With our land purchase in Vermont complete, we've been busy researching as much as we can about building cob and strawbale houses. We're starting to realize that a big part of this process is going to involve wrangling our murky, idealistic dreams into actual drawings and plans. So, this past weekend, we decided to make a 3-D model of our home-to-be.
We had planned on using massive quantities of clay, but we couldn't stomach the exorbitant craft-store-prices, so we whipped up a huge batch of homemade play-dough using about two dollars' worth of flour, salt, water, and oil. And then we put on some music, cracked open a beer, and,using a piece of cardboard as a base, played around with our dough-walls until we came up with a rough working model.
Translating our abstract ideas and rough drawings into real, three dimensional objects was an incredibly useful exercise. As we slid around our squishy dough-walls, all sorts of new ideas became apparent. We discovered that, upon adding a slight curve to our walls, really interesting things began to happen in the negative space behind them. Suddenly, without too much effort, ideal spaces for cozy nooks, crannies, and storage areas appeared organically in the design.
We've accepted the inevitability that our design will change (continuously) until we're finished building our first dream home, but it still feels good to have the "shitty first draft" behind us. In addition to our small-scale modeling efforts, Tara has been curating an extensive Pintrest board, full of inspirational images!
10 Acres in Vermont