Work experience opportunity in Natural Building.

This is aimed at students of natural building who want to put their learning into practice in a real situation. It can be hard to get started in any field without experience and whilst I’m not offering a teaching situation, I can offer a supported learning environment for you to bring all your skills together to create something lovely and then show it off.

All of this is written in the context and the uncertainty of the current pandemic, of course and it’s a long read but hopefully useful.

Intro and background

Twelve years ago, when I came to live in this little village in Bulgaria, I knew nothing at all about mud – in fact, I’d go so far as to say that I hadn’t considered it to be anything other than wet, sticky soil. Using it for mortar on a brick wall, which is what my neighbours were telling me to do, just didn’t register. I gradually gained some basic building skills, mainly around the million things you can do with wire, before my daughter came to live here. She brought mud into our lives and gradually more of our barns and houses were transformed with this great stuff that is also free and available in a variety of colours around here.

This opened the door to the whole concept of natural building although its not a new thing in Bulgaria. Many old properties here are build with mud bricks and plastered with clay, and wood of course, is a main feature of building. These structures were practical but creativity with natural materials wasn’t very important traditionally. Even though these old methods are no longer popular here, there is still much to learn for anyone interested in traditional ways.

We always have a load of resources that are just waiting to be repurposed and recycled. Old windows, lovely old doors, old oak barn beams and kirpitch – the name for mud bricks. And now I have one project that can include a wide range of skills and materials and, I hope, look beautiful at the end.

There’s actually two projects here – creating the structure and then the plaster, paint and finishing. I would see about a month gap between these projects partly so that everything can dry and settle down but also so that I can be in the new space before deciding how it will be finished. I will also need some time to catch up on my garden. It could be one person doing both things or two separate experiences.

The building project.

I’m going to build a porch on my house which will essentially double the size of the house. The existing house is 8m x 4m – the porch/conservatory/live in green house will be the length of the house and about 3.5m wide. The porch will face south and the aim is to have as much winter light coming in as possible. It equally needs ventilation in the summer when temperatures here can reach above 40C although it will be shaded by the vines. Winter temperatures can be below -20C which makes this a fascinating climate to work in. In addition, it can’t have foundations – it needs to be seen as a temporary structure to avoid planning permissions.

Building with natural materials is traditional here – the soil is very clay and we have an abundance of wood. The other tradition here is reusing and repurposing and essentially, this is what the porch will be made of – recycled mud bricks; wood – beams, lats, cordwood; straw; bricks – mainly for the floor; local roof tiles and lots of old window frames.

I would like to offer this as a project to someone who has a good foundation and level of competency in natural building generally and wants to put that all into practice.

What would you get experience of?

  • Project management – once we have agreed the parameters of the job and we both know that we’re going in the same direction, you’re in charge, remembering, however, that I’m the client so practising and negotiating customer relations comes in here.
  • Managing people – I will have a couple of volunteers to assist you. They will also want to learn from you.
  • Time management – natural building takes a lot longer, of course and as we’ll be making much of this up as we go along, things can happen. Part of your project management task is estimating how long things will take and keeping that in mind. I would guess that this project would take a month of actual work time with a couple of weeks of planning and problem solving – I could be wrong.
  • Building with old mud bricks – these have come from old houses and were probably made around 100 years ago. They’re really strong and heavy but if you drop them or they get wet, they’re finished.
  • Possibly using earth bags and straw bales.
  • Using different mortars
  • Making cordwood in part of the main wall, using Linden probably.
  • Local methods of building a frame for the roof
  • Design – this is not set at the moment – I have some ideas but you might have better ones and there are a couple of things that are waiting for a solution – like bringing light into the roof – old windows will not hold the weight of the snow and ice for example.
  • Installing old windows and a door frame into the walls
  • Seeing a project through from beginning to end and talking about it for future opportunities.

 

 

The finishing part of the project.

I see all of these wonderful, inspiring pictures of rooms finished with natural plasters and paints and I would like something very beautiful on the walls of my new porch – inside and out. I have no idea what that will be just now – I know what the space will be used for but the rest of the design won’t happen until it’s actually built. I’m very interested in this part of the work and I’ve been exploring the range of colours in the wonderful clay soil we have here. I’m looking for someone with a good foundation in making plasters and paints who would like a project to call their own. What you create here will influence and be enjoyed by everyone who comes in, for years.

 

What would you get experience of?

  • Project management – once we have agreed the parameters of the job and we both know that we’re going in the same direction, you’re in charge, remembering, however, that I’m the client so practising and negotiating customer relations comes in here.
  • Managing people – I will have a couple of volunteers to assist you. They will also want to learn from you. I also want to work with you on this and learn from you. Sharing your knowledge will be a big part of this so everyone working on this will be under your instruction.
  • Time management – natural building takes a lot longer, of course and as we’ll be making much of this up as we go along, things can happen. Part of your project management task is estimating how long things will take and keeping that in mind. I would guess that this project would take a month of actual work time with a couple of weeks of planning and problem solving.
  • Making a cohesive design for inside and out.
  • Collecting and processing local clays.
  • Learn how these materials – clay soil, river clay and lime are used locally and traditionally.
  • Making lovely paints.
  • Seeing a project through from beginning to end and talking about it for future opportunities.

 

What am I offering?

  • A supportive environment to practice bringing all your skills together and being creative with them and with your problem solving skills.
  • A self contained apartment, ten minutes walk away in the centre of the village. You’ll have a comfortable, private space and a lovely garden to chill in.
  • The normal volunteering deal is 25 hours a week in exchange for food and accommodation. Assuming you’d be working a 40 hour week, I’ll pay the extra hours at the local rate of 10leva an hour – that’s master’s rates.
  • Plenty of wood.
  • Plenty food. We’ll have lunch together when we’re working and I’ll provide all the dry goods for cooking in your apartment – beans, rice etc plus the veg from the garden. Any other snacks – the shop is right next door to the apartment.
  • An opportunity to put something real onto your portfolio and a reference.
  • A chance to experience life in a Bulgarian village. This life is changing rapidly – even in the short time I’ve been here, the changes have been drastic. The population is falling in this country and many of the old skills and traditions are being lost.
  • My gratitude when I spend time in my live-in greenhouse where everyone will comment on your work, for ever.

I would hope that the building project can happen in the first half of 2021 – probably in May/June. It should be dry then and not too hot. The finishing could possibly be a September project as August is way too hot to work.

 

You can find more about us on the rest of this website.

If you’re interested, please message me or email on kathymcgowan850@gmail.com – the next step would be that I show you round on whatsapp.

Thanks for reading all the way through this and I’m really looking forward to hearing from you.

Kathy McGowan

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