Peter and Natasha

1. getting plastered
(Comments)

...d house!! The bale on the floor in front of the plaster adds to the incongruous charm too. Keep the blog posts coming, the more detail the better, and the photos are appreciated too - can't get enough...

2. extreme veranda posts
(Comments)

great progress guys! I have been reading about Xavier Rudd's strawbale house recently - so beautiful and womderfully liveable. Yours will be the same, great for one's wellbeing - and that of any visit

3. Great Strides
(Comments)

...shed the framing. Well done. As you say, it will be wonderful to get the roof on so I hope the verandah posts go up according to plan. We are enjoying having more frequent updates again now that you...

4. thanks Ray
(Comments)

Hi Ray. We are looking for another special use for the two beautiful posts you found for us... any ideas? It certainly is an up and down journey, big dipper more like it! Thanks again for all your he

5. termites
(Comments)

Hi Mum, thanks for your comments. They are internal posts, so they will not have access to the ground which is whaat they would need to survive. They will continue to munch for a bit then die off. We'

6. Posts
(Comments)

I'm just wondering what sort of timber your new posts are and whether they will need to be treated? I have memories of the water tank at Galatea which was on a stand held up by felled pine tree logs

7. Post Haste
(Comments)

Batman & Robin, or maybe Gert & Daisy? Have you had a deep and meaningful conversation with the posts to see what they'd like?

8. A family affair
(Comments)

Hi Trini, so excited that you are coming, it will be a family affair! Yes, the recycled posts will be in the living area, one next to the kitchen bench, and one near the other side of the wall near ou

9. great progress
(Comments)

Wow, you guys are going great guns. Love the photos nearly as much as the blogging itself. The timber posts are beautiful, a lovely addition, are they in the living room/dining room? You're enthusias

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

... it work? Well we use the toilet in the same way (ie sit on it and do our thing!) and the stuff in it composts over time. This is from the Ecoflo website: "The waste is collected in a small...

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

...mps: * Timber - Treated Cypress Pine (termites don't like it) * No of stumps - 104 plus 13 verandah posts * Stump holes - 400mm diameter * Depth of stump holes - 1000mm * Depth of concrete ...

12. Wind. Cheese. Time.
(Blog/Rafters and Roofing)

... getting short on time now. Once again, angles complicate things but with the boxing there are also many posts to incorporate. It's kinda fun though. Although it will be a bit harder to carry timber a...

13. Reconstruct
(Blog/Rafters and Roofing)

...roductive day too. Extra hands meant an opportunity to pull off those big veranda beams and take out the posts. To do this by myself would have taken four times as long and been very awkward. In one d...

14. Not hot
(Blog/Rafters and Roofing)

A very interrupted day of building. I had to choose between dismantling posts and beams and putting up rafters. In a wind that brought snow to the state and redness to my nose I chose the rafters.Gett

15. Fresh Air
(Blog/Rafters and Roofing)

... job'. We are a third through the rafters after today, which is encouraging, and with the south verandah posts and beams complete, it feels like we are progressing again.  A day off tomorrow for ...

16. Welcome advice and ideas
(Blog/Rafters and Roofing)

...a for the south side, which is more of an front entrance than a sitting area, and completely replace the posts on the north side. This means we still have some new timber required, but at least one po...

17. Rain stops play
(Blog/Rafters and Roofing)

...treet on Sunday when he came over to say hi and he had a lot of great ideas for not having to pull those posts out, plus some good knowledge of local building recyclers that we could use for things su...

18. Veranda scenario
(Blog/Posts, beams, framing)

... minimum of 2.1 metres. I had let that fact slip from my mind as I was happily (or haplessly) putting in posts, filling in the remaining holes, celebrating getting them finally out of my hair and putt...

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

Another beautiful day for building and the veranda posts are looking beautiful too! All posts are in, thanks to a great day's work from myself and Ivan. It's been a funny feeling putting posts in

20. One man afternoon
(Blog/Posts, beams, framing)

... to nothing. That would explain it. That's the end of of that task for now. Getting 4 metre-long cypress posts into the ground single handedly is possible, but difficult. Once the post is in the hole,...

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

Before we can 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

22. Framing finished
(Blog/Posts, beams, framing)

...red and when that arrives we'll be back into cleaning out holes, compacting the holes back in around the posts, fitting bearers and also beams. It's all a bit familiar. At least we'll feel like season...

23. Muddy puddles
(Blog/Posts, beams, framing)

... too far from completion.  That's good, I'm dreaming of having a roof on. But before that - veranda posts, bearers and beams, then rafters and purlins. How exciting! ...

24. 45 degrees
(Blog/Posts, beams, framing)

...and friends Jeremy and Juni went out on Friday to discover that our central ridge beams, and most of the posts holding them up, had collapsed so that they were sitting at 45˚.  When Natasha ...

25. Swings and Roundabouts
(Blog/Posts, beams, framing)

...t weekend is Easter and we will be able to spend 3 days building. The next steps are putting the veranda posts in and finishing off the beams, then we can start the rafters and see the roof emerging, ...

26. Peter 2, Ring Beams and Posts United 0
(Blog/Posts, beams, framing)

...mfortable at the time, was minimal. Ladder 1, Peter 0. Lesson learnt. The upshot of the day was that all posts were up by the end of the day as well as having all ring beams in need of replacement get...

27. Equinox
(Blog/Posts, beams, framing)

...o fit the beams that will soon slot in there. This is not a simple procedure as it was with the standard posts. To get the checkouts right, we had to go from a line running from the centre of the top ...

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

...g beam that we had to pull down due to our altered ridge beam heights.  That involved taking down 2 posts and putting up replacements at the new heights and bracing them to the floor. It was easi...

29. Clerestory, cloistery or celestory
(Blog/Posts, beams, framing)

...me! Next I secured a section of ring beam that was only temporarily fixed on and pulled down a couple of posts that needed to be replaced. As I was putting on a replacement post, a whole flock of crim...

30. Action aplenty
(Blog/Posts, beams, framing)

... I just wanted to get into action! When we did get out to the land today (with extra timber to re-do the posts), it continued to rain. It was amazing. The view of the weather from our house is quite s...

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

...could be doing on hold until that solution is established. One issue has been that our beautiful feature posts which we started to cut to size - before I saw that our numbers didn't work - now are too...

32. Owner Building
(Blog/Posts, beams, framing)

...e's something I'm not getting then the figures are wrong. This would appear to mean that all the central posts we've put up will have to come down. Maybe all of the ring beams on the northern side wil...

33. Doesn't add up
(Blog/Stumps and Bearers)

...ulous hands ready to go, but there's some stuff that's just not adding up. The height of our two biggest posts doesn't seem right when we take into consideration the beams and rafters that need to sit...

34. Jet packs?
(Blog/Stumps and Bearers)

I've put a stain on our two posts, now tentatively named Arthur and Martha, not sure which is which though. The next thing is to trim the ends to the right size. I used linseed oil to treat the

35. Waking being
(Blog/Stumps and Bearers)

...g, 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 house from down the road, it is like a waking being. S...

36. Much help, time flies
(Blog/Stumps and Bearers)

...o use a nailgun, and Ari, a woman nearly finished building her own strawbale house.  We did so many posts in the last couple of days that we ran out of timber.  I need to order more now and ...

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

...ff to them if the wind hadn't already blown it away.   It was nice to see the new / old posts in the daylight on the house, not fitted yet as I'm there by myself but with a little bit...

38. First post the past
(Blog/Stumps and Bearers)

...relaxed timing but after all it is a Sunday. We received a bunch of timber yesterday to start assembling posts and beams so we set about putting up the first one.  It's amazing how shaky they fee...

39. The only way is up
(Blog/Stumps and Bearers)

...dy is reminding me that this was a very productive day. Our friend Ray has found us some lovely recycled posts that will be a feature in our main open living area. Jarrah posts, fabbo (thanks Ray!). ...

40. Squiggling
(Blog/Stumps and Bearers)

...enough eventually. Tomorrow will be a half day on the site as I will head out to look for two 3.7m posts at a recycled timber yard. It's exciting, who knows what treasures are out there.  I...