Creole Cottage 1: It started out to be a simple cabin . . .

Hobby Builders Supply runs an annual Creatin' Contest. My entries for 2006 and 2007 were fairly complex, so I was glad to see the contest kit was Greenleaf Dollhouses Adams, a simple, one-room cottage. Aha, I thought ... this won't take any time at all! These were, of course, some of those famous last words.

Here is the kit unadorned:



I was waiting for an inspiration for a nice little one-room project, but imagination is a fickle thing. A little voice in my head suggested that it looked like part of a Creole cottage -- a single door, single window. And, the voice added, if I were to get another kit, I could put them together in mirror image and get a passable home out of it for Marie Laveau, the Voodoo Priestess of New Orleans. (More about her in another post.)

That led to a lot of research on the construction of the cottages, and I learned about bousillage, a method of stuffing soft "bricks" made of mud and Spanish moss between supporting wooden beams. And so the bashing began.



The beams for the bousillage have been installed on the side wall. I don't think you can see it in the photo, but there is a little space between the two houses, which gave me another inspiration. Why is it that each burst of inspiration leads to more complications? Beats me, but that seems to be the way it works over here, anyway!

Anyway, that space and what went in it will be the topic of the next post.