Building It Yourself and the Joy of Dreaming

We're building an earthship. Yup; pounding dirt into almost 1,000 tires to make the foundation and walls of a 1,100 sq. ft. home.

The part of this project I love the most is that everything is still in front of us. We're not scraping old paint or replacing outdated cupboards. We're pounding dirt and dreaming of the beautiful fixtures and floors and hardware and doors we'll have once we get to the finish line.

This earthship isn't going to be like the funky art pieces you see in New Mexico. Some of those have imbedded colored glass bottles and lots of creative organic shapes in the finish.

This house is going to be a little more subtle than that. It's just a house that happens to be built into a hill.

The floors are part of the heating/cooling system of the house. Most earthships have earthen floors because in the winter the sun shines in the windows and warms the floor. The floor needs to hold that heat so it can release it when the sun goes down, so concrete and dirt are the primary flooring used in passive solar homes like this. We're doing adobe since it's just a little softer and much cheaper.

So adobe floors and whitewashed walls and lots of windows. . . a blank canvas!

Over the next year we'll be choosing details--tile and fixtures in the kitchen and bath, trim, lighting. But today I'm looking at doors.

Here are the doors I like so far:

We live just outside of town with no visible neighbors in a really safe place where folks don't lock their doors. We want to be able to see who's at the door, so I chose doors with glass. I really love the ironwork and carving on some of the ETO doors, but have decided on simple glass.

What do you think so far? Any suggestions?