The look of this hand crafted arched window and door from the cob sun room add a quaint look to the entry area leading into the living room of our straw bale house. This sun room serves as a heat collection space by way of the thermal mass properties of cob and the mud floors (aka mud or poured adobe floors). Norbert hand crafted the arched entry door which is painted on the inside panels with folk art by local artist Nicholas Herrera and tells the story of how this forested land was homesteaded by his family in the 1800’s. The creation of the door was a wonderful collaboration with Nicholas, and pays homage to the fact that had his family not come to this place, we would not reside here today.
The arched window frame was built by our very first intern Pearl Wetherall, who did the carpentry for the frame as one of her projects, a job well done indeed. Carolyn worked with our helpers and interns on the other cob walls the sun room, but focused alone on this curved wall holding the window and door. The plasters in this sun room were from clay rich soil harvested about 1/2 mile from our home and have a nice, rich red tone that was used as is, we did not need to add pigment to obtain the rich tones naturally found in the soil.
