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.
Well, this is awkward…
One of the most exciting projects in our timber frame/straw bale home of 2013 was building the wooden spiral staircase. It was a real head scratcher, and physically challenging to build as well. But the results were intensely exciting. The staircase is now an awesome focal point in the house.
We built the stairs in the days leading up to our move to Kentucky, and so we never had much of a chance to actually use them. We knew, too, that over time the risers and treads would shift a bit as the wood dried, and the whole thing would likely need adjustments later.
Well, since coming back to work on the house again, we’ve had an opportunity to see how things have changed and correct as necessary. As you can see above, it was at times a bit of a contortionist affair.
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.
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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Our living roof starts to grow up
It’s been fun to come back to Dancing Rabbit and be able to see firsthand how our living roof on Strawtron has changed since last year, when we completed building it. Unlike Gobcobatron, when I cut out sod squares and loaded them onto the roof surface, we used loose topsoil on this second living roof design. It was, in many ways, much more challenging but it was also what was available at the time. Thankfully, plants have started to take root in the soil and it’s no longer bare. I love the idea of an “evolving” living roof and seeing how the diversity of plants changes over time.
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.
Experience sustainable living at Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage this year
Well, that came up fast. It’s April 1 tomorrow, and that signals a special time of year. In a couple of weeks, the visitor season at Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage is about to begin. If you’ve been curious what life is like in an ecovillage or intentional community, now is the time to sign up and plan your trip for this summer.
There are a number of ways to visit Dancing Rabbit, but if you think you might be interested in living there one day, the visitor program is your best bet. Here’s how to go about setting that up.
High up in the sky, spreading seed on the living roof of Strawtron
Now is the typical time to think back on the past year, and to try my darnedest to remember everything that has transpired. 2013 was a particularly memorable year, not unlike the others, I suppose. But this year has been pretty different in several big ways, too. Most notably, this year we decided to move to Berea, Kentucky and sell our two homes at Dancing Rabbit. But that didn’t stop us from squeezing in a few more natural building workshops before we left. Oh, and we had to wrap up a lot of work on Strawtron before we could even sell it. Somehow, we found a way to cram it all in.
Here’s a look at how events and projects unfolded in 2013.
Two custom doors in the second story of the timber frame house
The second story of our timber frame & straw bale house has shorter than standard wall heights. It is definitely standing height, but the beams (or top plates, more specifically) that support the rafters are at head height, and another curved tie beam is similarly placed. We have two door locations upstairs, one to access the north storage loft above the porch, and a second for the walk-out balcony on the west, so we were faced with having to size and build our own homemade doors from scratch. Since I have never built a DIY door before, I was fairly intimidated, but the process wasn’t that bad once I got started. What I came up with were some super heavy duty, insulated doors made with tongue and groove boards, complete with some burly strap hinges to support the weight.
At last, I’m here to report that April and I finished building our wooden spiral staircase. Over the course of five days, literally up to the day before we left Dancing Rabbit, we installed the risers and treads. The spiral staircase design came from our dearest Tom Cundiff, who instructed us on the layout over the phone and in person during our last Timber Frame Workshop. It took us a while to fully grasp the layout and the flow of things, but once we understood the principles, it went fairly smoothly. Well, the actual building was extremely physically taxing, but I digress.
And so this is our attempt at a DIY wooden spiral staircase. Here’s how we built it.
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.
