One of the more commonly seen natural homes out there is the Hobbit House.  Thank you to Being Somewhere for the photos.

Natural homes, in my opinion, are the most beautiful homes you coud build.  When our house is done, it will be beautiful just because it is a natural home.  But that is not why we chose natural building.

Natural homes are wonderful for the environment.  You are building with renewable resources that are not made using toxic chemicals that off gas into your home while you are living in it.  Building with natural materials means that you are not releasing toxins into the atmosphere and are not producing huge amounts of waste.  I would love to say that my commitment to the environment was why we chose to build a cordwood home.  But that isn’t it eaither.

Our goal in building this natural home is being able to have a gorgeous, healthy home without a mortgage.  That is reason number one.  Freedom from having to pay off a loan for the next 30 plus years.  Renewable resources, many of which we can harvest from our property, are cheaper, if not free, than conventional building supplies.  Doing all the work of building ourselves also means that labor costs are near zero.  We may bribe some help with pizzas and beers at some point…

I have already talked about all of the gathering of materials we will be doing, but I will mention again that we are able to collect gravel, lumber, clay for mortar, sand for mortar, rocks for the foundation and many other items right off of our land.  We will purchase anything we have to purchase from a used resource center.  Much cheaper than buying new.

Building the natural home allows for a lot for flex in your plans.  This is why it will be so easy to buy second hand.  If we buy the windows, for example, before we start the walls, we can buy any shape or size window and build the wall to fit it.

We can also incorporate recycled materials into our cordwood home.  I will be making stained glass windows out of old glass bottles that will run all around the perimeter in order to maximize daylight inside.  When done nicely, these stained glass windows are a gorgeous addition to your natural home.  We have been collecting bottles for years for this….

So that was how we made our decision to build this way.  Almost completely being cheap.  I’m alright with being cheap when building the house, it certainly isn’t the lazy way out.

Check out the other house plans here.