The Great Escape

October is racing by, and we are racing right along with it.  So far this month we have celebrated my retirement from the corporate world, trapped, spayed and nursed a pair of feral cats, and made great strides on our Motor Home.  Yes, we are joining the ranks of the Outwardly Mobile!  Kind of a retirement tradition, you know?

Seriously though, Bob bought a Ford CF 7000 flatbed a few years back with the intention of turning it into a mobile living space.  He was tired of getting jerked around by flaky/controlling/weirdo landlords, and both of us were loving the Willamette valley summers but longing to skip the winters.  Bob has lived comfortably in RVs in the past, and we have seasonal neighbors with a beautiful old bus whose snowbird-lifestyle consumes us with envy.  The opportunity to get out of Dodge was lacking, however, until Bob took a much-needed trip to sunny Mariposa, CA last March and met this guy:

Next slide, please.

Er, sorry--the guy just to the left.  The one kneeling down.

Mark and his family had just purchased 80 acres of mostly-undeveloped land in Mariposa, with the intention of creating a food-growing, animal-raising community and permaculture learning center there.  He and Bob hit it off immediately while touring the property, and began talking buildings.  Mark was very excited to hear about Bob's locally-sourced, low-impact, DIY approach to strawbale building, and before the visit was over he had invited Bob to move down there and fulfill his dream: document the creation of beautiful, comfortable, truly sustainable strawbale structures; pass the knowledge on to as many others as possible; and, if we chose to stay, become part of a fun and caring community.

When Bob returned home with the news, it sounded too perfect to be true.  Through the magic of Facebook photos, I began to fall in love with the family and the property.  At the same time, my job satisfaction was deteriorating faster than plywood in a pond.  We visited Meher Haven together in July, and my concerns about the details evaporated in the warmth of the lovely, lovely people we met in that beautiful place.  It felt like home.

Mark offered us the use of an existing cottage on the property, which would have enabled us to move more or less immediately.  But our eagerness to get down there and get building was tempered by the lure of convenience and freedom that our own motorhome could provide.  Bob has been dreaming of designing his own motorhome for quite some time, and I was concerned about easing the transition for our 15-year old cat, who becomes a howling demon of destruction within 10 minutes inside his car-crate.  So we bought a box for the truck, and began making some drawings.

In the beginning...

The box in its original form, with experimental window positioning.

On paper, we worked out how we could fit all our needs into the space in a way that wouldn't feel as cramped as most RVs do.  Of course, "planning" has limited usefulness when tackling a large, complex project that is completely new to you.  The result of this is that while preparing a home for our new life at Meher Haven, we are also preparing yours truly for community living by getting me more accustomed to a go-with-the-flow, plan-as-you-go work style.  As uncomfortable as this is for my rigid Virgo brain, it's been embarrassingly obvious for some time that I need to learn some flexibility.  So I guess I'm ready?

Our ability to use natural and reclaimed materials for this project is somewhat limited by space and time constraints.  The box is approximately 8'x8'x20', which is just big enough to comfortably (we hope) contain a kitchen, tiny wet bath, minimal storage, and a living/sleeping/eating area.  There isn't a lot of extra space inside the box to devote to insulation, and legal constraints on the outer dimensions of the vehicle seemed to preclude insulating from the outside. 

Since Mariposa gets quite hot in the summer and cold enough in the winters, Bob chose to use an insulation with maximum R-value per unit thickness: everyone's pal, rigid foam.  I suggested that stuffing the walls with wool could be just as insulative and probably more fireproof, but with a long list of subsequent steps waiting in the wings and the autumn rains looming on the horizon, Bob was unenthusiastic about trying to source enough wool to fill the wall and ceiling cavities.  I'm filing this idea away for next time, though.

Ziggy Stardust's motorcoach.

On top of this foam layer will come a couple inches of straw packed in behind chicken wire, then an earth plaster layer over that.  Since earth plasters dry best when they dry slowly (and drying is a very, very slow process around here this time of year..), we'll wait to plaster until after we've driven the whole dog-and-pony show down to the new digs.  An earth plaster floor will add even more thermal mass, helping to keep the Home cool in the summer and warm when the low winter sun soaks into the clay.  In the meantime, we'll be living with the original oak flooring that the box came with; actually pretty nice wood, but sealed between the planks with four different colors of caulk.  C'est la vie.  We really like the warm color of the walls in our current living room, so we're hoping to approximate it with the earth plaster:

This photo also highlights the biggest impediment to a truly scaled-down lifestyle--books and records.

Happily, the couch (shown above) that we bought from our neighbors for $50 last summer is also a mysteriously comfy hide-a-bed.  It will serve double-duty in the Home; triple if you count "king-sized cat perch".  Because we are lucky enough to live near several recycling/architectural salvage centers, other sweet secondhand acquisitions include:

• super-deluxe RV windows--WITH SCREENS--originally from Monaco Coach up in Coburg.  Purchased at BRING Recycling Center in Eugene.
• all doors, exterior and interior.  These came from Craigslist and from the ReBuilding Center in Portland.
• lower kitchen cabinets; these needed some alteration, but Bob was able to use the leftover doors on the upper cabinets that he built from scratch.  Purchased at Habitat for Humanity's Eugene RESTORE.
• lovely, lovely granite for countertops.  (ReBuilding Center; boy howdy, did we dig through some UGLY rock to find these babies.)
• a nice big ceramic sink.  Those of you who are good at math have already figured out that we're not very concerned about weighing this vehicle down too much.

Reclaimed lower cabinets, with extra doors used on custom upper cabinets.  And a sneak peek at the wet bath-in-progress!

Of course, lots and lots and LOTS of things have had to be purchased new.  The rigid foam.  Lumber.  Tile backer.  Plumbing and electrical bits.  My #1 piece of advice to anyone embarking on a project of this scale is to live within a half-mile of Lowe's.  I shudder to imagine how cranky Bob would be by now if he had to drive all the way out to Jerry's Hardware a minimum of once per day, instead of just around the corner.

The upshot is that labor couldn't be cheaper.  I try to keep my foreman in hot meals and sweet treats, and the proper windows open so he can hear the stereo.  I really can't express how much wonder and admiration for Bob I experience during every day of this project.  How can one person know how to DO all this stuff??  Even more than his cabinetry/plumbing/electrical prowess, his creativity and sense of esthetics truly boggle the mind.  Once the lower cabinets were in and the big window and double doors were cut we could finally start to feel the space, and he said to me, "How about a curved ceiling?"  Brilliant.  And then he figured out how to make it happen.  (I'm still not sure how.  Some of the cuts appear to have required magic.)

Tiny corner ripped off of 2x4s, using table saw kung-fu.

Allow me another example of Bob-genius.  The wet-bath that we're building is truly tiny; less than 3'x4' and minus a corner.  So what does Bob think of to do with this itsy-bitsy space?  PUT A BIG, EXPANSIVE WALL MURAL IN IT:

Imagine how much warmer the shower would feel with this surrounding you on three sides.

Amazing.  It should arrive today, I hope--OHMIGOD the UPS guy just delivered it!!!  Gotta go!  Stay tuned for tropical updates!