The off-grid Homestead Shower ... Excuse me while I sob with relief.

We finally have an active shower on the homestead, with hot water which I have sorely missed. My husband has been taking cold showers, but I’m too much of a pansy and have been heating up water in the tea kettle to bathe. We also use that tea kettle for coffee, however, and I would sometimes get grounds in my hair. Ugh. I can attest to the fact that coffee does not work through osmosis, unfortunately. After a few months of this, we decided to finish the shower before finishing the greenhouse it will eventually sit in.

We used slate tiles and store bought lumber, making this area the most expensive we have built to date, by far. I bought cleaner to dissolve the mortar film, but I can’t find it so it looks dusty right now. :/ The paint is metallic copper, but the sheen doesn’t show well in the photo. My texturing attempt also failed. The bench opens and acts as storage. The floor is made from river rock we collected and some cheap cement.

The window was free from a window hoarder clean up, and the outside planking was lumber we nabbed from the landfill. I think it used to be a cabinet of some sort. The “door” is just temporary. This will all eventually be enclosed in a greenhouse that connects to the kitchen’s dutch door. (Our hillbilly attempt to recreate the effect in the movie Practical Magic.)

The shower’s left wall is just plastic sheeting at the moment, and will eventually lead to the rest of the bathroom. You can see the stacked tires in the back, which are rammed with earth to create the bathroom and greenhouse’s rear and side walls. (This comes from the Earthship building concept.)

We also started plastering the inside walls with lime putty since the floor FINALLY dried. We are in a motel for work right now, but hopefully that will go up quick and we can move in soon, and be out of the tiny travel trailer. Just ignore my husband’s butt. :)