Our First Wall is in Progress and it is Made of Bottles! 🍾🎨

Another offering from the digital pages of my Natural Building Diary. This is a place where I document the steps we are taking to build our future home with mostly recycled materials and those we are gifted directly from Earth!

It is probably obvious: I am not a profession builder. I even hesitate to call myself a "baby builder". I am simply learning as I go from experience and my very patient partner who is more knowledgable. And encourporating bottles into the build is somethig totally new for me!

((Very much in progress. The bottles will be cleaned and a final plaster applied before this wall is complete))

So, why would we even want to include bottles?

For our situation there are a few reasons why bottles make for a good building material for this tool shed. Firstly, where we live glass isn't recyclable, so our only option is to put used bottles in the trash or recycle them ourselves somehow.

As for building, glass bottles have two main benefits in this building which doesn't need to have particularly thick walls:

🌻 They make for cheap double paned windows that let in light but not too much heat or cold. The layer of air inside the bottle is ever so slightly thermic.

🌈 The light these bottles transmit is beautiful! We chose blue bottle as well as green to let in some interestingly colored light. Unlike typical windows, bottle are translucent but not transparent. This tool shed is right upagainst our neighbor's lot. We want privacy but not darkness. The translucent bottle let in light but aren't see through.

My man built this structure with wood left over from building the main wood frame structure and extra wire from the fencing project. The bottle themselves aren't able to hold up the wall so making a sturdy structure and filling in with cob is necessary. As you can see I have a lot more filling in to do and must get to it!

Until next time dear readers 📖🕯