Yes it is a very bucolic scene. Lovely isn't it? We were actually hoping it would be a little less peaceful and lovely. We should have begun tearing into the land this morning but our excavator went AWOL. The morning dawned clear and crisp. Not a cloud in the sky. We were elated and nervous as we anticipated everything falling into place in time for the April 16 start date of our strawbale building workshop with Frank Thomas. Ah but it didn't quite fall into place. Turns out the excavator was in Canberra on some "urgent business" and now Thursday's the day. He promises that Thursday's the day. A very lovely concreter is booked in for Monday and it should be pretty smooth sailing given it's just the footings for our 6mx3m studio cottage. No big dirty concrete slab for us. No siree, we are having an earthen floor with dirt from our land. Speaking of, we've been doing quite a bit of research on such floors, exploring the different methods and, trying to work out what might be the best approach given we will be asking the floor to dry over Winter. No doubt this will be the subject of some extensive writing around May. So as I was saying, we should have the foundation for our little strawbale complete next week. Time is getting tight, we need to leave around 14 days between the concrete being poured and our workshop start date. If this was Grand Designs, Kevin McCloud would be looking straight to camera saying "They've got less then 3 weeks to get the house site excavated and ready to start building. They've got over twenty people coming to work on April 16. By anyone's standard this is a ridiculous timeframe. I just don't know if they're going to be able to do it" Don't worry Kevin, we can do it! Tuesday, March 20, 2012
We wait...
Yes it is a very bucolic scene. Lovely isn't it? We were actually hoping it would be a little less peaceful and lovely. We should have begun tearing into the land this morning but our excavator went AWOL. The morning dawned clear and crisp. Not a cloud in the sky. We were elated and nervous as we anticipated everything falling into place in time for the April 16 start date of our strawbale building workshop with Frank Thomas. Ah but it didn't quite fall into place. Turns out the excavator was in Canberra on some "urgent business" and now Thursday's the day. He promises that Thursday's the day. A very lovely concreter is booked in for Monday and it should be pretty smooth sailing given it's just the footings for our 6mx3m studio cottage. No big dirty concrete slab for us. No siree, we are having an earthen floor with dirt from our land. Speaking of, we've been doing quite a bit of research on such floors, exploring the different methods and, trying to work out what might be the best approach given we will be asking the floor to dry over Winter. No doubt this will be the subject of some extensive writing around May. So as I was saying, we should have the foundation for our little strawbale complete next week. Time is getting tight, we need to leave around 14 days between the concrete being poured and our workshop start date. If this was Grand Designs, Kevin McCloud would be looking straight to camera saying "They've got less then 3 weeks to get the house site excavated and ready to start building. They've got over twenty people coming to work on April 16. By anyone's standard this is a ridiculous timeframe. I just don't know if they're going to be able to do it" Don't worry Kevin, we can do it! 
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I have only just joined you and am soooooo excited to see that you are building a strawbale building. So informative, thanks for all the links. I'm just off to do me some more reading on you blog.
ReplyDeleteOh thanks for stopping by. Yep the strawbs (as we like to call it) has been in the works for some time and is almost about to happen (weather permitting). We're pretty excited. Hope you enjoy our blog!
ReplyDeletesheeeet there has never ever been "urgent business" in the history of Canberra. hope they come through in time,
ReplyDeleteHello! It was lovely to meet you today Genevieve (actually, it was yesterday now wasn't it - night duty - does weird things to me), albeit a brief encounter over my brunch! Nice to put one of your faces to my stalkerness ;-). I wonder... we would love love love to see how your earth floor goes! We're tossing around ideas for when we eventually build a house (one cannot be a shed dweller forever!). Would we at all be able to have a look at it at some point? (Or is that just waaayyy to stalker like?)
ReplyDeleteTake care.
bec.
Oh so lovely to meet you, despite my sweaty and no doubt smelling like bacon demeanour. Of course we would be so happy to share all with you re. earth floor, strawbale building - whatever! We're not finding it that easy to get practical information on creating an earth floor so once we get ours sorted we are very happy to share with others. More earth floors we say! So yep you are welcome to peruse our place anytime. We met a guy who is building at BEND. His name is Peter, you probably know him? Anyway he is interested in doing an earth floor so we tentatively agreed to swap notes, ideas, findings etc.
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