A Tiny Update

I'm calling it a tiny update since sometimes progress appears to be tiny despite a large expenditure of effort. I have been working on the bench area for the last three working days. The bench area took a significant amount of cob. OK, a huge amount. Even though it was built up with stone it took 21 batches of cob for the bench to approach its final height. That's the equivalent of twice around the cottage.

But now the bench is now close to its final height. The floor has to come up four inches yet and then the bench will receive one final thin levelling layer of cob. Then plaster. This bench will serve as the main sitting and relaxation area for the cottage. It should also be possible to sleep on it if not sleeping in the loft. And the table should be able to be moved into the bench area for serving meals when there are guests.

I anticipate curling up and spending a lot of time on this bench for many, many days and nights to come. How many great books will be read here?

And the nicest thing? I get to do this all over again tomorrow. But focus this time will be on the wall around the bench. And for the rest of the week the (seemingly neglected) other walls will receive the same treatment and gain some height, aiming for the two foot milestone.

So, on this project quite often it seems to me like little progress is being made even though there has been a tremendous amount of effort. That is why I'm glad to have this blog to be able to look back and know that yes, good progress is actually being made. Here is the same bench area last week.

And here is the cottage a short 37 days ago. Progress ... oh yeah!

The layout of this cottage with its snug bench area and low loft above was inspired by the design of Ridge House at the North American School of Natural Building, also known as the Cob Cottage Company. This blog post at Ecstatic Earth here has a lot of photos of the amazing work done at Cob Cottage Company. And if you look close enough you will see Ridge House in there. Thank you Adam from Ecstatic Earth for sharing and providing a good portion of the inspiration for this project.