As I thumb through The Hand-Sculpted House, I get excited about the possibilities! There are so many wonderful things we can incorporate into the projects we’re looking to create as our experiments and through our learning. Notice the marble shelf incorporated into this bathroom wall! Even the creative vine sculpture framing the alcove, all built into the bathroom wall. Unique features throughout a home, or what we hope to implement in the backyard, adds such a unique flavor. No one else on the planet will have these features.
Look at the shelves molded into the wall and beside the stove of this picture! Even the detail of the small stones by the floor. All of these images spark ideas of what I would like to add to our home when we eventually build our own cob house.
Also, cob houses seem to be a little more flexible when laying out electrical outlets and plumbing fixtures, as opposed to the slightly more rigid structure of the earth bag houses. It just seems to be a more creative process, in my opinion.
Mud Pie Building 
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I love the freedom that comes with building a cob home. I hope that I am either able to move to a place that allows it or that my local city ordinance will soon approve of such structures. Stick built is too much $$$ and not versatile enough for my artistic tastes.
Hey, Andrea! Thanks for stopping by and commenting!
Yes! That is one of the reasons why we’re choosing to go with cob building…the freedom of design and artistic expression! Have you built anything with cob yet? And yes, I completely agree with the horrible costs associated with a regularly constructed house. But I guess that’s how the construction business makes its money. Personally, I think they should specialize in building earth homes…economical, safer to build (so it seems), no termites (ooops, pest control is out of a job…darn it! We’ll just have to do without those damned chemicals!), and so many other reasons.
Thanks again for commenting!
I have not built anything yet. I am still investigating home alternatives.
LOL about pest control!
Boy, am I glad I found this blog! I’ve always been curious about alternative building methods and only today learned about using cob, due to a story on Yahoo. This is very exciting to me. Where can I learn all about building with cob?
Thanks so much for sharing!
Hello, Jeff!
I’m not an expert by any means. I’m learning as I go along. I have been to an open house out here in California at the Cal-Earth Institute where they built shelters and homes out of earth-filled sandbags, a little bit of cement, barbed wire and stucco finish. Visit their web site and you can see their photo gallery as well as purchase Nader Khalili’s book which gives detailed instruction on how to use this building method. As for cob building, I recommend the web site/blog The Year of Mud. The book I’m working off of is “The Hand-Sculpted House”.
I hope this helps. 😀