Originally published Sunday, May 10, 2009 at 12:00 AM
Comments (3)
E-mail article
Print view
Share
Portraits
Seattle's first strawbale bedroom is a work of art and love
Single mom Brenda Ajbour gets help from friends, family and even strangers to build Seattle's first permitted strawbale project: a new bedroom, just for her.
Watch it go up
See Seattle's first permitted strawbale project being born at sagedesignsnw.biz and at raconstruct.com.
How to build a strawbale bedroom: Take lots of polar fleece, and rain, and mud, and straw (of course), and coffee, and a solar panel and can-do friends and neighbors. Mix well. Nourish with a "feastival" at the end of Day 1.
For "Team Stucco": Add more polar fleece and tea and rain and volunteers galore and windows and soup and bloody fingers and mud (the stucco kind) and hugs for friends new and old. Trowel-on liberally.
Brenda Ajbour's house in Bryant is a work in progress.
And a work of love.
This has been a real save-and-build deal for a single mom on a teacher's salary. She took on a downstairs renter to even afford the place. That left one bedroom. Ajbour gave it to Etri, her 18-year-old son (teenagers are best stored in bedrooms).
Ajbour? "I've been sleeping in the kitchen for three years!"
Not anymore. With the last coat of exterior stucco dry, Ajbour finally has a real room to call her own: Seattle's first permitted strawbale project at 256 square feet. Her architect, Sage Saskill, calls it "Brenda's strawbale oasis."
It is, too. Butter-yellow walls as thick as, well, a bale of straw; fat, stucco window sills, concrete floors. A little truth window exposing the room's straw guts.
But something else was revealed, too.
Ajbour knew she would get a womb of a room; she wasn't, however, prepared for the people. They came and worked, and kept coming and kept working. Through snow and rain and bitter wet cold. Strangers, some of them. A guy from Brussels. Etri's friends from Roosevelt. Volunteers and donations (the contractor threw in the tubing and labor for the solar-heated floor). The whole project took on that old-timey-Seattle-outdoors-hippie-alt-culture-inventiveness feeling some of us thought fell out of fashion with Birkenstocks and tie-dye.
"People worked nine and 10 hours for a bowl of soup! I was not prepared for the outpouring," Ajbour says, still amazed, changed. "We had regulars, and friends of friends; people who saw it on the Web site. That blew me away. One day I went out back and my new boss was there. Just showed up."
They came to help build a bedroom and left as family.
Copyright © 2009 The Seattle Times Company
The local, public face of Chase, Phyllis Campbell is trading on trust
Wine Adviser: 'Pocket Wine Book' slips into sloppy
Northwest Living: A Whidbey Island château would suit hobbits, too
Destinations: Sikkim offers an otherworldly experience to trekkers
Plant Life: Hedgerows offer variety and shelter to urban gardens

Mourners gather at KeyArena for slain officer's memorial
Mourners gathered at KeyArena for the memorial service of Seattle police Officer Timothy Brenton on November 6, 2009.
nwjobs

Post a comment

Michelle Goodman blogs about work/life balance.
How to tell your office you're gravely ill
Post a comment
nwautos

Choosing a new sedan? Weigh the impact of your choice on your wallet and on the planet.
Post a comment
- Flags were key link to cop slaying, bombings
- Suspect shot as city mourns slain officer
- Briefs | Soccer: New Mexico suspends hair-pulling player Elizabeth Lambert
- Bombs, guns found at home of suspect in Officer Brenton's slaying
- Huskies suffer another heartbreaking loss to UCLA
- McGinn pulling away as late ballots come in
- How an underdog named Mike McGinn took City Hall
- Using anti-shooter tactics, civilian Army police officer brought down gunman
- 3 Cascade Mountain passes close due to snow; more rain, wind expected Sunday
- Heavy snow in Cascades shuts down roads
- UCLA game thread
940 - Weapons, bomb-making materials found in suspect's apartment
336 - U.S. House passes health plan
276 - Bombs, guns found at home of suspect in Officer Brenton's slaying
218 - Decision day for health care in the House
203 - Grading the game
128 - Referendum 71 show's Washington's strategy for marriage equality is working
124 - Huskies suffer another heartbreaking loss to UCLA
107 - How an underdog named Mike McGinn took City Hall
71 - Fort Hood shooting suspect had shown troubling signs
47
- Suspect shot as city mourns slain officer
- Flags were key link to cop slaying, bombings
- The birth of 'Grunge,' in photos by Michael Lavine
- 10 ways to take control of your health
- 10 investing missteps to avoid
- How do innovators think?
- Bombs, guns found at home of suspect in Officer Brenton's slaying
- Danny Westneat | Lee the Horse Logger found slow wagon shrank tumor
- Tlingit heritage helps glass artist Preston Singletary break new ground
- Guest columnist | Cut the South Carolina jokes, Seattle. Get ready to compete









