Peter and Natasha

1. Kitchen delight
(Comments)

...seem very close now. I checked back on your photos from this time last year - you had rain then too with stump holes full of mud and comments about your ute being stuck in the mud. What a change since...

2. vegie sausage stumps
(Comments)

Love the squirty glue-sauce! And it's amazing how our brains can work through things in sleep and dreams, I tried to take Tim's pulse in my sleep the other night...he wasn't impressed but in the mor

3. Friendly spider
(Comments)

Maybe the spider was trying to thank you Peter, for providing shade via your mode of building, ie stumps and not slab. Perhaps it is just taking refuge in the portaloo until the house floor goes on fo

4. It's all relative
(Blog/Living and Finishing)

...any things, and we would not have been able to get through the first hurdle of our build (getting the stumps in) if it wasn't for the work Peter did on Ari's house. The confidence that Peter gain...

5. Our Fabulous Composting Toilets
(Straw Bale House/Straw Bale House)

...ow. They are based in Qld, and have toilets that can be used on a concrete slab kind of house, or one on stumps lilke ours. The model we are using is the Classic750. It needs 750mm clearance underneat...

6. No Experience Necessary
(Straw Bale House/Straw Bale House)

...e obvious, but it really is important.  Our test came very early in the build, in trying to get our stumps in. In 6 weeks Peter lost 10kg and Natasha lost 5kg, digging, cleaning out and re-diggin...

7. All weather access
(Blog/Living and Finishing)

...h a front end loader David moved any impeding mounds of rocky earth that had been there since we put the stumps in nearly two years ago. With a cleaner slate to work with he then cleared the weeds and...

8. An excellent Sunday
(Blog/Walls and Render)

... leave him to do that task without a worry. Meanwhile, Logan and I took to digging what must be the last stump holes we'll have to do on this house. One was a replacement for a veranda post which was ...

9. Specifications of the house
(Straw Bale House/Straw Bale House)

We've had a few questions about the actual building of the house, so here's a start: Stumps: * Timber - Treated Cypress Pine (termites don't like it) * No of stumps - 104 plus 13 verand

10. Boxing match
(Blog/Rafters and Roofing)

We received a couple of deliveries today which allow me to get on with the all important job of boxing and will also set us up for our baling weekend. All of the strapping, clips and tensioning tools

11. Inspection time
(Blog/Rafters and Roofing)

...his space. We had our framing inspection today. The last inspection we had was for a moonscape called stump holes, some time last year. So this inspection was to check everything we've done since t...

12. Wind and Rain
(Blog/Rafters and Roofing)

... wind. The wind at 128 Possumtail Run really is quite amazing. It's stopped us doing lots of work, from stumps and foundations (string lines didn't stand a chance) to the roof. In fact, it's stopped ...

13. An old friend
(Blog/Rafters and Roofing)

I had a visit from an old friend today, or maybe son/daughter of old friend because he/she was not so big. Or too small for that matter.  As mentioned in a previous blog, I came across

14. Last good hole filled in
(Blog/Posts, beams, framing)

...s been a funny feeling putting posts in the ground, kind of like a flash back to when we were putting in stumps but without the angst of not knowing what was in the ground.    The intention ...

15. Veranda posts
(Blog/Posts, beams, framing)

...put rafters on we need to put our veranda posts in.  Doing this is like an extreme version of doing stumps.  Instead of 1.5 metre pieces of cypress pine we're dealing with 4.8 metre lengths....

16. By-pass
(Blog/Posts, beams, framing)

... we are relatively slow and have made mistakes that needed to be fixed, which takes time, b) rock in our stump holes put us back by about 2 1/2 months and c) all the angles of the house has made thing...

17. Beaming
(Blog/Posts, beams, framing)

...dragging them across the block behind the ute again. So then it was time for a timewarp, back to digging stump holes. OK, they were actually veranda post holes. Same job. But easier because we've alre...

18. T is for Termites
(Blog/Posts, beams, framing)

...ies! Thursday. I looked at what I can do to keep things moving, and as I mentioned in the last blog it's stump bracing. Ivan arrived again yesterday and as it was raining in the morning, a minor mirac...

19. Inexperiencedbuilderitis?
(Blog/Posts, beams, framing)

...leted house and it will be a totally unique home to live in. Tomorrow I'm looking at finally bracing any stumps over a certain height, this is a fairly simple affair consisting of measuring the sizes ...

20. Waking being
(Blog/Stumps and Bearers)

...been times when it seemed like nothing was happening, at least nothing was visually different.  The stumps were a good example of this.  But when posts started to go up, we could see our hou...

21. The house is dictating to me
(Blog/Stumps and Bearers)

...ions of the posts and making sure they sit on top of a joist which sits on top of a bearer which is on a stump.  Otherwise, house not so strong! Not everything was where I hoped but it's all fair...

22. Squiggling
(Blog/Stumps and Bearers)

...glue on a floor joist.  That's not so bad.  When I put my carrot into the mashed potato like a stump in the dirt and then ram it in with my fork, maybe first lay down a pad of gravy, and the...

23. Hard to comprehend
(Blog/Stumps and Bearers)

...ed off their pile by the wind and one or two of them smashed into our decking bearer knocking it off the stump and loosening one of the stumps.  Several sheets were broken into pieces.  Thes...

24. Rain & Mud - nice...
(Blog/Stumps and Bearers)

...nd this is where it all gets a little tricky.  Fixing multiple bearers on one little 100mm x 100mm stump is quite a challenge.  We have things going off on all kinds of different angles w...

25. Measuring Stump Heights
(Blog/Stumps and Bearers)

...king on a house!  Progress that feels and looks like progress.  I've been measuring the stump heights with a water level made of 2 short lengths of clear hose attached with connector...

26. Last 6 stumps in
(Blog/Stumps and Bearers)

We have placed the last 6 stumps in the ground today.  After a big Saturday with help from Matt Noyes - man of many talents - and Peter Hosking we nailed 17 in a day.  That set us up for

27. Dingo Maestro Stu
(Blog/Stumps and Bearers)

...rs, compacting the soil back into our concrete padded holes. Then we marked out the position of the stumps (we are getting very good at this by now, third time lucky) ready for stump hole drilli...

28. Clean Fill - yeah right
(Blog/Stumps and Bearers)

...sp; So we’ve had 32 cubic metres of clean fill delivered to go into our trenchy holes around our stumps.  It’s come with bonus material!  One load with lots of chocolate wrapp...

29. Trail blazers or crazy, hmm, not sure!
(Blog/Stumps and Bearers)

... trail blazers! The rock in our earth really is something. We have been working all weekend to get more stumps in - and we are now up to the single holes that have been excavated. They are pretty b...

30. Concreting underway
(Blog/Stumps and Bearers)

...ne was a huge relief and milestone. Today we (me, Natasha and her Dad Terry) have been putting in stumps!  We've gone for the easy ones first, those beautiful 1m deep lovely round holes....

31. Rain has arrived
(Blog/Stumps and Bearers)

...his week for Peter - we must have been in these trenches up to 10 times cleaning them, marking them for stumps and trying not to get caught up in string lines....he is so amazing. I have so much ad...

32. The Bath - a great invention
(Blog/Stumps and Bearers)

... are lovely for tired sore bodies like ours! We've spent this weekend working on cleaning out trenches (stump holes) and enjoying the sunshine. It's been a less frenetic pace, and we have a little ...

33. Rocks and stump holes
(Blog/Stumps and Bearers)

It has been such a testing few weeks since we started these stump holes. Weeks of serious, unexpected hard yakka to get our stump holes complete. Amazing basalt rock in our earth, we have even found

34. Straw Bale House
(Straw Bale House/Straw Bale Homepage)

... say that without this experience, we would not have been able to get past the first big hurdle (getting stumps in - turned into a mega task!). We were both able to go to Ari's wall building wo...