In Priirpenye, as throughout Ukraine, there are still old houses and even so-called “hutted huts” - these are either old wooden houses, or houses even with clay whitewashed walls and earthen floor.
Thick walls, floor, stove in half the room, wooden beams, supporting the roof, old slate(or even a straw “strikha”), 56 “squares” - this description may be suitable for most of the “huts” that still remain in Ukraine and Priipenye.
In this form they are suitable only for museums, but not for life. Often such houses are passed down by inheritance with the intention of “preserving the heritage.” And what should the unfortunate heir do in this case? And you can’t live in those conditions, and you can’t keep your promise! An excellent solution for everyone would be a full update! And how to do this? Renovating an old house in just four steps!
How to convert an old hut into a modern comfortable home - just 4 steps!
1. Leave the walls. Make sure the walls look satisfactory. Clay retains heat in winter and cool in summer, so, if possible, it is better not to part with original walls. Another thing - internal partitions and oven. They usually take a lot functional space, so we advise you to demolish them, leaving only the “box” itself. Aim to spend 20 to 30 days on this. Although, given current gas prices, there may be no need to rush to disassemble the stove!
2. Replace the floor."Mazankas" usually stand on earthen floor, which is actually a mound of earth inside the house, thanks to which moisture does not enter the room, and the distance to the ceiling is reduced by 50 cm. We recommend digging a pit and filling it with concrete. This will allow you to create a heated floor in the house if desired. Along with laying all the necessary pipes, concreting and “settling” this work may take 2-3 months, of which 1.5-2 months will be spent just drying.
3. Walls can also create climate. Usually in villages houses are “sewn up” with bricks outside and whiten, but uneven ones remain inside clay walls. We suggest doing the opposite. Agree, it is very important that the house has smooth walls. It’s more pleasing to the eye and to design smooth walls easier - you can paint, decorate with appliqués, wallpaper, changing the interior at least every season. Therefore, we recommend laying the brick with inside(1 brick, maybe even half a brick) - actually build brick walls inside finished house. And between the adobe and the brick, lay out a mixture of sand and clay, as well as polystyrene foam. As a result, the width of the walls will be about 80 cm - serious protection from cold and heat. Brick walls It needs to be plastered and painted. From the outside, only the corners of the house can be bricked, plastered and painted. It is better to line the walls with a frame of slats and tension plaster mesh. Next, we suggest making a layer from a mixture of clay, sand and hay, and laying a durable facing board with high heat and sound insulation properties. This treatment imitates a log house. You look at the house - a real wooden hut, and inside - smooth, brick, plastered walls. Prepare to spend 1 to 1.5 months on this stage.
4. Updated roof. If roof structure in satisfactory condition, then it is better not to demolish it, but only replace the slate. Place it on the old rafters new board and cover with painted slate. Make a brick box above the ceiling and pour expanded clay into it to a height of 15 cm. We recommend lining the ceiling itself with boards, leaving the old beams. Then treat with stain, impregnation and varnish. All is ready! “Roofing” work will take from 3 to 6 weeks of your time. And if you line the attic with wide clapboard, you will also get a second floor!
At first glance, everything seems simple. But, in total, all work will take up to 6 months! However, a house in six months - is that really a period? It is also a house that keeps you warm in winter and cool in summer. In 40-degree heat, when the whole country turns on the air conditioners full power even at night, when you go to bed, you will take cover warm blankets. And this indescribable smell of freshly cut wood and forest is literally intoxicating, you just have to cross the threshold of your hut without chicken legs. It's worth it!
Until the 50s of the last century in the northern and northwestern parts of Ukraine, as well as in some steppe regions southern Russia traditionally built houses, which were popularly called and continue to be called mud huts(from the word smear - plaster clay mortar).
A little technology for making smeared walls
Now there are people who want to build ecological homes with their own hands. Therefore, enthusiasts are reviving such old-fashioned technologies, guided by the principle - “everything is new, it’s well forgotten old.”
Let's look at some features old technology making smeared walls.
The walls of the mud huts are composed like the walls half-timbered house, from wooden frame. The gap between the posts and crossbars, which used to be called cages, was filled in the following way: they installed wooden stakes and poles, braided them with brushwood, straw or reeds, and then coated them with clay.
Depending on the type of cell sealing, smeared walls can be divided into:
- wooden;
- wattle;
- straw;
- reed.
Wooden huts consist of frames (crossbars) and racks, the spaces between which are filled with thin logs (knurling), wooden plates or blocks. The surface of such a wall was first filled with wooden shingles from thin poles, and then coated with clay mortar.
Wicker mud hut. With this design the cells of the supporting frame are filled with vertical wooden stakes and horizontal poles (the pitch of the stakes and poles relative to each other was taken to be approximately 17...25 cm depending on their thickness). After installation, these elements were braided with brushwood and plastered with clay mortar.
Straw hut differs from wattle only in that instead of brushwood, strands of long and straight rye straw were used. The pitch of the stakes from each other was about 17...18 cm.
Reed mud hut. When constructing walls in this way, bundles of winter reeds, previously cleared of husks, were attached with wire to poles installed in cages. The beams were nailed to the upper and lower horizontal elements of the half-timbered frame (trimming).
The walls were coated as follows. Surfaces of external and interior walls were previously cleaned and moistened with a wet brush, and the first layer of solution was thrown onto it, which was then left to dry. Next, subsequent layers were added until it was possible to smooth and level all the depressions on the surface of the walls.
By doing plastering works, before performing the subsequent plaster layer, pieces of crushed brick were stuffed into the fresh and still soft coating, as far as possible.
After plastering and final drying of the entire plaster marking, the walls were whitewashed with lime, chalk or white clay.
The walls of cold auxiliary buildings were erected in a similar way. The ends of horizontal poles wrapped in straw, pre-impregnated with a liquid clay solution, were installed in the vertical side grooves of the racks. Adjacent rows of poles were fastened to each other with knitting needles, punching through the straw, or the rows of poles were intertwined with thin wire.
The surface of such walls was leveled by throwing a plaster mixture of clay, lime and sand.
It would be interesting to hear your thoughts about mud houses...
The Ukrainian mud hut is traditional home for the southern Slavs. However, such dwellings are found not only in the Ukrainian steppes, but also in Belarusian forests, and in Poland. It has a slightly different structure, unlike its northern sister - the Russian hut, which is also sometimes called a hut.
However, these differences are quite justified and understandable. It's all about climatic conditions. In fact, winter in the north of the Russian Plain lasts a couple of months longer. And frosts can be much more severe than on the warm Black Sea coast.
Mazanka - Ukrainian hut
Ukrainian hut is most often precisely hut. This type of housing is represented throughout Ukraine, as well as in the southern regions of Russia. And this is again due to natural conditions. After all, to build a Russian hut you need a lot of logs and other wooden materials.
In the southern Black Sea steppes, forests were always not very rich. Therefore, local residents have adapted to build their houses using a minimum of wood. The walls of the Ukrainian mud hut were erected from woven branches, raw bricks, or best case scenario, from halves of logs.
Then all this was coated (hence the name - mud hut) with clay, or a mixture of clay with straw, manure or other filler. And at the end of construction, the walls were whitewashed with lime or, more often, chalk. It was both white, so the walls both outside and inside were white.
Whitewashed huts of a Ukrainian village
These white mud huts have always been real symbols of Ukraine. Their images are still used today in election campaigns. advertising campaigns. Their images literally never leave propaganda posters.
These white walls contrast so much with the surrounding world that they make an indelible impression on creative people. For many famous artists, and not only Ukrainian ones, there are paintings depicting a Ukrainian mud hut.
One of them was Ilya Efimovich Repin. In 1901 he painted “ Ukrainian hut" On it he depicted a typical Ukrainian hut and yard. White walls with small windows and a yellow roof - that’s Ukrainian country house.
Arkhip Ivanovich Kuindzhi painted the painting “ Evening in Ukraine" The painting was painted in a unique manner that distinguishes this great artist. The whitewashed walls of huts appear as light spots on it.
But in the painting by Makovsky V.E. “,” written in 1901, presents a picture of Ukrainian nature. And going down to the river along the slope, Ukrainian huts with white walls and yellow thatched roofs lined up in a row.
Traditional Ukrainian rural house
In all the paintings the roofs of the houses have yellow. However, it can be light brown and gray. After all, they were built from the straw left after threshing the wheat. But not only this material was used for the construction of roofs. Sometimes this material was reeds.
Over time, the roof material could become gray. But in all the paintings he is depicted as yellow. This is very beautiful combination white and yellow against a background of summer greenery. This is what it is like – a real mud hut rural house in the Ukrainian outback.
Sometimes someone got tired of the white walls of a Ukrainian hut and turned them into a real work of art. Moreover, the ornament on old Ukrainian huts was not drawn just like that, but in accordance with national traditions Slavs
Look at these painted walls. The style of a Ukrainian hut cannot be confused with anything else. And if you look inside, there will be no limit to surprise. There are the same patterns as outside. Embroidered shirts and towels, pillowcases and tablecloths – everything is in patterns. The same ones can sometimes be seen in the Russian outback. They have the same roots.
Unfortunately, time has power over us, and all structures are subject to destruction. And you can’t stop progress. Man today prefers to live in modern houses, V comfortable conditions. Ukrainian hut hut, like traditional home of the southern Slavs, will soon remain only in museums, protected by its employees.
The selection of these houses is especially close to my heart, since it was collected in Podolia, my small homeland. In one of these huts I spent my early childhood and I have very warm memories associated with them. Vinnytsia artist Vladimir Kozyuk collected this photo collection for 13 years, for which he is deeply grateful. 
Vladimir photographed his first hut under a thatched roof back in 1996, completely unconsciously. And over the course of several years, the artist simply began to dream about these houses. After such dreams, he got up and drew what he saw. In 2004, he bought a digital camera and began purposefully searching for and photographing all the mud huts that still remained.
Today, many of these houses no longer exist, but there are photos and paintings. They are kept in many museums in Ukraine. The author connected the lives of its residents with each of these houses. 
With. Posokhov, Murovano-Kurilovetsky district, Vinnitsa, Ukraine 2005.
This adobe house under the straw, together with the grandmother, became the calling card of the Holodomor project; a huge banner hung in the center of Kyiv. It is noteworthy that the house is simply plastered with clay and there is no white limestone plaster.
When it was photographed, this mud hut was more than 300 years old. This is one of two oldest houses in Ukraine. A striking example of the reliability of adobe frame structures. Mazanka was with wooden log house on a stone foundation. The log house there has already turned to stone. Now this house no longer exists. The top of it rotted, it was flooded with rain and the house collapsed.
With. Yakimovka, Oratovsky district, Vinnitsa, Ukraine 2004. The house of Mikola's grandfather.
This mud hut was still about a hundred years old. This is not a staged photo. Grandfather was just chopping wood when he raised his head. He asked: “How much do I owe you for taking my picture?”
Here it is worth noting that the walls are tightly covered on all sides with brushwood, this protects it from moisture and dampness.
With. Verbovets, Murovano-Kurilovetsky district, Vinnitsa, Ukraine April 22, 2005. Baba Nadya's hut.
This is very beautiful house, where people still live today with a stable and a cellar, all under straw.
Teplitsky district, Vinnitsa, Ukraine, 2006
The grandmother-philosopher lives here.
“They considered her strange in the village, but for me she was quite normal. She posed for me for a photo. She talked about the deputies: “they are greedy, they offend people. That’s why they get diabetes and cancer, and then they waste money on treatment. But I live in my own house, I don’t offend anyone and I feel good.” She covered her house with sheaves herself. What kind of ingenious equipment did she come up with so that these sheaves, with the help of a rope and a lever, flew out onto the roof themselves? She then got out and tied them. She still had a bunch of sheaves in her garden. It would be enough for two more houses,” says Vladimir.
With. Ruban Nemirovsky district, 2009. Baba Marta's hut
“My wife’s grandmother lived in this village, and that’s how I found this house. Grandma Martha was so tiny. And the barn in the yard is just as small and the entrance doors are just as small. She told me that this year, while I was visiting her, neighbors broke into her house. The cereal was taken away. And she crawled under the bed so that she wouldn’t be beaten,” recalls Vladimir.
With. Naddnestrianskoye, Murovano-Kurilovetsky district, Vinnitsa, Ukraine
One of the best mud huts: whitewashed, lined with sheaves. The hut consists of two halves. The grandmother in the photo lived in one with her grandfather. And the other half was a barn. There lived a dog.
With. Kotyuzhintsy, Kalinovsky district, Vinnitsa, Ukraine 2004
All walls are tightly covered from snow and moisture with sheaves of corn. 
With. Deresheva, Murovano-Kurilovetsky district, Vinnitsa, Ukraine 2004. 
With. Chernyatyntsi, Kalinovsky district, Vinnitsa, Ukraine 2010. 
With. Vivsyanyky, Kozyatinsky district
The house is on a hill and is well heated by the sun. 
With. Dzyunkiv, Pogrebischensky district, 2006 
With. Chesnovka, Khmelnitsky district, 1998. Baba Vaska's hut
With. Zhabelovka, Vinnytsia district, 2008.
The last mud hut under a thatched roof in Vinnytsia region 
With. Verbovets, Murovano-Kurilovetsky district
The wide extended foundation is clearly visible in order to protect the house from freezing.
You can view the entire selection on Vladimir Koziuck’s website
Nowadays many technologies: clay plasters, reed and straw roofs, frame houses- come to us from the West under the guise of very expensive and fashion trends, which only the wealthiest people can afford.
But these construction technologies have been used in our country for many centuries, and let this selection of simple rural mud huts be confirmation that such houses can last and last for a long time. Let's revive the construction of houses from local materials while they still exist, and not buy technological innovations brought far away, which, by and large, were taken from us.