We found that some of the wood was rotten around one of the windows. The berm had been draining improperly when we first bought the place. The window was behind the cabinets we had to rip out.
Ripping out the rotten wood left us with a gap around the west window in the kitchen. It let in a bit of a breeze. I had decided to move this window to the south side of the house for more solar gain and we are looking at maybe bringing the berm higher on the west side. This gave me a chance to explore bottle bricks.
After grilling my friend Michael about the possibilities of using a table saw to cut glass bottles I went out and bought a wet saw. I did consider having Phoenix stand near the table saw with a spray bottle . . . but, umm, I guess that probably isn't completely safe . . .
Phoenix and I have been stopping by the local bars to find a few that don't recycle their beer and liquor bottles. A couple local bars are saving their bottles for us now. They are intrigued and I said I'd show them pictures :)
One night it got too dark out to work and I was so tired I started to make mistakes. I still had some cement to use up. I ended up fixing up a short brick wall that was cracking in half. It encloses a portion of the patio (I plan on turning this into the outer greenhouse, oh, and have found some fun links for the transformation--next year). We had also ripped out rotten wood under the door the the kitchen. I replaced this sill plate with cement and placed a collage of broken dishes in it. Phoenix was asleep, but we borrowed her hand to make an imprint in the middle.
Speaking of making mistakes, I still have some drippy dried cement to clean off of my bottle bricks, but here is a picture of the window at the moment. This is at night, from the outside with the kitchen light on. We placed vents in the upper right and lower left corners. The vents have the possibility of becoming earth tubes, but presently are capped and filled with insulation cut-outs.
No comments:
Post a Comment