Ready, set, Roof!

Alrighty, all set to put the ceiling on this section, Noble's just gotta chop up the 2" by 8" boards in the shape of the sun and we'll plop down the plywood and--poof a floor! Noble wouldn't say "Poof", but I'm not doing that part, so, for me; Poof!

Papercrete and recycled bottle arch DONE, kinda

THERE IT IS!! the big arch! Next we fill in the sides to get the whole 15' by 15' area level and we put on the ceiling! Which will also be the floor to our third floor bedroom.
We bought our tickets back to Costa Rica arriving on the 30 of May. So, we'll see what we can get done for this season, two more weeks.
Plus, it's getting hot here, over 100 F some days. Time to go back to the tropics.

Main arch coming up on Papercrete house in Marathon

Ooo, I've lost track of the days and the hours, but I have it all written down, so I'll go back and put in all the details day by day for the record once we catch up after our trip to visit the family in Fargo.
This photo is of the main arch coming up between what will be the living/dining room and the bathroom/office space. Those are liquor bottles, beer bottles and Topo Chico (mineral water from Mexico) bottles donated by our friend Matt. --if you have cool liquor bottles, send us a note--Mare in ND is going to save the Jagermeistier bottles from her bar (the Box) and them ship down--don't know if that's exactly sustainable devleopment, but they'll be Gorgeous.

25 days on the papercrete place

A couple of photos of my homemade glass bloc--first is the view of my production site from the top of the stairs--it is very organized-really, then some of the blocks. The shot I was taking every day isn't changing so much cuz we're just using a lot of mud to go up the stairway in the back--there a photo of one of the nichos in that stiarway which we're using as hand holds up the stiars--and we're leveling the roof/floor still.

Typical Day making our papercrete house in Marathon Texas.

A couple fotos of a typical day...

First, here is Noble making the papercrete mortar, takes about an hour. Then...










We move the mortar and bricks from the ground up to our second floor construction...













Here's Noble using winch, not wench, to haul the materials up to the second floor. And Alaine moving the "mud" up on the second floor.
















Then, here we are happily using the mud (mortar.) we get about 4 wheel barrow-fulls out of each mixer full of mortar. It takes about an hour to use each wheel barrow if we're moving at a good speed, but putting in the glass blocks up on the arches we move slow and can work up to 10 hours a day (20 person hours).

And then the most important part of our typical day is the beer on the roof at the end of the day as we celebrate what we got done and plan for the next day.

Day 22 or so

OOO Noble is getting my home-made-glass brick up over the arches.
No time to write more, too much going on.

Day 21--views of the bathroom

Here's the view from the top of the stairs--looking into the bathroom and a view from the bathroom out the norht window. We're working on getting all of the walls up to 10 feet so we can put on the ceiling, hopefully before we go up to ND to visit the family on May 5.

20th Day, making more papercrete bricks

We decided we're gonna need more than 240 more papercrete bricks this season, so we spent another day humping mud. Much prettier brick this time. We made a big mess of some of them last time, buet they'll still work.

19th Day building up the papercrete stairway in the back

We're getting somewhere...

Day 17 and 18--papercrete brick making

We've almost used all of our bricks, so we had to spend a day hauling seven bales of recycled paper, eight bags of recycled styrofoam, 14 five gallon buckets of sand, perlight, pozzlan clay, and seven 100 pound bags of cement and tossing them up into Clyde's cement mixer and then making 240 bricks in the hot hot sun. Hot tubing in the afternoon with Mojitos helped the muscles recover.

Day 16 papercrete joint with triple arch!

Missed a couple of days, so I'll post a bunch of photos of the progress.
Check out that triple arch!

15th Day on the Papercrete Castle in Marathon Texas

Here's the shot after the 15th day this season of working on our joint. Yesterday we worked 19 person hours on the place. It's hard to see the difference between yesterday's picture and today's, but we're building set-in arches up the stairway on the back wall. In yesterday's picture there was just the one in-set arch and today you see the works of three. We'll put in-set lighting in the in-set arches all the way up the steps. You'll have to come see our progress. Or get to work!
Total hours worked so far are 366 people hours.

14th Day Building the Papercrete Castle at Eve's Garden

Noble and Clyde--boss-man, architect, mad scientist behind the whole Eve's Garden extravaganza--changed our whole blue print and added these two arches YESTERDAY in one 18 person hour day (total 347 total person hours worked in two spring seasons here in Marathon Texas). Soon there will be an arch between these two arches and then a gigantic arch over these three arches--si dios y Noble quieren.
I'm excited to see big flowing green ferns in these arches.
Soon I'll have to change the point from which I take the shot. And soon we'll have to clean up a bit.

13th Day Building the Papercrete Castle in the Big Bend, TX

Ooo the wind here in the high desert can be a killer. Noble and I started wearing goggles on the windy days. There are little bits of papercrete flying around and even more painful is the perlite (little volanic rockcitos). So far, we've worked 329 person hours on the joint. We're hoping to get the 15 by 15 foot square foot part of the place together before we head up to visit my family in Fargo, ND from the 5th to the 9th of May. --Mom finally got off the farm along the Sheyenne River, for the first time in 4 weeks cuz she was on an island in the middle of the country. An island in North Dakota.
Anyway we have 11 days to get that room up and together. Then, 5 days in ND, then we'll have about 10 days to see how much we can get done on the 15' by 15' space built ABOVE this space --which will be our third floor bedroom. Just 10 days cuz we'll be headed by to Costa Rica around the 20th of May. In case you didn't know, we spend about 9 month out of the year on the Caribbean Coast of Costa Rica and the other three months here in Marathon, Texas.

11th and 12th Day working on our Papercrete Dwelling in Marathon Texas

Here it is! The big arch over the shower-to-be! Finished on our 11th and 12th day. So far we have worked 152 total person hours this year --last year we worked a total of 165 hours finishing the north wall, so I think I will switch to a total person hours worked over the course of the whole project which is 317 total person hours invested, that's like one normal 40 hour work week for about 8 people. If only we had eight people. But, it's just Noble and me hiking up and down the 14 stairs. But it's exciting doing the project together the two of us.

10th Day working on our Papercrete house at Eve's Garden

We made a big advance on Day 10, with a total of 130 work hours so far. Got the window frame in on the south wall, got more of our home-made glass-block in as "nichos" in what we're calling the "castle wall" which is a rounded out space in the bathroom where our colorful Mexican sink will go. Noble's been spending lots of time getting the stairway to go up. Soon the third arch along the east wall, that'll be the shower.

Day 9, 117 total person hours worked by Noble and I on our 15ish by 15ish foot bathroom/stairway/mini-office space built outta papercrete and recycled glass bottles.
Every morning I go over to the "Famous Burro" Restaurant and Gage Hotel to get their left over booze bottles and every morning Noble mixes up our papercrete mortar. It's recycled paper (soaked in water overnight) and pozzolan clay and sand and perlite (volcanic rock or something or other) and Portland cement.. all mixed together and then hoisted up by hand from ground floor to second floor by our 122 pulls on a not-so easy pulley system--at the end of the project we'll take a picture of my enormous pipes.

Day 8, 103 hours worked so far.

Day 7, 87 total person hour working on the project so far this season (season 2).
See, we got the "castle wall" going up to define the bathroom. The round part will house the Mexican sink we bought last year Ojinaga, Mexico.
The first arch on the left is storage (or a place for a fabo piece of art or a wine cellar) the middle arch is bathroom storage, and then soon on the right we'll put in the third arch will be the gigantic shower--we want to construct our own waterfall shower--ideas?

Day 6, 77 person hours so far in the construction of our joint this season (April 2009).
Noble is working on getting the stairway going up. This view is the east wall of our second floor flat. This year we're working on the east third of the second floor space of our dwelling--it's about a 15 by 15 foot space which will be the bathroom and a little space for an office. Our plan for this year is to finish this second floor room--the bathroom a small office-- and then at least get started on the third floor which is our bedroom--still trying to figure out what we'll do for a ceiling in the bedroom - vault?, groin vault? dome? 3-foot mini vaults? hmmmm?

Day 5, total person hours worked on our hand built papercrete flat -67.
Noble is having a blast putting together those arches.
I love putting in those re-used liquor bottles (there's also a couple of pains of traditional glass block put in with my home-made glass block.) SUPER!
The stairway (on the left) will soon look like a stairway.

Day 4, total person hours worked 60.
Check out those recycled glass bottles, with the sunrise they are incredible!
I call them home-made glass block. Every morning I swing over to the two bars in town and collect their empty booze bottles. Then I slice them in two with a diamond blade tile saw, clean 'em, and stick 'em together with silicone.
Tomorrow, the second arch.

Day 3, total person hours worked this year 46.
(Forgot to shoot Day 2.)
The junky looking stuff on the left is actually junk, filling up our stairway to the third floor bedroom with paint cans and plastic bottles.
The arch on the left is the first in a three across the back (east) wall.

Here's the photo from Day One of Noble and I working on our dwelling here in Marathon Texas. I'll try to post the day by day shots from the same point so you can see the place going up. We're having fun.

Noble and I Building a Dwelling

Hi Ya Friends. It's Alaine, trying to blog for the first time ever.
We figured we'd log our progress as Noble Baker and I are building a joint out of papercrete (recycled paper mixed with Portland cement, clay, sand, wata, volcanic rockcitos, and sometimes recycled Styrofoam.) We have been taking a photo of our day-by-day progress and logging the total person-hours it takes to build the place. Last year (2008) we worked for 11 days and worked 165 hours total. Here--I post what we accomplished in our building project after one day's work, last year May 28. Once I figure this out, I can post more shots.