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Blogs - Shire Strawbale Home Category

Forestry, Gardens & House Work

May 17th, 2010 by andrea in Blogs - Shire Strawbale Home, Food, Green Building + Design, Green Building Blogs, Green Homes, Straw Bale, Yard + Garden

This past April I spent a week in the woods at MacPhail Woods taking a university course, Environmental Studies 209 – Ecological Forestry, learning about forest ecology, sustainable forestry practices, forest restoration and the Acadien Forests.

It was an amazing experiential learning course and everything we learned has stayed with me and I think it will stay with me and will be built on by my own experiences as I work in our family woodlots and observe nature throughout the seasons. We learned about plant identification techniques, assessing forest health, ecological diversity, pruning and harvesting techniques and so much more. We also got to take a piece of the woods at MacPhail’s and design a restoration plan and then actually implement it. Read the rest of this entry »

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Straw Bale Home Building Primer

December 10th, 2009 by greenspree in Blogs - Shire Strawbale Home, Green Building + Design, Green Building Blogs, Green Homes, Straw Bale

So you want to build your own straw bale home. You’ve seen them in green home building books and on TV shows, you saw green home builders wax poetic about their homes low impact on the environment and connection to the local ecology. You’ve researched all the possible alternative home building techniques and the thought of conventional framing makes you shudder. You are going to build a straw bale home no matter what obstacles the MAN and doubters have to say! Well far be it for me to try and dissuade you!

There are some things you should know and experience first though. This, in all likely-hood, is going to be one of the most challenging things you will ever take on. Read the rest of this entry »

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The last few months on the house!

October 22nd, 2009 by greenspree in Blogs - Shire Strawbale Home, Green Building + Design, Green Building Blogs, Green Homes, Straw Bale

Finally I have gotten round to getting some photos uploaded! We are officially moved in, the mortgage has been completed, and we are “done”, although I don’t think the work will ever stop! There’s some niggly trim work to complete, a few touch-ups, there will be on-going stucco maintenance and inspections, fire wood to cut and split, a wood shed to build, the storage/garden shed to finish and organize, an addition in the next couple of years probably, landscaping, a garden or two, walkways, decks, etc… But for the next little while we are going to take it easy and enjoy a little break!

Enjoy the photos!

Forms for the concrete countertops. Keith wanted to try his hand at concrete countertops and we volunteered as the test case! Read the rest of this entry »

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Back to School

October 17th, 2009 by greenspree in Blogs - Shire Strawbale Home, Green Building + Design, Green Building Blogs, Green Homes

Tomorrow I will be applying to go back to school, enrolling in the BSc physics program with a parallel diploma in engineering. I will be attending part time, doing two courses per semester hopefully with the support of my workplace. It’s pretty exciting for me and the courses I will be taking will be both exciting and useful in my career.

I am a little worried that I will be able to handle the workload, however I think things on the house and at home should be calming down somewhat soon. We have moved into our house, are finished of three outside walls and 99.5% of the interior. Two weeks of rain have given us a good test for the wall system and it seems to be performing admirably.
*SIGH*
Relief.

I will hopefully be putting up some new photos of the house moved in and dressed up, as well as some photos of the completed outside walls. I wish Aliant would hurry up with the high speed expansion so we could get internet at home, but alas it is not available yet to us.

(cross-posted at greenspree.ca)

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House Progress

July 15th, 2009 by greenspree in Blogs - Shire Strawbale Home, Green Building Blogs, Green Homes

It’s been a long time since I did an update on the house. No, we are not moved in yet. No, I don’t know when we will be moving in. But I hope very soon.

The electrical work is 99.99% complete.
The light fixtures are all installed and working.
The stairs are in and the railing is up but still needs balusters installed.
The cedar bathroom vanity has been built (from scratch by me!) Read the rest of this entry »

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Stairs

May 13th, 2009 by greenspree in Blogs - Shire Strawbale Home, Green Building Blogs, Green Homes, Straw Bale

We finally have stairs! The weekend before last we put in the stairs that have been laying in pieces in our kitchen for about a year! We still need to build handrails and re-sand and finish them after being exposed to clay dust for months but it’s nice to be able to go up and down stairs without using a ladder or scaffolding.

The impetus to get the stairs done was the impending delivery of the washer and dryer which were going up stairs, we didn’t think they would haul it up our scaffolding for the $47 delivery fee. Read the rest of this entry »

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Tile and Window Sills

April 16th, 2009 by andrea in Blogs - Shire Strawbale Home, Green Building Blogs, Green Homes, Projects, Straw Bale

This long Easter weekend we have focused on the window trim, bathroom tile and later on today concrete floor finishing. The windows have all their birch plywood sills cut, installed and finished finally, and there are 8 windows boxed out with trim on the first floor. Only 6 to go on the first floor and 13 on the second!

The first step to cutting the plywood sills was to cut a piece of cardboard of cardstock or paper to the depth of the sill. Read the rest of this entry »

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Open Stairwell

March 31st, 2009 by greenspree in Blogs - Shire Strawbale Home, Green Building Blogs, Green Homes

Notice the distinct lack of scaffolding in our stairwell! We finished the trim at the top of the stairwell and were able to take the scaffolding out last week. The scaffolding has been there for basically a year so it’s a pretty big milestone!

We also have a very large pile ($1000+ worth) of knotty pine board which have been ripped, routered and sanded to form our window trim, door trim and wall trim and are now going through the process of being finished with Danish oil. Having a kitty in the house complicates things as we end up with dusty little footprints on the trim if we don’t keep the trim covered up. Hopefully the floors will be cleaned up soon so she doesn’t have dirty feet anymore!

(cross-posted at greenspree.ca)

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Shower Stall

March 15th, 2009 by greenspree in Blogs - Shire Strawbale Home, Green Building Blogs

Today we finished painting the bathtub (sorry no photos) and putting in the waterproof membrane in the shower stall. The cement board was installed last week and the new cedar ceiling on Saturday so the only thing left to do to get the bathroom ready for floor tiles was to install the membrane. We’re leaving the wall membrane till later as the plumbing for the shower fixture needs to be roughed in yet and we aren’t getting the plumber back till we have the floor tile done and tub in place, sort of a chicken and egg thing. Read the rest of this entry »

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Cement Board and Cement Floors

March 11th, 2009 by greenspree in Blogs - Shire Strawbale Home, Green Building Blogs, Green Homes

Things are progressing at the house and really starting to take shape, especially after taking a night to clean the bulk of the dirt and mud that was on the floors downstairs! When the floors are wet they look fantastic, almost like polished black marble and hopefully when polished and waxed they will keep this appearance.