The focus of our blog is on low cost, low tech housing solutions. But sometimes it’s good to stop and look at what’s happening in society. Even though I read about the economy every day, this article about the true rate of foreclosure is still shocking. Who wouldn’t be moved by what’s going on? Due to financial hardship, more people are investigating lower cost DIY housing alternatives such as earthbag building, straw bale construction, adobe and pole building.
Month: April 2012
Arched Doors
Welcome your guests with unique and beautiful arched entry doors. Arched entry doors can make a stunning addition to your home. Options include many different kinds of wood, carvings, panel designs, colors, sidelights, hardware, clear or stained glass, and metal grillwork.
The Creative Mind – The Secret of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Success
“Taliesin Apprenticeship was the most important experience of my life. I was nineteen in September of 1959 when my father dropped me off at Tanyderi and drove off down the hill. The room assigned to me was on the top floor with an eastern view toward Taliesin in the distance. Each morning at sunrise I would awake and look over toward the sun rising over Taliesin. I was in paradise. I had come to Taliesin with one intention, to see if in my own mind I could be an architect. I wanted to design buildings the way Frank Lloyd Wright designed his architecture. I had decided I would stay at Taliesin until I learned how to do this.
Moving from WordPress.com to this Self-Hosted WordPress Site
Recently WordPress.com shut down the website we had before this one, earthbagbuilding.wordpress.com, after it was seen as spamming. We emailed them and said we were doing our best to stay within all their guidelines and within a few hours a human restored the site and apologized, saying that somehow the site had tripped some filter they had and had not been human-reviewed.
Well, it was mighty nice to be back up… and we decided it was time to move to a self-hosted wordpress site, where we would have more control and could monetize the site. I realize that most readers won’t care but for the geekier ones among you, or others who will be doing something like this sometime, here is what we did:
1. We decided that since so many of the posts are moving beyond earthbag building, a more general name would suit us. After batting around quite a few domain name ideas, we registered this one, www.naturalbuildingblog.com — for two years, to get a little more credit with the search engines.
2.We signed up for an account at Bluehost.com. (That is an affiliate link, which means that if you sign up there through that link I will make a commission at no cost to you.) I have another account with them and when some of my WordPress sites were hacked last year, I got such excellent customer support on the phone from them (not outsourced overseas) that I am in the process of moving my other sites off Hostgator to Bluehost.
Bamboo Interior Design
Bamboo is one of the most sustainable building materials on the planet, and so I’d like to post a few pics of nice bamboo interiors and bamboo furniture. Bamboo is rapidly renewable, captures carbon, filters and oxygenates the air, reduces flooding and provides habitat for wildlife. Bamboo is used in thousands of useful products from furniture to cutlery to houses. There’s endless variety to choose from. These are just a few examples I found from searching the Internet.
Reasons to Escape the Matrix
Most of our blog posts focus on one narrow topic. From time to time it’s good to look at the bigger picture and summarize the most important reasons for breaking free of the system. It’s all about creating a better life.
– Build your own home with sustainable materials to save tens of thousands of dollars and help protect the environment.
– Opportunity to live debt free and simplify your life. This not only saves you money, it frees up spare time so you can do the things you really want and **Be Happier**.