Peter and Natasha

1. thanks for the post
(Comments)

...buary. Maybe March, gulp. We were hoping to get slab, frame and roof on by April/May at the lastest to avoid rendering in the wet but it's all looking very tight, even with using a professional builde...

2. Sustainable House Day
(Comments)

Wonderful to see the new photos of the sustainable house day and also the latest rendering blitz. One day you'll be done. Stick with it guys.

3. SHD Impetus
(Comments)

It is great to read that you have such an exciting goal and are back into the last external rendering chores to make the house as good as you can before your 'open' day. Lets hope you can get a good

4. Mushrooms and rendering
(Comments)

Glad your office has had some attention rendered - it is always hard when you have a place that has been the repository for everything that's not in daily use and it has to be cleared out. Where did y

5. When you're hot, you're HOT!
(Blog/Living and Finishing)

...d a lovely drop in visitor today - Jan who I immediately remembered coming over to help one day when we were rendering. Jan was keen to get up the ladder that day, and I distinctly remember seeing her...

6. Moving along
(Blog/Living and Finishing)

...tting our trusty (but in need of some serious maintenance) concrete mixer onto the ute and heading off for a rendering blitz. I hadn't seen the house in 3 years, and it was fantastic to see how...

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

...nbsp; It's been a pretty hard road for them, and we are going up to their place to help them in on a Rendering Blitz on the weekend of 18th & 19th June. We want to get stuck in to the thir...

8. Ticking things off
(Blog/Living and Finishing)

...ks! We have been ticking things off our list, feeling very happy indeed. We have now finished all the rendering on the outside of the house, which is very very satisfying, and all the rendering...

9. One room to go
(Blog/Living and Finishing)

We've been rendering again. It may seem like a never-ending task to some but we just do a day here and a day there. Most of our days are now taken up with work or looking after Dylan so we build when

10. Website and progress
(Blog/Living and Finishing)

...ed! It has well and truly proved its worth. So on to our progress. We've been at work over the weekend rendering bedroom 3 with Mel. Some of it was only at first coat and some cob was needed in ...

11. Front and south
(Blog/Living and Finishing)

...rselves with a proper front door arrangement.So here's the relationship between the deck and the render: the rendering is hard to do at that height until the deck joists are on, plus the render needs ...

12. Pantry order at last
(Blog/Living and Finishing)

... I've lived in but not very Zen. So yesterday Steven and Caroline (and Imogen) came visiting hoping for some rendering action. But I needed a break from rendering so Steven and I embarked on getting t...

13. Heaters and Cupboards
(Blog/Living and Finishing)

...ide of the house to get the rooms ready for the shelving and cupboards.   This has involved rendering a little bit in the pantry and some larger expanses (walls) in the WIR and store...

14. New opportunities
(Blog/Living and Finishing)

We were very fortunate to have some rendering assistance this weekend, as well as some great weather, and we are very pleased to have the north external wall now fully rendered. It looks fantastic. We

15. Chipping away
(Blog/Living and Finishing)

...ptation to do odds and ends inside but we still need to attend to weather tight issues outside. So I've been rendering the east wall, continuing what was mostly finished a couple of months ago. I also...

16. Render window trampoline mushroom
(Blog/Living and Finishing)

Internal rendering, a new window, flying trampolines and houses popping up like mushrooms. All this since the last blog.  First of all, we decided to have a look at the forsaken room, otherwise k

17. Rendering Bliss
(Blog/Living and Finishing)

We have been hanging out to get stuck into some more rendering on the outside walls. Uncharacteristically, we have been receiving lots of rain of late, and the second coat of render on the wall that

18. Making way
(Blog/Living and Finishing)

... water to run down (we had leaking windows, which is ot a good thing).   We also have a 3rd coat rendering weekend on 29th and 30th May, and we are looking forward to getting the trickier ...

19. A big list and a special visit
(Blog/Living and Finishing)

...mused. However we have managed to knock over a few very satisfying tasks. We continued along our path of rendering the west end of the house, moving round to the north face of the house. This is w...

20. Keeping perspective
(Blog/Lock up and inspection)

...arly. I like this new pace and life style! I'm also starting to re-vamp the website and plan some more rendering days. We've had a few people ask when we are having the next rendering weekends, ...

21. Taking a breath
(Blog/Lock up and inspection)

...king forward to sharing our home with lots more people in the future. Last weekend we finished off the rendering of the second bedroom, which is great, and will mean we can have visitors over wi...

22. On the path to completion
(Blog/Lock up and inspection)

...ck of my mind - to the front. Would we become slackers?We had been planning to get stuck into some 3rd cooat rendering in our second bedroom today, and we were quite excited about getting a bedroom fi...

23. Train keeps a-rolling
(Blog/Lock up and inspection)

...week we've had massive support from Brenda in many areas and yesterday Aygun and John did a brilliant job of rendering and finishing off the base of the sub-floor. All the little details seem to take ...

24. Patience is a virtue
(Blog/Lock up and inspection)

...o go on the ceiling, and some more sealing along the inside celestory windows. And then there is the cob and rendering on the outside. Patience, patience! At least we have a few days of cool wea...

25. Denial is a long river
(Blog/Lock up and inspection)

...We also have some sections of the external walls to be rendered with a second coat. If anyone fancies some rendering this weekend, your help would be most welcomed, as we are aiming for our inspecti...

26. It's a long way to the top if you wanna straw bale
(Blog/Lock up and inspection)

...gan, and Kirsten, Ivan & Odyan dropped in to say hello, and Tathra and Gilda came to get stuck into some rendering. It was fantastic! Then today we had Josie & Anthony, and Geoff &amp...

27. Deck prep and entertaining
(Blog/Lock up and inspection)

...t tint it will be fully operational and will look really good.  But my main focus lately has been rendering the area where the deck will go, as getting the deck done is a requirement of the...

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

...nstallation while I got his mum to brush the loose sand from our final coated walls. Aygun got into final rendering a section of wall in the north entrance hall. With his usual excellent attention ...

29. Kitchen cabinets
(Blog/Walls and Render)

... finally use it is brilliant and relieving. Bring on the decking now! Mind you, before I do that I have some rendering to do. My birthday was on Saturday and I decided it was fun day - so I cut up ano...

30. Dirty work
(Blog/Walls and Render)

Back to rendering again. I've been on other jobs lately, overseeing our amazing visitors rendering for a while but I got back into it myself in the last two days and remembered how much I enjoy it. It

31. Nesting
(Blog/Walls and Render)

...it would take to get it all done.  Here is the list of the main things we need to get complete: * Rendering inside walls 3rd coat (hallway next to laundry to go) * Rendering outside wall...

32. Many tasks
(Blog/Walls and Render)

...out this way a couple of years ago. As a result of the sodden ground and ongoing rain I didn't get into much rendering today. It was just me on site except for a wonderful lunch visit from Natasha.I m...

33. Getting closer
(Blog/Walls and Render)

.... On the first 3 days of this week I had the company of Natasha's dad Terry who helped with a good amount of rendering and also did some work on the exterior subfloor area.  Then on Thursday and ...

34. Revealing Walls
(Blog/Walls and Render)

We were blessed again with mild weather for rendering. Brad and Mark arrived to a lovely cool morning at the house on Sunday morning, and before long we were getting stuc

35. Ongoing heat
(Blog/Walls and Render)

...ew days yet. Apart from sapping my energy levels and making outside work a very hot and sweaty business, any rendering I try to do is a race against the render drying before I get a chance to trowel i...

36. Good mud
(Blog/Walls and Render)

... get our portaloo taken away and start using our own loos!So now that I've been able to really get into some rendering, as opposed to before when I was co-ordinating other people and doing pre-render ...

37. Another big dose of generosity
(Blog/Walls and Render)

... much we still have to do... We had Brad and Mark arrive Saturday morning to set up for our second coat rendering extravoganza, and this time we were much better prepared for who was coming and t...

38. A proper day off
(Blog/Walls and Render)

...s of thunder and I read a book. It felt like a tropical holiday. So I'm a lot more relaxed now. As with last rendering weekend, there will more to do than just the rendering. I'm still working on the ...

39. Unfinished business
(Blog/Walls and Render)

...lounge and the master bedroom on both sides. Not only are these two great company but they are a dab hand at rendering. So things are really coming along on the inside, soon I'll need to concentrate m...

40. Catch up
(Blog/Walls and Render)

...essary to give us one side of walls which need wire and stuffing on the other side. Then of course they need rendering. We are hoping to get to as much of this rendering as possible before the second ...

41. Keeping the focus
(Blog/Walls and Render)

...day. We also had our fabulous Kiwi friend Logan come over on Sunday, and the three blokes got into some hand rendering - lots of fun. At the same time as appreciating all of this, and taking time to ...

42. Rendering with the stars
(Blog/Walls and Render)

...rts - sunny and windless. We had 13 old and new friends come along to help as well as Brad and Mark the pump rendering experts and of course, Natasha and myself. There was still a lot to be finished b...

43. Countdown
(Blog/Walls and Render)

... day for cleaning up, finishing walls and getting our plastic down on the floor (to save clean up time after rendering). We've both been surprised at how many walls we have managed to finish, es...

44. All loved up
(Blog/Walls and Render)

... So tonight's mission is to assess where we are at, and where we think we will realistically get to before rendering on Saturday 10th and then tomorrow we will talk to Brad our pump renderer about t...

45. When too many layers are not enough
(Blog/Walls and Render)

...and have been gaining some ground on our long list on the "mission to get everything ready for our pump rendering" on October 10th. It's pretty time consuming, but also quite exciting, as we...

46. Many hands make fun work
(Blog/Walls and Render)

...end we will hopefully get the bulk of the walls done, and then the next weekend, get into the long awaited rendering! We have been doing some rough soil testing to see if our soil is suitable...

47. Down to the wire
(Blog/Walls and Render)

...ith the internal walls now that everything that needs to be in there is installed. We're building up towards rendering. Because of unavailability of our spray render guy we may have to do our fi...

48. Tank you
(Blog/Rafters and Roofing)

... internal walls, with any extra sets of hands we can muster. If it all goes well we will be able to get into rendering this month.    ...

49. Roof 1, Toilet 0
(Blog/Rafters and Roofing)

... Once we have begun this process we'll be able to estimate how long it will take and do a decent estimate at rendering dates. One area that has stalled a bit lately has been the issue of windows. They...

50. Suppliers & Contractors we recommend
(Straw Bale House/Straw Bale House)

... Bacchus Marsh Building Supplies - 03 5367 6101  19 Station St BM Straw Bale Tools & Pump Rendering: (strapping, tensioning tool, clips) Brad Hodge - email bradhodge@dodo.com.au ...