! Magazine, issue #55. Well, in addition to that, the staff has created a slideshow of the building of my cob house for their website, and a piece of my writing accompanies it.
You can check out the Building a Handmade Cob House slideshow at the Yes! website. If you like it, maybe you’ll consider stumbling it and sharing with friends?
Thanks!
Admiring the first post
At long last, the kitchen timber framing has begun. The foundation was completed several weeks ago, and since then, more of the framing design has been hashed out and actually started. So far, we’ve got our first two posts up and plumbed, and the first beam awaits shaping and raising.
The new front door (that will soon receive a new coat of paint to cover up that blase beige)
The cob walls of the mud room addition are finally complete and all that remains now is to plaster the walls once the cob has fully dried. I’m very happy with how the addition process went and the end result. We’ve now got a great (tiny) little space for storing shoes and hanging coats, and it gives us an extra bit of buffer against exterior temperatures. Here’s a few pictures of the new front entryway of the house…
GOBCOBATRON in Yes! Magazine
Whoa! Yes! Magazine recently contacted me about a feature they were creating for their newest issue about resilient communities — they specifically had interest in covering Dancing Rabbit, but it turns out most of the article ended up being about my cob home. They even selected our photo for the cover shot! (Thanks to Stephen for the photo help.)
This morning we had a mini photo shoot for a possible magazine cover image. Thankfully the weather was just lovely. It was nice to see the house slowly lit up by the beautiful morning sun… If we’re lucky, this photo will actually make the cut. Thanks to Stephen for the photo!
More to come later…
Hullo. I am Brian Liloia, but I am also called Ziggy. I'm a 26-year-old currently living at Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage. In April of 2008, I began building my own cob house, and on July 11, 2009, I moved into the finished home. Here I have documented the entire cob building process, and continue to share information about living in an earthen home, and now my latest project, a group kitchen. This is the Year of Mud. The experience continues.