Mink Lake Cooperative

June 2026

One could say that the bathroom bottle wall began over a decade ago. Bags and bags of glass bottles from beer and spirits, especially the most coveted ones of various blue hues–light Bombay Gin bottles and deep cobalt blue Skyy Vodka or Blue Giovello prosecco bottles–were collected over the years, primarily by Dash and YP in preparation for a feature wall in the Earthship. We were lucky that some friends of Mink Lake Co-op members also gifted a huge collection of square Los Arango Reposado blue bottles that they had been saving for their own future bottle wall somewhere, but decided they would generously donate to this Earthship project instead. Brice and I started assembling and building the bathroom bottle wall in August 2024 and it’s finally come to a close in June 2026. Over 400 individual bottles were used in the wall. I couldn’t begin to tell you how many hours of work!

PHASE 1 / One Week in August 2024

The first job was to sort and organize the available bottles that could be matched by diameter as closely as possible. My Dad and I also took one half day to search Maynooth antique shops and Bancroft thrift stores looking for more glass pieces that had interesting colours like yellow or red. We found some antique red glasses (that I probably overpaid for just to chop off the stems), some grey/purple drinking glasses and some neat yellow bottles from the dollar store. Remember, two bottles = one brick! Finding just one interesting piece is not enough–you need to find multiples of the same or very similar and each piece must reach the minimum length once cut (in our case, 3”) to create the final brick size to go into the wall properly (6”).

"You want me to build what?"-Me, while bottle hunting

We set-up a cutting station inside the Earthship with a tile cutter. I hauled endless batches of bottles that had been carefully stored outside to be cut in half inside at the station, then rinsed and set out to dry.

We turned the tile cutter around because a lot of glass shards were created during the cutting.

The next day, once dried, Dad did a quick polish and taped the matching ends together with duct tape to form a brick while I cut more bottles. (Sometimes the sizes wouldn’t match perfectly–as long as it’s close in diameter and the tape can secure the two ends, it works.) From previous bottle wall work, Dash had made a handy tool of a wood block with a V shape centre so that you could easily steady the two ends in the holder and then roll the duct tape around. This simple tool made a huge difference for assembly.

Dad at his work station.

Finished bricks

Overview of finished bricks

Matching bottle sizes into...

brick ends.

We also discovered during the cutting process that the yellow bottles we purchased were just covered in yellow tint/film and the glass was actually transparent. Turns out it’s tricky to find true coloured glass today.

The discarded half of the bottles were dumped outside where they will get buried at some point under the berming of the Earthship.

Using the finished bricks, Dash and I then laid out a design on the Earthship floor within a chalk outline of the approximate surface of the wall to be built around the door frame.

We talked through various patterns and landed on something like earth (beer bottle bricks on the bottom) becoming grass (green Heineken and wine bottles) then reaching upwards to a starry sky (blue and clear bottles).

Eventually, we created a pattern with some flowers and stems and then realized…we needed MORE BOTTLES. We didn’t have enough bricks to achieve the sort of square density of glass we wanted due to the size of the space to fill.

Example of someone else's Earthship bottle wall (unknown). You can see how close the bottles are laid into the wall...thats alotta bottle bricks.

Back to the brick mines. I made more bricks out of the type of bottle we had in greatest supply: beer bottles. We decided to pad the bottom of the design with more brown “earth” bottles and agreed we could use cans to help take up more room in the wall, which get covered up with grout later, unlike the bottle bricks.

Our week was almost up. Dad and I made the unprecedented move to go to the Earthship after dinner to cut more beer bottles in the waning evening light in hopes we'd have enough to at least start building the wall before we left.

We decided to start the wall with what we had. The job of taking the design off the floor and into reality was reserved for the visual artist in the group, Brice. I stayed in my lane operating the brick factory having mastered the process from bottle selection and matching to quick cuts on the tile cutter.

Brice got his masonry practice in with laying the cans and building the planter walls first.

Brice confidently plunged into making a custom designed wall for the first time ever. He did an excellent job with creating the flowers and stems and even completed some initial grouting work around the bottles, which really put the beauty of the project into a new perspective for me (even if I groaned about this completion step, having been ignorant of how brick laying works).

The first cans and bottle bricks are laid.

The flower takes shape and has been grouted.

PHASE 2 / A Weekend in September 2024

Brice and I returned to the Earthship for a weekend to finish laying the wall. I had to do a crash course in mortar work and it was a bit intimidating because this project is so visible. It’s hard to do a show piece on your first try when literally cementing something into physical permanence!

We soon found our design groove and laid the bottles. I managed to organize some sort of pattern on my side with the gorgeous blue bricks. We were a bit messy, however, and a lot of mortar was being dropped on the recently laid flag stone floor (spoiler alert: that would come to haunt me a couple seasons later).

However, as we went pulling bricks from the design outline on the floor, it was becoming more obvious that even with the addition of cans for spacers, we wouldn’t have enough bricks. This wall space was deceptively HUGE. We added as many more cans as we could to fill the space, achieve a coherent design and grow that wall to the top beam to complete it.

Unfortunately, we didn’t make it to the top. We ran out of bottle bricks and had no raw inventory left lying around from what had been collected to continue on the starry sky theme.

We cleaned up, went home and demanded all our friends and family to drink more prosecco and gin from blue bottles over the coming winter months. And only blue bottles!

PHASE 3 / A weekend in June 2025

Friends and family powered through on their assigned drinking task. I cut and assembled more blue bottle bricks at home in Toronto and sent them off with Brice who returned to the Earthship solo for a weekend to complete the wall to the top beam and grout around the bricks.

It’s done! Or so we thought…

PHASE 4 / Many weekends and days in July & August 2025

With many people’s help (future blog post!), the entire interior of the Earthship was painted in lime wash, which of course, included all the bottle walls, not just the feature bathroom wall. There was so much square footage to cover with the lime wash and I think in desperation to be done with this monumental task, we just went over all the bottles figuring we would clean them off later. It was a choice. The lime wash splattered everywhere, often despite one’s best efforts to apply slowly just because it’s quite liquidy.

We did come to realize near the end of the painting process that you could get more control of the product with less mess by holding the brush like you were grooming a horse and brushing into the wall. If only we had discovered this sooner!

Mom being pulled into the job. No one was safe!

Child labour that lasted only 3 minutes at a time.

Either way, it was hard to get around all those bottles with this wash so precisely. We also didn’t always protect that newly poured concrete floor or laid flag stone greenhouse floor (spoiler alert: this would also come back to haunt me at multiple points later on).

My son trying to lime wash Grandpa. Visible splatter on the floor.

By August, the lime wash was nearly complete. Brice started cleaning the bottle bricks of dried wash while the rest of us finished walls on opposite areas of the Earthship and I started cleaning and finishing the floors in the U rooms.

We tried vinegar to remove the wash, but that often bled onto the walls and would strip the wash accidentally and also took time to dissolve. We tried steel wool. Too slow and too much effort required. The more accurate and faster solution was to use a wire brush on a cordless drill and sheer it off.

One by one, the bottles revealed themselves again across the entire interior. But the drill would slip or catch a side on a small bottle surface and we saw that we would need to do finer lime wash touch-ups around the bottles at some point in the future.

PHASE 4 CONTINUED / A weekend in September 2025

Brice and I returned to clean bottles and work on the floors. Brice cleaned ALL the bottles…everywhere. We were done, knowing we would only have to do lime wash touch ups around the bottles at the start of next season. Phew!

“What about cleaning the bottle caps in the walls?” Dash asked us.

Riiight…we added that task to the top of the list for season 2026. There are actually no caps on the bathroom wall, so there were still only lime wash touch-ups to do there.

PHASE 6 / An extended weekend in May 2026

Our first of four scheduled trips for the 2026 season was focussed on cleaning the bottle caps of lime wash in the entire interior and doing touch-ups around all the bottles on every wall with tiny brushes, and to do so very carefully so as to not add more droplets on the floors or wood frame.

We did it! One by one and both sides of the bathroom bottle wall. I also took this time to clean the slate on the top of the greenhouse planters of limewash and seal the stone and complete the U room floors.

Hurray, we’re done!

“What about cleaning the lime wash off the wood around the bottle walls?” Dash asked us. :)

PHASE I’VE LOST COUNT - An extended weekend in June 2026

Brice and I returned for our second scheduled trip armed with a quart of Golden Wheat interior stain and freshly charged drill batteries to wire brush that lime wash off the wood frames all around the interior. Brice owned this task because I had thought that I would be putting together our newly ordered IKEA kitchen set-up. IKEA did not come through on the scheduled delivery and I was left with time to confront the situation with the masonry and lime wash stained flag stone floors.

Three full work days later, the splatters of lime wash were removed and fresh stain applied, the bathroom wall door frame was also sanded down and stained.