Happy Holidays!

The holidays are upon us and along with them comes cold, snowy weather.  The good news is that all the plastic that we put up around the outside of the house is working.  It keeps most of the wind and snow out and makes for a decent space in which to work so the work is continuing.  All be it more slowly.  It's still cold so afternoons are just about the only time comfortable enough to get out there and work.

We have started on phase 2 of the walls.  In order to continue stacking bales, boxes have to be built to go over the doors and windows.  That's what we are currently working on.

First we attached chicken wire from the bond beam to the soffits.  This will help hold the straw in place as a lot of it at this stage will be flakes. (This was subsequently covered with plastic. We found that the wind - and some snow - was being blown in and the sound of the wind through the chicken wire made it sound like a hurricane was blowing outside.  The plastic stopped that!)

This is one of the boxes ready for instillation.

Here it is installed over the bedroom window.

While we are doing that, our electrician, Samuel, has started running the wiring.

Pretty exciting!

This time last year all we had up was the large adobe wall.  It looked more like an adobe ruin than the beginning of a house.

It's looking more like a house now!