Us

Today was mighty cold for us wimpy west-coasters. Only -22 or so, but felt more like -35 with the windchill. Tonight it is supposed to get down to -40, ugh! A perfect day to have a family brunch and huddle inside over hot tea and long conversations. Well, and then Jamie and I decided to test our supposed love of the four seasons by going out for a cross-country ski for half an hour or so - down to the lake and back. BRRRRRRRRR. It's been a long time since my eyelashes have frozen shut. BUT besides my face, the rest of my body felt nice and warm, and it was definitely invigorating to get a bit of fresh air. However, I do have to admit, my most favourite part was getting back inside and taking a long hot soak in the tub:-) I still do love winter, I just prefer it not to be quite as cold!!!!!!!

A post for Mariah!

And of course all of those other interested folks who might want more house detail, but since Mariah is the loudest and most passionate complainer about my lack of posts :-) this one is for her!

So, you were wondering about our big Ta-da moment......and the thing is, it was hard for us to blog about as the moment never really seemed to happen. However, as I glanced back over our blog I realized just how little I'd really documented about the process on here, so I've dedicated a couple of hours to uploading a slim selection of the bazillion photos we did take and written a bit about our experiences - grab a tea, settle in, and here you go, a mass catching up on house details!!!!

To start with, you were asking about our last night in the Barth, and I have to say, it was nothing really that spectacular. We'd been getting increasingly cold and uncomfortable living in there and ended up spending more and more nights with Meg (Jamie's sister) and her family as they were housesitting in a house in Almonte with a basement suite. We had to bring our water inside so that it wouldn't freeze, we slept cuddled up to hot water bottles and spent days enjoying the heat of the wood stove in the yurt. Jamie's mom was traveling to Florida in November so we knew we had her house to stay in soon, but we just had to tough it out for a few more nights.

I actually have no memory of our last night in the Barth, since we did not realize it was our last night. We fully intended to spend a few more nights there, but on Oct. 30th we left a friends' Halloween party to the discovery that it had snowed heavily all evening long, and it was pretty easy for us to succumb to the kids pleas of 'please, please, please can we call Nana Heather and stay there tonight?!' So, we packed it in and moved in with her, not sorry to miss any more frigid nights in our RV one bit!

It also did not feel totally memorable, as we knew that we'd be moving right back in next spring! EVERYTHING was delayed more than we had anticipated, and although the house was comfortable enough for us to be able to move into for the winter, it is not done yet so we'll need to spend another month (or so, now that I'm more realistic! Let's just say two months!!!!) living in the RV come the warmer weather of spring. During that time we'll do the final coat of plaster on the inside of the exterior walls, plaster up the interior walls and then once that's all done, acid etch the concrete floor a dark brown and seal it. And as a result we have to move EVERYTHING out, store it in our white storage tent, and move everything back in once again. I'm rather depressed and exhausted when thinking of that, so I try not to focus too much on it and realize that we'll power through it at the time, and just get it done. And then won't it feel AWESOME to be moving in for good?????!!!!!

As for our big moment of moving in to the house, that too was VERY anti-climatic. In fact, the week or two after moving in were probably the lowest points of the whole process so far for us. Full of 'did we screw up'?, 'what were we thinking'?, 'why did YOU think this was a good idea'?, 'why is the air quality so bad in this so-called green house'? and 'will we ever feel warm again'? type questions. We no longer had a place of our own to stay in, so felt the strong need to get into the house, but we didn't have running hot water, there wasn't enough insulation to keep the heat in, most of the doors weren't in yet and much of the glass wasn't in the doors that were in, there was no air movement or ventilation so we felt like we couldn't breathe, etc. AND Jamie was busy at work, and it was COLD and well, very stressful. BUT the plumber pulled through, we got an HRV installed and now have air movement, we spent HOURS late into the night insulating inside and out, the doors arrived, we cleaned, unpacked, set up and started to make this a home through hard work - and a conscious choice to solve rather than dwell, and to quit accusing and blaming as that's NEVER helpful. And you know, at the end of Dec. we looked around and realized WOW - it really feels like a home, we've managed to pull it off. That and Christmas for the kids. No wonder we were EXHAUSTED over the holidays and wanted to go to bed early every night, but we're through the worst of it and are now falling more and more in love with our home!

So there you go - no big 'TA-DA' in the moment, but hopefully you can see why not. ALSO, we continued to feel rather cut-off from everyone as we did not get our phone hooked up until Dec. 27th, and as for internet, we tried a few different options but did not get working internet here at home until a couple of weeks ago. I cannot begin to describe how awesome it is to have such fast internet, and instant access to friends far and wide, it has done wonders to lift my spirits! And now that I've caught up a little on the house details, I'll work on finishing up the monthly family photos from last year, and THEN onwards to more regular posting! xo

Bales, glorious bales

Here's a few photos of our straw-baling adventures. FIrst off, a shot of some of the interior framing, after wiring but before baling. Then, an outside shot of the house, while Farmer James from up the road was dropping off a load of straw bales. I LOVE the idea that when we needed more materials, we could call him up, he'd hop into his tractor and drive it up to our house to drop them off - I'm sure the neighbours trying to drive somewhere down Wolf Grove Road didn't love it so much, but that's what you get for living in farm country I suppose!


The next couple of shots are of some of the techniques used - I often tripped over balls of baling twine laying around, as it was used constantly during the cutting and shaping of bales to fit around the various bits of framing (part of using a lot of passive solar design also means a lot of window framing!) And then Jamie is using one of many bale-bashers, used to ensure the bales are nice and tight, squeezed in together in order to create more mass. A popular part of the baling process for many:-)

Here, Ryland is using a moisture probe to check on the dryness of the bales. It was really important to make sure they stayed less than 19 percent moisture content, and usually we found that our bales were 8-10 percent. The team constantly checked them out during the baling process, and then again before we plastered them in. Once they are sealed, it is very unlikely they'll get moist, but we do plan on permanently installing a couple of these probes in order to keep an eye on them - and really just for curiosity!!! A couple of times now Jamie's had to cut into the walls to create vents for things like our stove, HRV system (heat recovery ventilation system - something we were going to try to do without but after moving in quickly realized that we could not!) and drier, so he's seen that our straw continues to remain nice and dry!

Tying it all together with details.....

Here's a few photos of more technical details on the outside of the house. Over all of the straw bales, a black plastic mesh (Tenax) was sewn onto it with baling twine and baling needles (kind of like a regular sewing circle, with one person sitting on one side and the other perched on scaffolding on the other side, passing the needle back and forth) This served a couple of purposes - it held the walls together tightly, and also served as a surface for the clay to bond onto. You'll also see building paper (also known as Typar) on all of the wood, which served to separate the plaster from the wood and to help keep moisture out. Finally you can see the diamond mesh placed in areas where it was determined it was needed to minimize cracking. This tended to include areas that went from straw to wood as well as corners of windows and doors. I was amazed to learn how much detail went into creating a straw-bale home, and to see how different materials effect each other. A steep learning curve for me, that's for sure!

Window details

It was pretty hard to really capture the creation of the windows with the camera - in fact, it was impossibly hard to take so many photos inside as there were blue tarps covering the entire house (to protect the straw from the elements - apparently more important than my need for good photos!!!!) so it was rather dark inside. However, here's a couple I got - Justin is stuffing loose straw around the bales to fill in the wire frame, and pulling the wire mesh as tightly as he can around it and up, to create a rounded window. I'm sure he must have biceps of steel to pull this off, three sides to every window in our house, but the effort is well-worth it. I think the end result is stunning, and the window details are one of the key features of the house!

In the photos you'll see a wood 'frame' on the outside edge of the window, that's the blocking indicating where the plaster should stop, and to enable easy installation of the windows. The rest of the wood will be a window ledge, eventually created with rough-hewn wood from our property. You can also see the burlap placed over the wood. Since clay bonds differently to straw than wood, the burlap is used as a bridge between these two different materials to prevent cracking in the plaster.

Little helpers

When we first envisioned building a house made of straw, we dreamed of making it all ourselves, But so much changed in the time since we first found our piece of land, including Jamie's return to work that we started to realize that it was less than ideal for us to do all the work. We also toured a few homes that were largely self-built, most of which were ten years into the process and also had stories of much money and time spent trying to do something, only to hire 'experts' to come re-do it. That, and memories of so many years of renovating our old house in Vancouver largely on our own, led us very quickly to the realization that we would MUCH rather go a bit into debt, have a small mortgage, and finish up our house much quicker by hiring teams of experts!

And you know, in the end we've realized how well it really has worked for us. After a day or two of straw baling, Jamie did comment that it LOOKED so much more fun, and in fact he found it a bit tedious at times and a wee bit frustrating to have to keep cutting and retying it! So although he started out feeling sad to have let go of such a large part of the process, there were days that he was rather glad to 'have' to go off to work for the day, and come home to see another wall baled!!!! And yet, with the nature of the house, we could all help out as much or as little as we wanted, get our hands dirty for a bit and when we'd had enough, walk away knowing that the work would still get done! Not surprisingly, Jamie did more work on the house by far than all of us, often with Ryland by his side, but we can all point out various areas where our hands got dirty creating our home. It was a perfect balance for us, enabling us to be involved, but also to keep our relationships happy, our bellies full of healthy foods and enabling us to still vacation a little over the summer!

The weeks of clay

Here is a very image-heavy post all about the plastering process. We did two coats on the outside of the house, of a lyme-cement plaster (3 parts lyme to 1 part cement). Originally we had toyed with the idea of using natural clay on both the outside and the inside, but as time passed and the weather got colder, everyone started to get a bit nervous about freezing and excess moisture. Clay takes a lot longer to cure (dry) so there's more risk of it freezing and therefore failing/falling apart. However, Jamie still wanted to use a more natural product so although they knew they needed to use a cement-based product (which would set in hours vs. days), they decided to experiment with a 3 to 1 lyme mixture. For the inside layers, we still wanted to play with more natural clay mixtures. Essentially, it is clay, sand, straw and water. This first shot is of a couple of the samples that Andrew made up before figuring out the perfect consistancy of the clay before putting it on the walls. Apparently it dried up beautifully, which bodes well for our walls:-)

Our front yard was a mass of sand piles, clay piles, water hoses and grown men playing in mud puddles and creating mud pies. I tell you, if it had been any warmer all of us probably would have jumped in with them, but as it was our toes and fingers were frozen just watching them all!










You'll notice the first coat on the outside of the house, and the second coat on the inside of the house (the natural clay takes three layers as opposed to the two coats for the lyme-cement) that it is kept rather rough with grooves - it's called the scratch coat, and it allows the thinner, smoother final coat to attach easily.







And here's a couple of views of the walls drying - watching clay plaster dry is even WORSE than watching paint dry, talk about t-e-d-i-o-u-s!!!! Since we did not have a wood stove, nor were we insulated nearly enough to run the radiant floor heating, we had to rent massive heaters and fans, and move them around the house regularly to dry it out as evenly as possibly. It took a good week to get there, but eventually we did. Since at this point it was winter already, and we were ready to move in, we opted to stop at the two rough coats and save the final coat for the spring - when we'll also finish up all of the interior walls and after that is done, acid etch and seal the concrete floors. It's a bit depressing to move in with the thought of moving back out again in the spring, but I'm sure we'll survive!!!! One more push..........

Cleaning house

Here's some shots of the massive house cleaning project. Of course, here it looks like we enlisted the kids in a lot of child labour, but in actuality I just shot a few photos each time they were helping out as they looked so sweet, but it was me and Jamie who put in the hours of elbow grease and endless mopping. Over and over again. Man, that dust, it just won't let up! Especially with a concrete slab and dirt walls!!!! But, we cleaned it up enough to be able to move into, and although we're very excited about the day that the walls are finished and the floor is sealed, we're really enjoying the home as is!




Here's a shot of Tiegan playing in their future bedroom, while we installed windows and cleaned, cleaned and cleaned some more. AMAZING how much dust was created during the construction season!

Jamie and I put in most of the windows on the main floor of the house - I got rather muscular near the end, those are heavy suckers!!!!!!!!!! One of my favourite features of a straw bale house is definitely these nice deep window sills - we created a few of them low enough to be awesome bench seats, I can't wait!

Jamie installing one of the upper windows......we haven't quite figured out how we're going to access them in order to open them, or even dust up there, it's pretty high up. But wow, does it ever let in a lot of lovely light!!!!

The view from the hole for our doorknob - a view we enjoyed for just over a month before the hardware arrived:-)

And this was the first time Ryland opened our front door after he, Ian and Jamie installed it - a pretty exciting moment! No, we didn't go for the plywood look, it just took a few more weeks for the glass to arrive so in the meantime we kept the plywood in.