Putting all doubts to rest...

Sometimes, I think that after meeting me, people go back to their respective abodes and have the following conversation with their spouse/roommate/cat:

"So I think that guy's kind of weird.  I'm not sure, but it seems that he's a few bricks short of having any bricks at all."  

To which their spouse/roommate/cat replies:

"Why yes, I doubt his sanity too.  Meow."  

Well let me me put your doubts to rest once and for all.  I am quite strange.  There, I said it.  Now, let me illustrate the sobriety of this conclusion with an anecdote.   Back in February, KT got some totally weird movie from the library about "alternative housing".  It was a propaganda hippy-movie.  These guys were talking about our housing being unnatural and killing our Mother Earth, and that we shouldn't buy into the system of working all the time just to pay house payments for shelters which are an absolute abhorrence to nature herself.  

I wasn't necessarily convinced of their particular viewpoints, but then they suggested a course of corrective action: we all move to the woods and make houses out of mud.  The supreme "dudeness" inside of me (which I try to suppress most of the time) thought: "Mud house, whoa, that would be sweet."  These people were buying plots of land and building their own houses out of cob, which is a mix of straw, clay, and sand.  I had heard of this being done throughout history, but couldn't conceive why someone in this modern era would chose to ignore all of the technical housing developments over the past centuries and make a mud house.  However, my utter frugality laughed gleefully at the thought of getting away with no house payments. I imagined myself saving up for a few years, then quitting my job working for "the man" (like I actually work, but stay with me here) and escaping society in the woods.  I could sell dreamcatchers and dried corn on the side of the road whenever funds ran low, and life would be grand.  Just grand.  On top of that, my research deals with composite materials, and these earthen composite are the Adam and Eve of modern day advanced composites.

Well, when I get an idea in me, I want to put it into action ASAP.  I obviously don't own any land, and I don't plan on being anywhere long enough in the next few years to want to root down and build a house with my own blood, sweat, and tears.  Nor do I ever take myself seriously enough to believe that I would start a crazy plan like this and actually see it through.  I have to face it, I'll be workin for the man for a while.  

Well, I eventually decided to make a little bench in the woods.  I thought that this would be a very simple thing, my boys would get involved, I would enjoy the time in the woods, and I'd get a feel for whether mud could actually be a suitable building material.  I wanted to be as cheap as possible, and mostly use things that I found around the woods. It was march at this point, but I was pretty excited to start.  So, I picked my site and started digging a foundation (so that the freezing/thawing of the ground wouldn't shift my structure too much and cause cracking).  I dug down a couple feet into the  partially frozen ground with a little hand shovel and some sticks.  I collected rocks for a few weeks that I carried about 1/4 mile through the woods on my way home from school.  It probably wasn't the most efficient way, but I felt like I was growing my muskles at the same time, so I might as well.  Here is the finished foundation:

The next step was to check my soil for clay content.  You can actually put a sample into a jar of water, and shake it up.  It naturally settles into separated layers, which shows you how much sand/silt/clay is in your sample.  Mine was basically all clay, so I needed some sand.  I bought some straw ($5) and started making test samples with different ratios (which was kind of stupid, because I didn't end up measuring portions anyway).  

Then I just got to work.  It was super-slow going.  I brought bags with me to school, then filled them with clay from the river and carried them the 1/4 mile every day.  I took the clay to my house, mixed it with a drill and paddle mixer, added sand from the sandbox (settle down, there is so much sand in that thing that you can't even tell), and mixed it all up with some water.  I let the concoction sit overnight, then I added straw and mixed it by foot.  Surprisingly, the kids weren't really into stomping out in the mud.  Then I slopped it onto the foundation.  This is how far I had gotten by the time I left for NASA in May.  Not very far.  Carrying the dirt all over the place wasn't very effective.  Also, it rained a ton, which isn't very good for cobbing.  So I put a tarp on the whole thing, and taped the words "don't move" on it so that the neighborhood kids would leave it alone.  They didn't.

June and July was when I did most of the work.  The kids came down with me, and they just called it "playing with mud.  I got a lot of looks from neighbors as I walked across the sidewalk with mud up to my calves carrying two buckets full of mud with my two boys in tow.  I think they figured out that I was weird before I did.  When you are weird, you are always the last to know.  

Well, here's how it looked at the end of July.  Pretty ugly.  My neighbor's daughter Brooklyn said it looked like a poo-chair.   Strangely enough, my wife was still supportive.  

Then I put a layer of plaster, and the thing started to look decent.  As we were packing up the car to go to Germany, I went to say goodbye one last time.  Low and Behold, some kids had graffiti-ed my bench already.  This was easy to do with sticks, because the plaster was still drying.  I had to leave anyway, so I just let it go.  When I got back, both arms of the chair were knocked off, and someone had scratched "SEX" into the back of the chair.  Real mature.

But, this story has a happy ending.  Guess how easy it is to fix a mud bench?
I made new arms, another layer of plaster, and a lime wash: good as new.

Finally, in an attempt to get it ready for the harsh Michigan winter, I put boiled linseed oil on it ($8.00: the most expensive purchase for the bench).  I applied it with a rag, and it ended up wiping off a lot of the lime, making it look rather drippy and sad.  But, it seems pretty water-resistant.  When I come back to graduate in the spring, I'll be curious to see if it's still in one piece.

So the bottom line is this: I think I might be able to build a house.  Of course, I'd have to learn other key skills like plumbing, roofing, electrical wiring, etc., but other than that I have it covered.  So if you just get sick of workin for the man, give me a call.  It probably wouldn't take much convincing to get me out in the woods building a humble little mud house.  Don't worry, I could teach you how to make Dreamcatchers...