Our friends Gail and Beau visited in June. We talked, took care of goats and chickens for a neighbor, ate, talked a lot more, worked on the house, discussed science and social studies, and took a side trip to Austin. It was a great visit!
While we finished building the walls between the window openings, Ella played in the sand pile. We use one part sand to three parts dirt for our slurry that holds the bricks together. She found another use for it: making faces.
“Mom, I bet we could sell these!” she said. But sadly, time proved them to be too brittle.
Our goal was to build the walls up to the point where we could install lintels. Lintels support the wall above window and door openings. Eva and Gail worked on a corner that included the support wall for an arch on the inside. Beau worked on a wall section just beyond the last window.
Gail and Beau know a lady who is building a cob house (mix mud and straw, form into walls by hand). She hosts workshops, where people learn about cob and practice the technique. “You could have a compressed-earth-block building workshop where people would pay to come and build your walls!” Gail suggested. Hmmmm. That sounds pretty good. I’ll have to look into that.
We rewarded our own hard work with a trip to Austin for fun. We talked, we ate, we visited interesting shops on South Congress. At St. Vincent de Paul Thrift Store, I had to take a photo of this button-covered shoe rack, the ultimate eye-candy for two button makers and enthusiasts like me and Gail.