Construction
Constructing our adobe box took about 2 days. We started with building a foundation made from scraps of wood on top of some old adobe bricks. Normally in the hot summer weather of Parras, wet adobe bricks take about 1 week to dry before they are ready to use in construction. Due to the hurricane that came right after we made adobe, our bricks still held a lot of water after a weeks time. We could still build with them but they were very delicate and broke easily, as we experienced a few times. The bottom of the box was built with 6 adobe blocks, 2 x 3, and molded together with a mixture of water and the sandy-clay we used to construct the adobe. The 4 sides were constructed with 2 blocks each and were a challange to fit together. A nice thing about building with adobe is that you can cut the bricks to the exact size you need, or shave them down a little bit. We used a saw to get flat sides and manipulate the blocks into fiting together nicely. After the first story of bricks, we let the structure dry and become stable. The next day we added the second story to the box which proved to be even more challenging.
Our Finished Adobe Box