This is the Severin Christmas present. 8 pallets of rough cut lumber. About 1/2 is Black Walnut and the other 1/2 is Cherry. Beautiful wood. We spent the last two days loading it on our new 20 foot trailer and bringing it home to our pole barn. Now my car needs to sit outside but that is alright. We are going to use this lumber for kitchen cabinets and for the ceiling of our EarthShip. If we have anything left we may make some outdoor furniture as well. We have about 2300 feet of board length. If you are ever in need of finding a great place to get any building materials, check Craigs list. This is where we found this lumber at.
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At 10:00 this Christmas morning I decided to go out and do some work on the Earthship. Now I hope there are no moans and groans. Because of the bad weather we haven't worked on the house for over 2 weeks. Even on Christmas day it felt great to get something done. And to get our bodies back in shape. After all this is my exercise program as well. Upon going out and setting up our work area I found some really neat photo opportunities. Since all the snow that we got has now melted and with the rain left puddles of water for it to freeze at night. These frozen puddles left some neat patterns that I just had to take photos off. This one if you look in the middle is in the shape of a key and was located inside the Earthship next to the tires that are waiting to be put up for the next row. This is what happens to the clay when it freezes. It is like an nature ice sculpture standing straight up. When it rains the tires do a fine job collecting rain water. When the water freezes they create these icy rings. This is an image from one of the frozen rings that came from a tire. I thought it was cool. Now you know that the snow has melted, and with a day of rain we have muddy conditions out here at the EarthShip site. If you plan on coming out please bring mud boots along as well as eye protection, gloves, and clothes you can get dirty in. The mud will never come out of your clothes ever again. Enjoy your Christmas week. PS. Allen and Arron did get 3 more tires completed with Mary Kay getting 3 more ready to be finished. It was a great sunny 44 degree Christmas day. Hello Everyone. This is our Christmas Card sent to those whom visit our blog. We want to thank everyone this year that we have met and have made our move to West Plains, MO enjoyable. It has been fun getting to know the community and we are sure to meet more next year. The progress report on our EarthShip. The photo is the closest to where we are on our construction. Some updates are; the pink insulation that you see started around the home is now complete, this is our thermal barrier. Another layer of pink insulation will go up on top of the first row after we complete a few more rows of tires. This will continue until we reach the roof of the home. Currently we are 1/2 way done with the 3rd row of tires, that is 165 tires completed, with the back fill completed for the first two row of tires. This may not seem like we accomplished a lot but we did. This is huge for just the 3 of us to complete by ourselves. Like with most construction we have had a few delays in the process of our building our EarthShip. #1. Was the moving of the fence that separated our property from the seller. The fence was put in the wrong spot because it was marked wrong. So this was fixed not at our expense. This delayed us 2 weeks. #2. We had found out from Tony's Tires that we needed to get approval from the DNR in order to build our home. They have a code that says that if you use more than 99 tires for a project they need to know what it is that you are building. They just want to avoid huge mounds of tires on property. It starts to become an issue if people will not use them as they say they are. This delayed us 1 month. #3 Winter weather. We were not sure if we could continue to work through the winter. Everyone was preparing us for a cold winter and I guess they were right. Not long ago we got 12 inches of snow from the winter storm Cleon. Thank's to this storm this has delayed us 2 weeks. It will be hit and miss for working on the EarthShip this winter. Despite all the miss haps and delays we feel we have made progress. Especially when we have a neighbor that told the Daily Quill newspaper about our home and they came out and did an article on our home. This has led to making the community more aware of what we are doing. One day Delmar Coatney gave us a call and asked if we would like a donation of windows. We were not sure what we would find when we went over to his place. We saw an opportunity. He takes in Coke machines that Coke scraps out and takes them apart. The Coke coolers have double paned, insulated, 3/4 inch thick glass doors. All we have to do is remove the plastic door frame and we have our windows. This is what a EarthShip is all about. Reusing used materials in making of a home. This is called using reclaimed glass. Delmar was so gratefull for finding a use that he gave them to us for free. All we had to do is go and get them. We are greatful for Delmar for giving us a call. His donation is sincerely appreciated. With our facebook page growing we are getting more and more inquirey's of people wanting to come and help. Anyone that comes and helps us will get a return if they decide to build an EarthShip, a garage, storage room etc. We will go and help them as well. Doing this brings a community together. We want to thank the tire places that helped us in collecting the tires: Tony's Tires, Friga Tires, Lee's Tires, and Wilbanks Tires. Thank's to them we were able to get all the tires that we needed. We want to wish everyone a Happy Holiday and a Blessed New Year and may many new blessings come your way in 2014. Allen, Mary Kay and Arron Severin When we moved from Wisconsin to Missouri in April we left behind 3 feet of snow. We were happy to leave the snow behind. Now in Missouri with an unusual winter storm called Cleon we now have 12 inches of snow. Our neighbors have said that this is one of the worst winter storms that they have ever seen in the 42 years that they have lived here. At least we can take comfort that this doesn't happen all that often. We were told that usually what happens is it will snow a few inches then melt within a few hours or a day or so. With this winter storm we will have this snow at least until Wednesday ( 12-11-13 ). Temperatures are suppose to start getting above freezing on Tuesday. So for now we are nice and cozy in our camper. Staying warm. Haven't gone anywhere except to give our neighbors up the hill a hard time about the snow. With the icy roads it isn't worth going to town until this starts to melt. No work will get done for the next couple of weeks. We shoveled ( with the tractor of course ) out our EarthShip so when the snow does start to melt we won't have to wait as long for the water to dry up. We did cover our tires that are a work in progress and some dirt so work will get back under way when everything has thawed out. |
AuthorMary Severin writes about her families embarkment on a learning adventure to build an Upcycled Home using Earthship Principals. To find out what these Principals are click on the Earthship Principals link above. CategoriesArchives
March 2018
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