Building Building

So if you buy a block of land to develop a self sufficient farm, you need something to live in. Shelter is one of the most basic needs for all humans and living in a tent or a caravan gets very old very quick. I have done this before.

Houses are necessary. It just takes a long time to build one.

There was a part of me that wanted to be as sustainable as possible. I experimented in my head with all sorts of different building materials such as straw bale, earthship, cob, mud brick. Having a family of 7 (4 mad children, 2 mad parents and one very sane nanna) it needed to be big. A two bedroom cob hobbit hut was not going to work and there would have been a bloody lot of tires in that rammed earth wall in the earth ship.

The husband vetoed my grand plans of eco building and we settled on building a timber home with vertical cladding in the style of a Norweigan farm house. It was important to me that the house looked like it belonged to the area and I wanted the home to look traditional. We decided on a simple 'A' Frame design with an open deck to take in the fab view.

I thought we were being really organised and got our plans drafted quickly. I then had an honest conversation with a builder and realised I could not afford that house so I then had to shrink it. That added several months to the process. It then took us several attempts to lodge the plan at council. (My husband banned me from council for a while because he was afraid at what I might do). On the third attempt we handed the pile of papers that had been prepared by a professional to a professional standard, to the council person. We smiled as we were given a further pile of now changed forms which the professional had filled out, but they did not have the same picture on them.  We insisted that said council person must keep the papers and we would pay the fee regardless. Explained that we could email newly filled out changed forms the next day, which we did promptly. Several weeks later we received a letter asking if we still wanted to pursue our application because we had not provided  filled out changed forms, with new pictures, because they were sitting in someones email inbox who had gone on holidays. 

Despite the delays we are well and truly building now with the frame done just waiting for some roofing iron this week. 

Summer in Tasmania is supposed to be warm and dry. Windy and showery conditions have been all I hear on the news lately. I must confess to feeling slightly deranged when I hear this forecast. We made the decision to put our subfloor insulation in prior to the roof going on. It could be an experience that we get to live through again. Although we won't know till the roof is done an we let it dry out. 

Stay tuned.