Moving

I've moved my blog to a new (and exciting) location.

Head update

The concept of the 6 1/2 by 6 foot house had been floating gently in the back of my mind since earlier in the summer. As of last week, I find my brain space being consumed! The 6 1/2 foot dimension is based upon the length of my sleeping body (plus a bit of extra wiggle room). As I look at the carpet squares in my sister's apartment (20 inch squares), it occurs to me that I could actually get away shaving off some square footage - 60 by 80 inches appears sufficient.

This would be a house for me to live in for just a year. Here is what I think will fit: a sink, food preparation/cooking space, seating for 3, enough floor space to sleep, storage space (kitchen stuff, books/writing supplies, clothes), and a small Rumford fireplace. I have decided that it is (arguably) impractical to also squeeze in a shower and toilet. Instead, these functions will have to be available right outside the house - in winter, I'll enclose them, greenhouse-style.

I plan to start building in Spring. Up until that point, I see myself wasting huge chunks of my time in further planning of this tiny dwelling. I expect it to be especially cute because it will appear so awkwardly unbalanced in its height-to-width ratio. It will also feel very den-like because of its small volume in contrast to its massive 18-inch-thick mud walls.

I finally have a new camera, and am heading back to the cob cottage tomorrow to take exciting new photos.

Shelving visitors

I had a feel good week at the cottage site, and was thrilled to have Elaine (sister) and Ian (nephew) come visit and see what I had accomplished. It was an inspired 5 days. I didn't actually get much done in terms of preparation work for plastering, because I was too busy building things that were never in the plans.



A saw a piece of slate sitting around, and thought it would make an adequate bedside table. Margaret (the future dweller) commented that she much prefers a two-tiered bedside table so that she can store her current reads on the bottom shelf. After a bit of searching, I came across a matching piece of slate. I "cobbed" them into the existing wall, but needed some support on the suspended corners. Here was my chance to use roundwood. After shaving off the bark, planing down the knots, chiseling out the notches, and drilling holes for the horizontal roundwood braces, the support post was ready to perform its function.

I was happy with how the peg joint turned out.



I found a nice forked length of roundwood to use as a hanging support for this shelf, which will be above the end of the bed.

A fantastic space to store books, or little boys. Notice, also, the new little niche carved into the wall near the tall, vertical window. This will be a good place on which to perch a candle, or a statue, or glasses during sleep.





Here is Ian, in his hunter-gatherer mode, collecting stray chunks of dry cob.


I've spent a bit of time every day thinking about how I might go about creating a door to fit into a very strangely-shaped opening. The problem was that there are bumpy foundation stones along one side of the door opening, a bumpy threshold stone, and a curved top arch. To build a door that would swing shut into this negative space and still keep out drafts was an overwhelming thought. After 5 days of letting the problem marinate in my mind, I gave up on the near-impossible, and decided to retro-fit the cottage entrance with a wooden door-frame.

The horns at the top of the frame are integrated supports that perform two functions: they add extra strength to the frame, and create a support structure upon which a shelf will go. This way, when Margaret slams the door, everything on the shelf has a good chance to come crashing down on her head. Notice the 3 "deadmen" attached to the right vertical of the door frame. Deadmen (usually gnarly tree branch cut-offs) are used to secure something into a cob wall, in this case the door frame. The more strangely-shaped and gnarly they are, the better - they'll have more "tooth" (grip) into the cob. I used a hammer to chisel out the cubbies in the wall into which the deadmen are places. Then I screwed the door frame onto them.

Below, I have begun to bury the deadmen (you see where the term comes from) in cob. The pieces are bamboo are in place to keep the door frame evenly-spaced and plumb while the cob dries (at which point it won't budge an inch).




Pull-up.


I like how the shelving looks with things actually shelved on it. You can see the stove pipe entering the building near Ian's head.




Eventually, the little boy escaped, and we all went home.

I'll be back on site tomorrow, getting serious about plaster prep. Next weekend, we'll host a "plaster party" to coat the interior walls, and the following weekend will be the party for the exterior. If everything goes super-smoothly, we might get the floor poured in the between week.

still standing

I'm back in North Carolina. As I got closer and closer to the state, my hungry anticipation at seeing how the cottage withstood a lonely summer grew unbearable. Come and feast, as I have feasted:

Not such a lonely summer after all! I learned that these pipe-shaped mud formations are the nests of the harmless, humble (and talented) Mud Dauber Wasp. These strange little creatures sting a certain kind of spider, fly the dead spider body up to a potential nest site, and proceed to build these little clay pipes around the spider. Then they lay eggs in the spider's dead body. Each pipe is actually a series of compartments (like bamboo), each compartment representing one egg-filled spider carcass. I find the nests to be terribly beautiful, and rather appropriate for a cob cottage. It leads me to wonder whether one might be able to organize these mud daubers in a great enough force to build cottages for human use.



In general, everything looked great. There were no signs of water damage (a punctured roof membrane or seepage in through the North wall was my biggest summer worry). Everything looks dry and solid. Give swords and a year's time to one thousand warriors and see if they can crack those walls.





I really like how the built-in shelving unit looks, regardless of whether Mike thinks my waist-height sculptural details mimic urinals. The bottom three shelves will remain as exposed bamboo. The top three shelves are ugly lumber that will be covered up with earthen plaster when we plaster the interior walls.

The sub-floor looks and feels better than I ever could have imagined, considering how wet and expediently An and I slapped it down in June. It has a cracking pattern that matches where our screed boards were (the boards that allow a builder to ensure that a floor is level as it is poured), but the cracks aren't big enough to be a worry.



The green roof held up pretty well. Transplanting the living community of plants in June - right as the hot North Carolina summer was beginning - wasn't the best timing. The plants got hit hard with heat and drought before they were able to take over and flourish. Luckily, 50% of the surface area is still covered by the hardiest of the hardy. As fall approaches, I expect that cooler temperatures + rain will give us our green.



The way that light dances so softly around that window...



peek-a-boo!



The Rumford Fireplace is still alive and well, with its white god-rock aloft the highest flame-tower.



Today I started gathering the purest clay I could find - this will be used for plastering, and for the finished floor. Luckily, we have (at least) two colors on the property. I think the lighter shade will work well on the interior (to brighten up the space with natural light). That bright orange-red is going to make for a gorgeous exterior plaster.



The longer the clay gets to soak in water, the better the quality of plaster. I'll stir this mixture every morning, and it will be creamy and perfect by the time plaster party day arrives.

It's always comforting to return to the earth.

cob if you want

There are some angles on the land from which the cottage looks particularly spectacular in its shape, and make me wish that I had a camera. If I was up on my sketching, I would have captured these vistas on paper, and then scanned them in. But alas, people find the camera to be more truthful than the hand anyhow.

Here are some photos I have procured from friends and fellow builders that provide a similar story to mine through different brain-eyes.

Here is the Green Roof from the garden, holding the weight of a sleeper (Mike on his last night):


This is perhaps my favorite angle to enjoy the roof line from:


An in-your-face capture of some green roof residents:

My sister encouraged me to post this photo to explain more clearly how the rafters are "cobbed" into the wall:


Here is the first floor layer, which is a drainage layer - made up of about 4 yards (!) of hand-harvested stone and gravel from around the land, hauled back to the site in wheelbarrows and buckets. It's a very glorious emotion that I feel when I consider how hard we worked to move all of that geologic material, and how much money we saved and ecological damage we avoided responsibility for by not purchasing gravel.


The second layer of floor is a 2.5" subfloor layer, made of grit, sand, straw, and clay slip. The straw will act similarly to the rebar in poured concrete.


I wish I had a photo of the finished subfloor. It looks gorgeous and smooth and is amazingly level (we'll see how it settles over the summer).


Glory shot:


I noticed on one of the last days in North Carolina that An had written on her shirt in German. She told me she woke up in her tent with a pen nearby and felt like some shirt-writing.


"Cob if you want"

And she did.


Now I'm back in Syracuse through Monday, at which point I will be heading to Stony Creek Farm in Walton, NY. I will occupy my time there with more building, both in the structural sense as well as community... until August, when I return to North Carolina and finish what I started.

my camera's last words were

Today was my final Uncle Monday for this round of North Carolina. Yesterday was my last teaching day, as we finished up our Green Roof Workshop (strong and biologically). This week will be a mad dash to get an adobe floor poured, and then on Friday I skip town with my sister, nephew, and An - zipping north.

I put my camera through a lot over the past year: living in tents, held with the muddiest of fingers, accelerating at 9.8 m/sec^2 onto hard ground. It has shed much of its skin of chrome buttons and aluminum casing. How fitting that it should breathe its final gasp of air right before the roof is finished. Photos just allow us to physically separate ourselves from the things we know we should see. In a photograph of the cottage you can't hear its beckoning whispers: "hop through my arch" or "nap on my roof." A walk is worth 1,000 pictures.

In any case, below are some captured moments of time.

This is a good demonstration of the free-form nature of cob. That's a rectangular window, with a cob makeover.


Do you see the koala face?


This is a nice photo by Mike, taken right after we placed our six long full-spanning rafters.


Here is An fooling around with the placement of the radial rafters.


And the shadows they make.


It's a constant process of tweaking rafters, jumping down and stepping back for a true view, checking whether the roof line is voluptuous enough, and repetitive tweaks until it's right.


Radials again. It's easy to get sick of rectangles and lines and boxes, but not so much with curves. (said the hopeful natural builder to the beautiful lady beside him)


Putting on the "bender-board" decking. Each trapezoid is custom-cut.


If Mike and I ever start a building group, we have a photo to put on the tri-fold brochure.


Thank you to my friend Jaimie (the blonde head sticking above the roof line)! She came down to help for four days, and contributed some great sculptural work on the interior of the building, as well as roof work.


The dumpster behind the carpet store in town provided us with rugs and carpet underlay galore (some of it brand new, wrapped in plastic). This was used for the 2 cushioning layers of the green roof that sandwich our salvaged pool liner. Aside from the wood members, and metal fasteners, our green roof was completely free.


Here is Ian from Iowa (An's husband) screwing on some of the fascia boards, which function to hold the layer of soil/plants, as well as accenting the shape of the roof and making it sing.


And here are two color-challenged photos taken with my other camera, which apparently has a bad lens. There are in-progress shots of the green roof workshop.



I'll be putting up finished roof photos next week.

I can't believe how many hands this tiny cottage represents. Everyone has put so much of themselves into it, and the feedback Mike and I have received is some of the most meaningful stringings of words that I have ever known to exist. This project has brought thousands of wheelbarrows full of love into this world.

Water chestnuts

After a tussle with a tin can of water chestnuts on friday night, this next week on the cottage (the last push of cob!) may be even more exciting and demanding than I had previously anticipated: an opportunity to master one-handed cobbing.


We've been receiving great feedback from the workshop!

Nita was our oldest participant, weighing in at 6 decades of life. She drove from Boone, NC in her little Honda Insight, and was (I think) the hardest worker of the bunch. She was often the last to leave the site, and volunteered her energy whenever we needed some extra help with clean-up, or tarp-tying, or gathering materials. She put together a really nice slide-show of all the photos she took:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SqR0Igs63G8

Danielle was not only great during the workshop, but she lingered at the farm for a couple days after, and will be back again this wednesday for a "work party!" She took some really nice photos, and compiled them here. Danielle is involved with her husband and two friends in starting a small-scale organic gardening operation in Silk Hope, NC. She will be putting up a cob house within the next two years. We took a field trip to her land during the workshop and found the most amazing collection of clays, so I can't wait to see what she does.

nephew update

The cottage isn't my everything down here in North Carolina. Here's a photo update of my time spent with nephew Ian.

What a well-behaved, angelic little eater. That is my sister's hand on the spoon, not to be confused with the hand of a cobber.

I'm trying to get Ian interested in building and structure from a young age, so our toy of choice is his colored wooden block set. Try as I might, he seems to be more into deconstruction than anything else.




Consider how much larger my brain might be than that of the little boy.

A top-of-the-stairs shot by Elaine. All subjects are satisfied: me with my watermelon, Lilo with my watermelon droppings, and Ian with access to my most tender chest hairs.