http://small-scale.net/yearofmud Building and living in my first cob house Thu, 15 Jul 2010 18:42:08 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en 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 ... http://small-scale.net/yearofmud/2010/07/15/gobcobatron-photo-shoot/ Man, goings-on is a weird word. It just never looks or sounds exactly right. Anyway, there have been a number of these so-called goings-on lately. Here's the lowdown on what's been keeping me busy... By now you know that the cob bed has been completely removed, but the wall has been ... http://small-scale.net/yearofmud/2010/07/12/all-the-current-goings-on/ 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! http://small-scale.net/yearofmud/2010/07/11/lorena-stove-whale-mosaic/ Just a quick update to feature a few cob building blogs that I've been checking out lately: earthen acres: Danielle is building a very small cob cottage and documenting her progress. So far her home has a completed dry-stacked (and beautiful!) urbanite foundation with the first layers of cob on the ... http://small-scale.net/yearofmud/2010/06/27/a-few-cob-building-blogs-to-check-out/ [caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="A section of the second course"][/caption] Wabi-sabi is moving slowly but surely towards completing our urbanite foundation for the kitchen. I've gotta say... stacking stone is one of the things I'd really love to learn well with an experienced builder. Granted, urbanite and stone are different animals ... http://small-scale.net/yearofmud/2010/06/19/builidng-up-to-the-final-course-of-the-urbanite-foundation-kitchen/ Unbelievable. This is the third incredibly wet year running now. Rain, rain, rain. It really gets old. (And mucky.) But that didn't stop us from the cob bed and bench demolition project inside of my house. I had been dreading this task for a while now, but boy am I ... http://small-scale.net/yearofmud/2010/06/18/cob-is-resilient-cob-bed-demolition-photos-and-video/ [caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="Counter space with spice shelves, and stove to the right"][/caption] We've moved into the new temporary outdoor kitchen. All of the food, utensils, pots, and pans got carried over last week, and we set up the ol' single burner rocket stove outside the door. We've finally got ... http://small-scale.net/yearofmud/2010/06/08/all-moved-into-the-temporary-outdoor-kitchen/ I love a good building book for inspiration, especially when it contains photos of inventive and intelligent homes from around the world. Imagine houses with six feet-thick seaweed roofs, deep-nestled and hand-carved cave homes, and pigeon-harboring huts made of mud. These and more are all vividly documented in Built By Hand: ... http://small-scale.net/yearofmud/2010/06/07/built-by-hand-a-beautiful-photo-book-of-traditional-homes-and-architecture/ [caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="Can this plant lower indoor humidity levels?"][/caption] April and I have been doing research about how to lower the indoor humidity levels in the house. Recently, the outdoor temperatures skyrocketed to the mid-80s after several weeks of 60 degree temperatures, so everything is really humid and damp... ... http://small-scale.net/yearofmud/2010/05/25/reduce-your-homes-indoor-humidity-with-plants/ Last week, we set out to make some progress on stacking the urbanite foundation for our kitchen. There were a few things I learned from my own foundation, and a few things we wanted to do differently for this building. At first, we thought we'd want to dry stack the ... http://small-scale.net/yearofmud/2010/05/21/building-the-first-course-of-the-urbanite-foundation-kitchen/