We've built a house

Judy has officially moved in to the home we've all been building for her for the last year and 9 months.  We tried to do it as naturally as possible, but there were areas of compromise.  Even with one of the walls being completely uninsulated the house doesn't get cold, underground homes are awesome!  It took a lot longer than we thought and there is a lot of finishing work to be done including the earthen roof.   For the floor we'll do an earthen floor workshop hopefully some time this year when our house has 4 walls, a roof and doors so that Judy will have somewhere to stay while we're doing it and the floor dries.  We should start on our house soon.  

Center wall meets wooden wall

I fought with the center block wall and re-did it 5 times I think. Tried 2 different adhesion coats for an earthen plaster and it wouldn't stick in some places, wet or dry.  Had to scrape both attempts off.  Tried 3 natural plaster recipes and they dried so that you could see the spaces between the blocks underneath perfectly outlined in a darker color.  But not consistently.  Also weird speckles and spots.  I probably did something wrong, but I gave it all my effort.

screened dirt for plaster and floor

Earthen plaster samples.  Yes I know I should have written 1/6!

Center wall and Bedroom wall, wall mud at top was painted later

I tried home made plaster which failed and had to be scraped off.  Stucco was too expensive.  So I just covered it with Surface bonding cement and after all the home made attempts, it went on like butter.  So much lighter!  I can't finish a wall in one pass because I have the shoulders of a 7th grader, so I did quite a bit of sanding between the two passes.  Sanding wasn't too hard and didn't take too long.

Wall mud was used to round off the tops of the blocks since it's open to the other room for air flow and then I lightly sanded after it dried and painted. There are all sorts of natural and home made paints you can use.

Bedroom window

Jeffrey took an old chest of drawers and made the bathroom vanity and sink!

Instead of expensive cabinets, we used shelves and it looks great! 

kitchen cabinet for $10, plus sanding and finishing

Kitchen shelves

We shouldn't have used PEX for the plumbing.  It sprung leaks and was hard to work with.  So he replaced the plumbing with CPVC. 

We need to finish up the berm, 2 small retaining walls, finish the growing membrane for the roof and finish the exterior.  The roof will be covered with strawberries.

Bedroom window