Wednesday, November 28, 2007

Not much productivity....

Because I'm sick (still have a cold from Japan, going on two weeks now) I don't really have the energy to do too much... so I'm doing little projects, and goofing off.

Painted the first coat on an old rocking chair that will eventually sit out on the patio



set up the 'cold air intake' for our living room. This is pretty cool. We intend to have a wood burning stove in our living room, and while I doubt our house will get to the 'air tight' stage, I've read about having a place where outside, cool air can be used to stoke the fire, instead of already warmed air from the room going into the fire and up the chimney. This tube goes through the foundation to the outside, then will go through the gravel under the floor and pop out right below the door of the fireplace. I'll work on some cool looking way to have it come out of the floor... in other words, it won't be a plastic pipe sticking out of the floor.






Fixed the hose by putting a new end on it. that'd been bugging me for a couple months. Notice I needed two clamps. cheap stuff.






And, even when I'm not working, the compost pile is working away. I'm really happy with my 'speed composting' bin, where I've been working the kitchen scraps, horse manure, and leaves from around here. All this will go right into the garden, and I'll be making another batch or two before next spring.
Holiday Decorations?


before we went off for Thanksgiving, we peeled and hung 82 persimmons from Melissa's folk's tree. They should be great candy by Valentines Day. In the meantime, they're our winter decorations.

Wednesday, November 21, 2007

Sorry for the lack of posts....

we were in Japan for two weeks, and now we're on our way out of town for Thanksgiving. Here we are in Nagasaki having lunch at a tempura spot.

Design Mistakes in my cob house

So, I have long meant to create a list of mistakes I made when designing the finishings on our house.  Now that we've lived in it for a ...