Winter is almost here!

We got our first snow on Thanksgiving!! Its exciting, I suppose.. if I didn't HATE snow! LOL Actually I really dislike extreme cold.. Well it really wouldn't be that bad outside if it was 30s and no wind.. But here we get plenty of wind.

Winter means a few things around our house..

1. Gavin's BIRTHDAY. He will be one on the 17th. I really can not believe my precious baby is turning one. I can still remember his birth. Tommy and I were recalling, and decided he was our spontaneous child, with his spontaneous birth! (birth story blogs down)

2. Shayla's birthday! My precious little sister is growing up on me! I can't believe that either! I still remember the day she was born at 2:19 in the afternoon being a whopping 7lbs 13 oz.. I remember all her details!

3. Christmas! A Day of loving and enjoying our family!

And finally we start ground work on our COB house.. That is probably one of the most exciting things about it! I can not wait! We already have the spot picked out, where we will be putting the house, err building the house.

And now you may be asking yourself? What the heck is Cob? Well Cob means a loaf. And a loaf of what you may ask. Well a loaf of clay, sand, water, and straw! Now you may be saying SERIOUSLY?! LOL Yep, we are building a house out of mud!

Now that may sound crazy, but Cob dries to the consistency of concrete! As I once read/heard, you will appreciate cob more when you forget to put a window in and have to knock a spot out! It is tough!

Why? You may be asking yourself, why in the world would we want to do that! Well because it is cheap! Clay is very very common here in Missouri, in fact you can find it 3 inches down! And thats free, we have the equipment to dig it. We need under 100 bales of straw.. (Thats overestimating) And those are around $2/3 each.. so 200-300 for that. Then we will need a couple loads of sand.. And hey guess what thats what we do for a living deliver gravels! So we will spend a couple hundred on sand. Water .. well we have a well. Of course we will need to dig a well where the house is. And the interior will also cost money.

We are really hoping to have a cheap house, but a nice very strong structured house!
Lets do some simple estimated math:

Straw- $250
Sand-$200
Well- $4000 (thats guessing high)
Small Saw Mill- $2000 (so we can cut and use wood off the property)
Concrete Mixer- $300 (This is going to speed the process up)
Plumbing- $2000 (totally guessing)
Electrical- $3000 (again guessing)
Roof- $2500
Bathroom fixtures- $1000
Kitchen fixtures/cabinets- $2000
windows- $2000
Misc.. because I am sure to miss stuff here -$6000


Total- 25,250 (now thats probably low.. but then again we will be looking for deals)

Now that may sound like a lot.. but it can cost anywhere from 40-100 k to build a house.. and it cost over 100k to buy a brand new house!

So yeah this def. sounds like the way to go!

Our plan is to start this winter on clearing the spot, marking it, digging the footer, and then we will let it settle for a few months before pouring the footer and starting. We are planning to work on building it next spring/summer and hopefully have most of the exterior done by winter. We are not sure how long it will actually take. It will matter on how much work Tommy gets this spring/summer, and how much help we get to build this!

Now that you may have a crazy ideal of what these houses look like, take a look at some of them, and you will be amazed at beautiful they do look!

(And its an environmentally friendly home- made from all organic)

http://www.builditgreen.co.za/Portals/0/Images/Cob%20curved%20roof.jpg

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_AG-t89TgS9Y/S8FAvRO7O_I/AAAAAAAAAek/o-uzsvxQEt0/s1600/cobkitchen1.jpg

http://small-scale.net/yearofmud/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/3120264741_5b35f725e7.jpg

Great Resource site
http://www.cobprojects.info/

This blog has a great overview of the process
http://cobinbaja.blogspot.com/search?updated-min=2007-01-01T00%3A00%3A00-08%3A00&updated-max=2008-01-01T00%3A00%3A00-08%3A00&max-results=10


Hope you all enjoy!