Recycled Table Yields Three Desks
Treasure Hunt
In advance of building our next earth bag structure, we begin to gather the needed items. We drive by our local business to pick up free pallets a couple at a time so we will have several accumulated for the ceiling and window wraps. We also watch Craigslist and one of our favorite activities - garage sales. Here we look for various windows and skylights, tiles, and pots to place in the walls. We have also been on the lookout for something to make a good desktop - something we could embed in the super adobe walls for a desk.
Granite Top Desk First
On our first super adobe structure, we picked up a slab of granite. It was too small to fit between the walls so the guys built a free standing desk. Below is the video of it followed by the description of the above "table" desk:
For the next earth bag building, we wanted to find a larger slab so we could have a built-in desk.
Treasure Find
While out doing our usual garage saling activity, we seem to bump into solid wood tables. We decided to try a table leaf for our next desktop. We purchased a used, heavy, solid oak kitchen table. Because it was round, we had two ends that already looked like small half round desks. This sparked another idea.
The “Go To” Guy
It was time to call on Garen - our "go to" guy. Garen disassembled the table into three parts. I could not figure out why the table 
ends wouldn't stand on its own - I mean it had 4 legs after all. Nevertheless, confirming what Garen already concluded, the table balance was off for the ends to stand without any adjustments.
Garen sized up the problem and made several 
adjustments. He turned the rounded legs around and moved them towards the outside edge of the tabletop. Then he added a 2x6 to the back to balance it out. And… “Presto!” We have a small half-round desk. He quickly put together another and we ended with two desks and the original table leaf wood slab for later use in our next earth bag structure. Not bad for 25 bucks!
Shelly
March 27, 2013
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Resources
www.greenhomebuilding.com/adobe.htm
www.earthbagbuilding.com/articles.htm
www.earthbagplans.wordpress.com
We moved from the city to the country in 2005. Since then, we have been building structures, raising livestock and growing some of our own foods. We are crazy about family, nutrition and want the best for our growing family.
