A Rammed-Earth Home in Napa Valley
(Page 3 of 4)
September/October 1999
By Laurel Lund
Anchoring the kitchen is a central cooking island made from recycled tiles purchased from a local “seconds” outlet, wood recycled from a defunct bowling alley, and fir recycled from a Bay Area salvage yard—the resource that supplied the rough-hewn, recycled, wood beams overhead.
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A Family of Substance
Beyond the kitchen archway is a combination dining room/library where the family enjoys sharing matters of substance, literally and spiritually. “We intentionally made our dining area a place for talking things over,” says Wright, a former Montessori teacher who loves helping the couple’s six children enjoy learning for learning’s sake.
Across from the built-in bookshelves is a fireplace, one of two cast-earth fixtures on the first floor. The other fireplace anchors the living area, where PISE walls have been grout-washed to create the luxurious look of marble—a backdrop for the family’s oak, Mission-style, Gustav Stickley sofa.
The master suite is opposite the living area, which is divided from the dining room by a niched stairwell that leads to the second-floor bedrooms and bath. The suite’s floors consist of the same terra tiles as the kitchen and other first-floor rooms, while the tile countertops are seconds.
Mud and Mortar
The house that David and Cynthia built took almost thirteen months to complete, a true labor of love. They worked sixty hours a week, with Easton supervising the project. The couple also did all the design work and some of the finish work, including laying floor tiles, crafting cabinets, and painting.
“Cynthia is an important part of why I’m able to successfully develop earth-building technology,” says an admiring Easton. “She not only contributes design ideas, but we worked side by side on the last phases of refining PISE to learn how it can fit today’s residential construction standards.”
Easton and Wright’s six children also contributed to the building process. “All the children have been involved in the R&D experience at one time or another,” he says, laughing. “In fact, it’s almost a joke that ‘Dad wants us to work on another crazy new idea’.”
One of Easton’s “crazy” ideas includes successful experiments with cast earth. This technique requires additional water and cement so the mixture flows into a form model. The results include not only the massive, cast-earth fireplaces but also the columns beneath the guest-house kiwi arbor, the front entry pediment, all floor tiles and blocks around windows and doors, and the coping or edging tile around the pool.
We Are the World
The development of regionally appropriate earth technologies drives Easton. And it all began with some adobe-block and soil-cement construction during college when he remodeled several cabins in the hills near Stanford, following only the directions in an issue of the Whole Earth Catalog.