Karim had a few days
off work for his birthday, and we went to a three course dinner and debate on “Eating
Wild Mushrooms… Fun or Foolhardy?”, which was a fantastic night out. After
being disengaged from the house build to date, he also got a real thrill out of
spending a day helping Jack erect some of the rafters.
Progress slowed down somewhat
this month, partly due to several rainy days, and Jolly being away for a couple
of weeks. Even still, the roof sheets have
been installed over the dining room, and the rest of the roof framing should be
completed within the next week or two, so we’ll have a roof over the whole
house by the end of May.
I’ve been drowning in
paperwork and decision making duties of late. The build has been happening so
quickly that it’s been difficult to keep up with it, so the rainy days and mental
support from our furry feline friends have actually been very welcomed.
A huge task recently
has been the electrical plan, because wiring needs to be installed in the
ceiling soon. I’m not a technically minded person at the best of times, so
becoming coherent in sparky lingo and understanding the various lighting, home
theatre, home networking and switching components, let alone how they can be
installed in a straw bale house, has given me quite a pain in the brain. Though
if you look at our current cabling situation, you can see why I’m taking it so
seriously… this kind of image is totally banned from our new home and I’ll go
to whatever lengths necessary to prevent it!
Having an Architect
background, and great taste, Bree has been a fantastic shoulder to lean on during
the decision making process. She suggested that we create a “display board”
with samples of the materials we plan to use on the walls, floors, ceilings and
trims. This has been invaluable, and will really help us choose our timber claddings,
colour of window frames etc. We want to use pure earth render internally, and
desire light coloured walls, but our clay is quite red. So I’ve been
investigating methods to achieve light coloured earth render, stumbled across
white Kaolin clay, and was flabbergasted to find that a Kaolin clay mine operated
only about 10km south of us, and closed down in 1945. We’ve since found where
it is, and can drive straight in with a trailer – brilliant! Here’s a test
board of render using the Kaolin clay, with some of the local timbers and
window frame colour that we’re considering.
We even went on a
mission to the other side of Hobart to try and find lighter coloured sand
(because the brown sand darkens the render when mixed with the white clay), and
stumbled across sand heaven… it was just like being in Egypt all over again,
exactly one year later!
Before returning to
that dreaded paperwork, I thought I’d share just a couple of photos of the
garden. It really is hard to believe that the fence only went up and the first
seedlings were planted a mere 21 months ago. You really do have to love the
permaculture principle of “Accelerating Succession and Evolution”.
