the dirt

I ~almost~ have enough bottles to complete both bottle wall windows in the studio and I think they’re going to look great! I love the variety of shapes and shades of green in all the bottles. Each brick is made with two bottles that have been cut and taped together to make a bottle brick, so this is approximately 300 bottles that I’ve collected, cut and cleaned to make these windows. Mortaring them into place will be a whole other part of this project, but very fun to see it start to come together. Big thank you’s to all my friends who have been doing their part slugging back the contents and saving the bottles for me!

In other studio news, Nate is working away at getting our plumbing online. We needed to get a pump, pressure tank and all the piping components to get everything set up to work with our solar system and septic system. Getting all the components is a process in itself. While we have a plethora of local hardware stores, there’s no guarantee that they will have all the parts you need in the right size and quantity that you need, plus we of course need to ask for all these parts in Spanish, because most products are behind the counter here not in aisles where you can browse for what you want, so that adds another level to the search for parts. And our property is about 20 minutes from the nearest store, so missing something off your list can take a few hours out of your workday. The lesson here is to slow down, be patient and eventually your project will come together.

The studio is designed to double as a guest space as needed, so we included a full shower in our bathroom set up. We will be adding a solar water heater into the system soon too. I still haven’t quite figured out how I want to design the sink/counter area, so that’s still on hold, but we’re slowly collecting the rugs, curtains, hooks and of course the ART to design out the space. I never thought I’d post a photo of my bathroom on my blog, and it currently doesn’t look like much, but when you go through this much work just to get indoor plumbing on an off the grid system, you’ve got to show off the milestones!

After taking months to research solar systems and different providers in our area, we finally chose a winner and we stoked to have sunshine powering the studio now! The funny thing is that we don’t really have a lot to power up yet, so until I install the new track lights and we get a water pump and refrigerator ordered, our sunshine will just be charging our devices and lighting up these little temporary lightbulbs – even still it’s pretty exciting! Next up is a functioning plumbing system…stay tuned.

In other sun related news, we are in a spot for about 95% coverage of sun for the eclipse the other day, so we put on our welding helmets/goggles and sat down to watch the show. Always an impressive phenomenon to watch the universe do it’s thing. It amazed us that even with that much coverage it didn’t get particularly dark, it did get noticeably colder but I guess we’ll have to try to catch the 100% path next time to experience the difference.

I am very thrilled to announce that I am finally be done painting the outside of the studio and I’m loving the way it looks! It took me a bit longer to do than expected since I got side tracked making my big piece for the show, the wind was very uncooperative in the past few weeks, and I also had a color matching snafu at the paint store when I went back to pick up a little more paint but that got sorted and I was underway again to finish the project. A few touch ups and clean up spots but other than that I’m done – phew!

I cut another batch of bottles up for my bottle window project. Loving all these green shades in the sunlight. I think I have enough bottles for one window to be completed, so now I’ve only got about 100 more bottles to go!

I’ve also just scheduled our solar to be installed next week – so very, very soon we are going to be powered up at the studio, which will be game changing! Lots more projects to check off the list…. poco a poco!