I'm loving living in a cob/wood house with an earthen floor, earthen bathtub, rocket stove with cob bench and a cold room.
The house feels plenty roomy to me... 1300+ sq ft goes a long way when you design it yourself to put the space exactly where you need it. I actually feel quite spoiled and pampered in here, with the high ceilings and big, deep windows. After 15 years of mobile homes, it just feels so foreign to me, as do the solid, sound proof walls. The floor to the kids' room is not sound proof, however, so we really have to watch our night time conversations... they love to hear us talking about them at night . And when our little dog, Molly, jumps off the girls' beds in the middle of the night it sounds like a herd of elephants (ok, well that's a bit of an exaggeration).

The cold room is working well as a walk-in cooler in place of a refrigerator. I don't have to do anything with the vents unless the lows are going down to negative numbers at night... there were only a couple of nights like that so far, and I didn't think of closing the vents, so the potatoes that were right near the vents froze. So far, that's the only loss, and was my own fault. Keeping food away from the vents seems to be sufficient to keep things from freezing (though I will try to remember to close them when we get our bitter cold season... IF we get our bitter cold season). I have the few frozen things that I had out in coolers outside, and that has been fine, even with the recent January thaw. Andrew is talking about rigging a cold water cooler for the summer, based on the Amish principle of using cold water from the pump, only ours will come from our well... that would give me the extra "cool" that I need for milk and a few other things, and the cold room would hopefully suffice for everything else in the warmer months. We eat most things fresh then, anyway.

The cracks in the floor were nowhere near the problem that I had feared. None have pulled up or worsened, and most "healed" with the oiling. The floor feels wonderful and it's very easy to clean and maintain. The only negatives are that it is quite soft, and dents easy, and the area in the mudroom takes quite a beating during the really snowy times, when kids are hanging snow covered snowsuits and boots back there. It's ok if I remember to wipe it down with a towel, but otherwise it gets soft and the very top layer can buckle. (We have a very thin top layer that acts like a laminate... the floor itself remains intact, but it's that top layer that can peel or dent easily... it's because of the weird way that we ended up having to do it, so I don't think that a normal earthen floor would have those problems.) Anyway, all in all I love the floor and never want to change it. It feels healing and soft to me, and I love going barefoot. It's especially nice that we have it heated in the living room, and I would highly recommend that. It's cooler in the bedroom, but not cold and clammy like concrete. Here's a pic of the girls making the garland that shows the living room floor:



The house is staying a very even and comfortable temperature with the rocket stove heater. People are amazed when they visit in the afternoon and feel how warm and cozy it is in here, with the bench still warm, and we tell them that we haven't had the stove on since the previous night. With typical wintertime temps of highs in the upper twenties, we usually run it 8-10 hrs/day. That not only supplies our heat but all of our hot water. We are getting good at timing it and keeping showers short. The hot water tank holds the hot water even when the oven is off, so, for example, this morning we were able to run 3 comfortably hot showers and still had hot water to spare for dishes from the previous night.

Without a doubt, my very favorite feature of the house is the cob bench. I never imagined how much I would LOVE the bench. I love everything about it, the way it feels, the way it looks, the way it makes me feel, how easy it is to clean and maintain... you really have to experience the bench to appreciate it. Here's a pic of the kids "feeling at home" on their cob bench:



I also love the smell of the house. It's fresh and earthy and woodsy all at once. I hope the smell never changes.

Taking a shower in the cob tub is like bathing in mountain stream, without fear of onlookers and leaches . There's a clean fresh smell in there, and the walls and floor feel "real." We do have to dry the floor in the tub after showering, but other than that it's very low maintenance... no build up of scum on the walls or anything like that.

I loved the way the girls decorated the house for Christmas, and I am really going to miss the tree and the nativity scene. The house seems to have been made for them. Here is a picture of us waiting for Jesus, with the "Sun" coming up in the East in the background.