Here's a few photos of Jamie giving me a tutorial on how to cut and re-tie a bale. Some of the bales we just had to notch to fit within interior framing, and those bales we would just cut out a piece with the chainsaw. But other bales we needed to cut in half or 2/3s, and those we would need to measure, re-tie with baling twine and a baling needle (sewing for real men?!) and then cut - fascinating the first couple of times, frustrating by the twentieth time!!!!!!!

Okay, so we're not really moving forward with these unpublished posts, but this is what you get! Here's a few photos of a sunny day when Ryland was helping us with a bit of housework. First off, some shots of me learning the finer details of putting bales into a wall - seems like an easy enough concept, but with all of the cutting and shaping and stuffing in between framing, it can be a pain in the buttocks! My few hours of work make me super glad to have hired an awesome team to do most of the baling - allowing us to get our hands dirty when we want and for as long as it's still fun!!!! Of course, I'm the crazy asthmatic, allergic-to-hay/straw woman who married a man who had his heart set on building a straw bale house, hence the crazy gas mask:-) Luckily once it's all plastered it won't bother me, but during the building, I've been staying out of the house as much as possible!

The second set of photos are of Rye and Jamie stapling moisture barrier around the perimeter of the house - it's between the wood base plate (which the bales are sitting on) and the metal flashing. I made the mistake at one point of referring to it as vapour barrier, which Jamie had a good chuckle over, so I'm quickly learning my technical terms to this whole house-building thang!!!!!

Ooooh, I uploaded these photos AGES ago, and meant to come back and write some text to them, but then obviously forgot about my blog completely in the month since, getting caught up in the chaos of our lives............and now that I've been nagged by enough people to forgo an hour or so of precious sleep (some guilt right back at you!!!!), I've found a few unpublished posts that I figure I'll just publish now, thus biding me some more time to come up with more recent posts!!!!!

So, here's some finishing photos of the straw-baling - final stuffing in areas where there's not enough straw, a load of last minute straw that Jamie and Ryland picked up in the van, and the niche that Jamie created in our kitchen......we figured that one of the fun parts of having a straw bale house was the ability to create niches, so we'd better put a couple in, but then we had a hard time agreeing where they should be! However, a little kitchen alter seems like an ideal thing to put in this little niche! We're very excited to have picked up a super cheap tub on Kijiji, and can't wait to fix it up a little and be able to soak in long hot baths this winter.....and then the final photo is a shot into our study off the living room!!!

We've had this photo on our Barth fridge for the past couple of years, and thought that it was time to update it! Always fun to see how we've all changed over a couple of years!