We Install Windows On Our Straw Bale Home

This week on OSRL we install the first windows into the straw bale walls of our house. How's it going everyone? Welcome back to the domestead. So if you're new here my wife and I were building our own home off-grid here in the Arizona desert. But if you caught our last video you know that I've been painting the wood for the greenhouse section of our house. I got the whole front side done in the last video and I've started painting the top. So I got to work my way along the top finish that off. Now I still got to put a second coat on this whole thing and I also got this going on the north side of the house. So I finished up the base coat here on our straw bale wall and Jess is handling the dirt work getting a second coat on top of that. Now she's about to head around the corner here and get to this north hand side. So before she does that I want to start getting in some of the windows that we have available over here. So I'll get that straight and that way she doesn't have to worry about that she can just kind of work that second layer right over that. Come along because we got a lot of work to do. This is for the people. She's right in your way. Now I'm in your way. That's a big one. Just wants to enjoy it by herself for a while. I guess. We were playing tug-of-war here for a little bit. It's a new rope though so she's got to break it in. Yeah. You like your new rope? She wants to love her mama. All right well I still got a lot of work to do with painting but I'm gonna step back from that a little bit. I want to get those windows in place so everything's ready for when Jess gets around that corner. So let me pull those windows out and let's get to work. Here we go. You want daddy to throw the frog again? Oh you want daddy to throw that frog? Surely no, surely no dogs will climb into the shipping container while I'm in there. Got it. All right Jess what do you think? First window's in place. You want a bug? She ate it. Actually cleaned the coop out a little bit. This time we're in the cage. We're in the cage. And put some fresh straw in there and the chickens always love that when there's fresh straw. They're having fun just scratching it up. It was like a party. You were but she's back in the back in the coop now. Yeah so she had gotten a case of scaly leg mites so I decided to separate her from the flack for a little bit and we had her living in our rv and I was treating her. She's doing a lot better so I put her back in with other chickens and I little worried. I didn't know how things would go you know when you're putting chickens back in like sometimes it can throw off the whole chicken social dynamic. I was a little surprised you know I was like oh is she gonna end up like at the bottom of the pecking order now or something and that was not the case. And then the rooster was really interested in her. He's following her around and doing what I call like the rooster dance. He does this weird kind of he bows down and puts his wings out a little bit and then kind of shuffles towards the hen and he does a thing where if he finds like a some kind of special treat or a bug or something he'll make a excited kind of chirping noise almost and it calls the hens over and he did that with Cream Head and I don't know what he found but he let her like eat it. So romantic. Yeah. So Cream Head's doing just fine. Went back into her flock no problem. You ready for a walk? You ready for a walk? Let's go. Falling behind. Going on our evening walk. Look just as the sun sets. Is that blinding everyone? Anyone else have to work at de-weeding their house? So I finally got those weeds removed from inside the house. It looks a lot nicer in here. You can actually kind of see the space real nicely. I like it and it's out of my way. I can bring the ladder around and get the rest of this painted. So that's what I'm going to keep working on. I'm going to get up there keep painting. Man it's kind of crazy being in this space now that some of the windows are in there. It's really looking like that much more of a home. It's just really beautiful to see. All right. Man so much going on. It's crazy but I am excited. I'm glad I kind of took a break from the painting for a little bit to get some of these windows in. I think it's looking absolutely fantastic and I'm so glad to see them up. I don't know how do you feel about that space? You know every time we get like another major step done it's really exciting because you can just see the house taking shape. I always get excited about that. I feel like the putting the windows in is a big part of that because it's like oh it's more finished. These are the windows that sort of we had on hand. They're looking fantastic. Again this one came from some friends of ours. The other one down there we picked up at a deal so very cool very cool to see those in. Making a lot of progress with the painting that's coming along. I got about half of that roof area done. I still got to hit that other half but you know it's coming along. I don't want to make all these videos just about painting but there will be some painting going on for a little while until that's complete. I don't know maybe people want to have a whole video watching paint dry or something. Yeah yeah I heard people love that watching paint dry. That is a popular topic. All right well very exciting the build is coming along. I got the first window in place over here so when you finally when you make it around the corner over there doing the wall that'll be in place ready to go. I still need to kind of move on with doors and windows for the rest of this so you can just keep on plastering. Thanks so much for joining us today. Don't forget to give us a big thumbs up and we'll catch in the next video y'all.